In this presentation Prof. Shore will provide some historical context to the 4th industrial revolution. He will highlight aspects of previous industrial revolutions and illustrate the critical role of precision machinery and metrology. The technical content of the presentation will be based around the innovative ultra-precision machinery being developed through Prof. Shore's, Loxham Precision company. Loxham is producing ultra-precision and micromachining machines through adoption of new digital technologies and techniques. Their new era machines and products offer high performance digital manufacturing capabilities with extremely low environmental impact and eased ownership attributes. A number of application examples will be introduced for example: advanced instruments and sensors, space and IR optics, Quantum devices, medical and watch components.