Technology; it’s omnipresent. We use complex tools daily, but inherently forget how much time, energy, and design goes into each new high-technology product, which changes the way we live.

There are many people, and stories, behind every part of your phone, laptop, or car. Engineers, visionaries, programmers, artists, technicians, metal workers, and more spend countless hours designing, optimizing, and building each part, subsystem, and product.

We never think about certain parts, such as a cellphone camera lens, as a challenge to create.

In reality, however, it took a person to design the lens size, another person to replicate this design in CAD software, an ultra-precision engineer to mill the mold for the lens, and ultra-precision temperature control system to get a precise cut to the angstrom level for all eight million reincarnations of the lens.

This lens is but one small part of the cell phone.