I agree,
@JonB . I've marveled at modern manufacturing and the precision and repeatability capability today, especially in firearms, but then I marvel even more in the arms produced in massive quantity from the late 1800s to the turn of the next century. It's not hard to find a bolt that will fit a 98 Mauser, if you're going to rebarrel it - it's harder to find one that WON'T fit.
If I could do "field trips," I'd take my classes to Grand Rapids, Ohio and show them the functional canal and mill - still operating and producing flour. The neatest part is the full-blown machine-shop at the lowest level, with a jack-shaft running the length of the shop, supplying natural power to all the machines, which produced some very viable and long-lasting tools when it was in operation.
We tend to look at the past with a bit of contempt and condescension, as if "they" (just "us" in a different time), were struggling in their intellectual squalor and entrapped in ignorance, pining to live in OUR world - the "future," where they would have unimaginable ease and comfort and ENLIGHTENMENT. Laughable! "They" lived at the very height of technological advancement (for the day) and felt as on top o' th' world as we do today. In other words, pretty arrogant and pitying those a generation behind them - just like we tend to do.
I personally tend to believe that a person not only had to be tougher "back then," but much smarter as well.
Aside from the brains, much of what was accomplished before was only achievable through exploitation of rote hard labor of biological beasts of burden (to include humans) which is the part that technology has begun to erode by making machines the slaves. We might not be slaves to labor today, but we have been shackled and are being milked for "data" and whatever intrinsic monetary value our existences represent - so, we haven't lost THAT.
We're just fatter, lazier and dumber now.