The idea of the book about the old Russian masters-inventors arose shortly after the end of the Great Patriotic War and, in fact, was a response to the victory of the Soviet people. Historical memory returned to the memory of the victory of the Russians in 1812, made us think about the sources of that victory, a harbinger of future, modern historical events. It turned out that Russian technical thought in the XVIII century was not only not backward, but at times ahead of European science. Historical sources have preserved quite reliable information about the ancient Russian masters. Tula arms factories used machines of the Russian invention, about which the master Lev Sabakin in 1784 read a report to the members of the Royal Society of London.