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Author: David Hounshell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801831584
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
David A. Houndshell's widely acclaimed history explores the American "genius for mass production" and races its origins in the nineteenth-century "American system" of manufacture. Previous writers on the American system have argued that the technical problems of mass production had been solved by armsmakers before the Civil War. Drawing upon the extensive business and manufacturing records if leading American firms, Hounshell demonstrates that the diffusion of arms production technology was neither as fast now as smooth as had been assumed. Exploring the manufacture of sewing machines and furniture, bicycles and reapers, he shows that both the expression "mass production" and the technology that lay behind it were developments of the twentieth century, attributable in large part to the Ford Motor Company. Hounshell examines the importance of individuals in the diffusion and development of production technology and the central place of marketing strategy in the success of selected American manufacturers. Whereaas Ford was the seedbed of the assembly line revolution, it was General motors that initiated a new era with its introduction of the annual model change. With the new marketing strategy, the technology of "the changeover" became of paramount importance. Hounshell chronicles how painfully Ford learned this lesson and recounts how the successful mass production of automobiles led to the establishment of an "ethos of mass production," to an era in which propoments of "Fordism" argued that mass production would solve all of America's social problems.
Author: David Hounshell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801831584
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
David A. Houndshell's widely acclaimed history explores the American "genius for mass production" and races its origins in the nineteenth-century "American system" of manufacture. Previous writers on the American system have argued that the technical problems of mass production had been solved by armsmakers before the Civil War. Drawing upon the extensive business and manufacturing records if leading American firms, Hounshell demonstrates that the diffusion of arms production technology was neither as fast now as smooth as had been assumed. Exploring the manufacture of sewing machines and furniture, bicycles and reapers, he shows that both the expression "mass production" and the technology that lay behind it were developments of the twentieth century, attributable in large part to the Ford Motor Company. Hounshell examines the importance of individuals in the diffusion and development of production technology and the central place of marketing strategy in the success of selected American manufacturers. Whereaas Ford was the seedbed of the assembly line revolution, it was General motors that initiated a new era with its introduction of the annual model change. With the new marketing strategy, the technology of "the changeover" became of paramount importance. Hounshell chronicles how painfully Ford learned this lesson and recounts how the successful mass production of automobiles led to the establishment of an "ethos of mass production," to an era in which propoments of "Fordism" argued that mass production would solve all of America's social problems.
Author: David Hounshell
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 745
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Book Description
“In From the American System to Mass Production, David A. Hounshell has provided a detailed, thoughtful, and comprehensive examination of American industrial technology from the early 1800s through the 1930s. Lavishly illustrated with 19th-century prints and more recent photographs of factory interiors and industrial products, this important work traces the direct and indirect routes down the road toward modern American industrial civilization. For business and labor historians and for historians of American technology and industrialization, Hounshell’s book will fill many gaps in the history of the technical contours of modern industrial America... [the book] begins with an examination of the origins of the American system of manufactures in government and private arms production and then moves to the sewing machine, woodworking, agricultural equipment, bicycle, and automobile industries. It touches on the important inventors and innovators and describes their fundamental contributions in these American industries. Most of the principal figures and institutions are covered: Simeon North, Eli Whitney, Thomas Blanchard, John H. Hall, and Samuel Colt in armories, Eli Terry and Seth Thomas in the clockmaking industry, the Wheeler and Wilson, Willcox and Gibbs, and Singer sewing machine firms, the Singer woodworking plant, the McCormick Reaper works, the Columbia, Pope, and Western Wheel Works bicycle companies, and the Ford and General Motors automotive corporations... Hounshell’s work is a major contribution to the social history of technical innovators and their innovations... All in all, From the American System to Mass Production is an impressive work. In his documentation of the history of American industrial technology, Hounshell has demonstrated the slow evolution and the near-failure of large-scale, capital-intensive, and work-degrading industrial systems. Whereas other historians of technology have tended to tread too lightly on the social dimensions of technical change, Hounshell has provided an excellent social analysis of the networks of innovators and their role in the diffusion of armory practices and other industrial advances from industry to industry.” — Technology and Culture “Mr. Hounshell is an enthusiastic, lively writer, yet very careful scholar. He is cautious in his conclusions and candid about what is debatable. He offers several sides of every issue; he does not judge particular technologies as good or bad... What stands out in this history is how slowly what appears to be a sensible, productive and efficient system of manufacturing was adopted, chiefly because it required a change in the mind-set of managers, changes in skills and work habits of workers, and disciplined procedures and practices throughout the plants.” — New York Times Book Review “David Hounshell’s history of the evolution of American production methods has few rivals; in execution of the theme, it has none... Hounshell carefully documents the development, transfer, and modification of the technology of the manufacture of interchangeable parts from firm to firm and industry to industry... A series of excellent technical photographs and Hounshell’s own field trials support his argument.” — Science “[A] meticulous study of mass production’s roots and early flowering... An able researcher, [Hounshell] follows the trail of early manufacturing ideas and shows how they were gradually perfected and diffused throughout different industries before converging in Ford’s miracle at Highland Park.” — Wall Street Journal “[An] important study which offers a convincing reinterpretation of the development of mass production in the United States. [Hounshell] has combined substantial new archival research with a synthesis of the mass of new work completed by others in the past three decades.” — Journal of Economic History
Author: David A. Hounshell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Author: David E. Nye
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262018713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
From the Model T to today's "lean manufacturing": the assembly line as crucial, yet controversial, agent of social and economic transformation. The mechanized assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line—developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts—first created and then served an expanding mass market. It also transformed industrial labor. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of “lean manufacturing”; American industry reluctantly adopted the new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford's pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.
Author: Ray Batchelor
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719041747
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
Henry Ford is often thought of as being the ultimate American folk hero who developed one of the most important changes to 20th-century American society - mass production. With his successive teams of engineers, Ford developed technologies which placed the motor car at the disposal of millions of people, freeing them from previous notions of distance and space, and re-shaping the modern urban environment worldwide.
Author: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421425254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
How manufacturing textiles and guns transformed the United States from colonial dependent to military power. In 1783, the Revolutionary War drew to a close, but America was still threatened by enemies at home and abroad. The emerging nation faced tax rebellions, Indian warfare, and hostilities with France and England. Its arsenal—a collection of hand-me-down and beat-up firearms—was woefully inadequate, and its manufacturing sector was weak. In an era when armies literally froze in the field, military preparedness depended on blankets and jackets, the importation of which the British Empire had coordinated for over 200 years. Without a ready supply of guns, the new nation could not defend itself; without its own textiles, it was at the economic mercy of the British. Domestic industry offered the best solution for true economic and military independence. In Manufacturing Advantage, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele shows how the US government promoted the industrial development of textiles and weapons to defend the country from hostile armies—and hostile imports. Moving from the late 1700s through the Mexican-American War, Schakenbach Regele argues that both industries developed as a result of what she calls “national security capitalism”: a mixed enterprise system in which government agents and private producers brokered solutions to the problems of war and international economic disparities. War and State Department officials played particularly key roles in the emergence of American industry, facilitating arms makers and power loom weavers in the quest to develop industrial resources. And this defensive strategy, Schakenbach Regele reveals, eventually evolved to promote westward expansion, as well as America’s growing commercial and territorial empire. Examining these issues through the lens of geopolitics, Manufacturing Advantage places the rise of industry in the United States in the context of territorial expansion, diplomacy, and warfare. Ultimately, the book reveals the complex link between government intervention and private initiative in a country struggling to create a political economy that balanced military competence with commercial needs.
Author: Joshua B. Freeman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393246329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
"Freeman’s rich and ambitious Behemoth depicts a world in retreat that still looms large in the national imagination.…More than an economic history, or a chronicle of architectural feats and labor movements." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.
Author: Ottilie M. Leland
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814326657
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Master of Precision is the fascinating firsthand account of Henry Martyn Leland's life and work during the early days of the automobile industry.
Author: Thomas J. Misa
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801860522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
From the age of railroads through the building of the first battleships, from the first skyscrapers to the dawning of the age of the automobile, steelmakers proved central to American industry, building, and transportation. In A Nation of Steel Thomas Misa explores the complex interactions between steelmaking and the rise of the industries that have characterized modern America. A Nation of Steel offers a detailed and fascinating look at an industry that has had a profound impact on American life.
Author: Philip Scranton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521521352
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
A careful reconstruction of the rise of textile capitalism in the Quaker City.
