Author: Richard Paul WatkinsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Watchmaking, the American System of Manufacturing and Mass Production
Author: Richard Paul WatkinsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States
Author: David HounshellPublisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 745
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
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932
Author: David HounshellPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801831584
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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.
From the American System to Mass Production 1800-1932
Author: David A. HounshellPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Book Description
Manufacturing Time
Author: Amy GlasmeierPublisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9781572305892
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Since the large-scale manufacture of personal timepieces began, industry leadership has shifted among widely disparate locations, production systems, and cultures. This book recounts the story of the quest for supremacy in the manufacture of watches--from the cottage industries of Britain; to the preeminence of Switzerland and, later, the United States; to the high-tech plants of Japan and the sweatshops of Hong Kong. Glasmeier examines both the strategies adopted by specific firms and the interplay of such varying influences as technological change, cyclical economic downturns, war, and national trade policies. In so doing, she delineates a cohesive framework within which to address such broader questions as how sustained regional economic development takes place (or starts and then stops); how decisions made by corporations are structured by internal and external forces; and the ways industrial cultures with different strategic learning capabilities facilitate or thwart the pursuit of technological change.
From the American System to Mass Production
Author: David A. HounshellPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 796
Book Description
The business of time
Author: Pierre-Yves DonzéPublisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526162563
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
World watch production today is concentrated in three countries: Switzerland, Japan and China. Former centres such as Great Britain, France, the United States and Russia saw the industrial manufacture of watches disappear from their territory during the twentieth century. How did this situation come about? The business of time aims to answer this question by presenting the first comprehensive history of the sector. It traces the evolution and transformation of the global watch industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, highlighting the conditions that enabled watch production to expand across the globe and revealing how multinational companies gradually emerged to dominate the industry.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History
Author: Joan Shelley RubinPublisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199764352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1551
Book Description
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History brings together in one two-volume set the record of the nation's values, aspirations, anxieties, and beliefs as expressed in both everyday life and formal bodies of thought. Over the past twenty years, the field of cultural history has moved to the center of American historical studies, and has come to encompass the experiences of ordinary citizens in such arenas as reading and religious practice as well as the accomplishments of prominent artists and writers. Some of the most imaginative scholarship in recent years has emerged from this burgeoning field. The scope of the volume reflects that development: the encyclopedia incorporates popular entertainment ranging from minstrel shows to video games, middlebrow ventures like Chautauqua lectures and book clubs, and preoccupations such as "Perfectionism" and "Wellness" that have shaped Americans' behavior at various points in their past and that continue to influence attitudes in the present. The volumes also make available recent scholarly insights into the writings of political scientists, philosophers, feminist theorists, social reformers, and other thinkers whose works have furnished the underpinnings of Americans' civic activities and personal concerns. Anyone wishing to understand the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of the United States from the early days of settlement to the twenty-first century will find the encyclopedia invaluable.
The Rise and Decline of England's Watchmaking Industry, 1550–1930
Author: Alun C. DaviesPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000571904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
This survey of the rise and decline of English watchmaking fills a gap in the historiography of British industry. Clerkenwell in London was supplied with 'rough movements' from Prescot, 200 miles away in Lancashire. Smaller watchmaking hubs later emerged in Coventry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. The English industry led European watchmaking in the late eighteenth century in output, and its lucrative export markets extended to the Ottoman Empire and China. It also made marine chronometers, the most complex of hand-crafted pre-industrial mechanisms, crucially important to the later hegemony of Britain’s navy and merchant marine. Although Britain was the 'workshop of the world', its watchmaking industry declined. Why? First, because cheap Swiss watches were smuggled into British markets. Later, in the era of Free Trade, they were joined by machine-made watches from factories in America, enabled by the successful application to watch production of the 'American system' in Waltham, Massachusetts after 1858. The Swiss watch industry adapted itself appropriately, expanded, and reasserted its lead in the world’s markets. English watchmaking did not: its trajectory foreshadowed and was later followed by other once-prominent British industries. Clerkenwell retained its pre-industrial production methods. Other modernization attempts in Britain had limited success or failed.
The Consumer's Workshop
Author: Ben MoorePublisher: The Consumer's Workshop
ISBN: 1419654454
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124
Book Description
In Part I "Learning from the Past" we explore the history of American Manufacturing. We are on a trajectory toward the future. We intend to show that trajectory by a short review of our recent past. In Chapter 1, titled "The History of American Manufacturing- Where it All Came From" we examine the impact of the First Industrial Revolution (from Manpower to Steam Power) and the Second Industrial Revolutions (of Modern Day Manufacturing Methods) on American Manufacturing. In Chapter 2, which is called "The Information Revolution in Manufacturing", we examine the impact of the Third Industrial Revolution that started after the 1940s and is still in process. In this chapter we explore the shift in manufacturing from Individuals to System Thinking, the growth of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and the emergence of MRPII/ERP systems. In Part Two, which is called "Efficient and Profitable Customization", we take a look ahead to the future. We show how American manufacturing is only midway through these current trends and how these trends foreshadow the remaining topics in this book: systems thinking, the engineering pyramid, product configuration, configuration engineering and mass customization. In Chapter 3, called "It's Not about the Computer, it's about Systems Thinking", we explore how recent advances in Systems Thinking have helped to lower development costs. In Chapter 4, called "The Engineering Pyramid", we introduce readers to our Engineering Pyramid paradigm and a top down approach that can be utilized to increase the speed of innovation and dramatically lower engineering costs. In Chapter 5, called "Systemization and Standardization - They are Not the Same" we explore the current challenges of designing and building customized products and our methodology for top down systemization and standardization to increase the speed of innovation and dramatically lower engineering costs. In Chapter 6, called "Mass Customization", we demonstrate the importance of mass customization for the future of American manufacturing and describe how current leaders have made mass customization profitable in their businesses. In Part Three, called "The Human Component - It's Still All About the People", we look at the continuing importance and the necessity of people systems in the manufacturing process. In Chapter 7, called "Employee On Boarding" we provide an approach to bringing people into the organization. In Chapter 8, called "High Performance Team-Based Work Systems ", we tell you how to maximize throughput, profit and career rewards through an empowered team based work system.. In Chapter 9, called "Technology Transfer and Training", we explore how employees can learn the necessary skills for working in a highly efficient manufacturing environment. The last section, Part Four, is entitled, "Putting it All Together". Here, in Chapter 10, called "Taking Your Company There" we tell you who will be the winners and losers of this natural extension of American manufacturers. Also, we tell you how you will know if it's too late for your company. Sorry...some of you readers won't be happy.
