Chapter energy and technology the enhancement of skin

5.8. Productive technology

There is more to be said about technological evolution during the pre-Roman period, especially in Greece and Alexandria. Invention and innovation were not lacking during that period. Several sorts of looms were in use in Mycenean Greece, more than 1000 years BCE. Archimedes is justifiably regarded as one of the great inventors of history, but he was only the most outstanding one of a considerable list of inventors, including Aristotle, Eudoxos, Hephaestus, Heron, Hipparchus, Ktesibios, Philon, Plato, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Timosthenes and other nameless ones {Kotsanas, 2011 #7693}. Kotsanas has described and reproduced over 200 of the inventions of Ancient Greece and its satellite territories (Alexandria, Byzantium, etc.). Most of the mechanical inventions of modern times were anticipated by the Greeks.

These inventions ranged from automata, sundials and hydraulic clocks, oil presses, screw pumps, compound pulleys, astronomical instruments, cranes, ships, siege machines, cross-bows and catapults. Many had military uses, while the rest were primarily scientific instruments, time-keeping devices or amusements. But the Greeks had screw-cutters (both male and female), nuts and bolts, hemp ropes and cables, pulleys for lifting heavy weights⁵, hydraulic and pneumatic machines, chains and sprockets. They could, and did, build marvelous temples, free-standing statues, massive fortifications and monumental tombs. These were individual creations. Some were reproducible, by skilled artisans. What they did not have was structural materials apart from wood and stone, manufacturing (replication) systems – other than human slaves – in the modern sense. I will come back to this point later.

While manufacturing technology was slow to develop, the Dutch made a huge advance in mechanical engineering during the Middle Ages. The reasons for colonization of the waterlogged marchlands in the Rhine River delta by farmers are lost in history. But the likely reason was to for protection against the raids by mounted or seaborne raiding parties. But the land of the delta was marshy at the best of times and frequently subject to floods, both from storms off the North Sea and from spring floods down the Rhine. (Some of those floods were very large. One notable Rhine flood in 1784 raised the water level more than 20 meters above normal levels at Cologne. Most of the cities along the Rhine were totally destroyed by that flood.)

What the Dutch did, starting around 1000 CE was to build dikes (to keep the river within its banks), drainage canals and windmills. Those highly sophisticated windmills were built primarily to pump water continuously, by means of an Archimedes screw, from canals and ditches to reservoirs at higher levels, and thence into the river. (Some of them are now UNESCO “heritage” sites). Much of the land of Holland is now permanently several meters below sea level (and the land is still sinking). One of the interesting features of the Dutch water management system is that it is an essentially public enterprise in which every citizen has a direct interest.

It is evident that the technological innovations before 1500 CE did not increase manufacturing productivity in any significant way. The only materials that were produced in bulk before 1500 CE were paper and silk (in China), cotton fabrics (in India), linen and wool cloth, plus wood, glass, bricks and tiles. There are two categories. The first category consists of materials that were processed mechanically. Thus paper was the final product of a sequence starting with cutting mulberry trees, crushing the wood, bleaching the fiber, dewatering the mush and pressing it into a sheet that could be cut into pieces. (One district in China paid its annual tax to the central government in the form of a million and a half sheets of paper.)

Cotton, linen and wool fabrics are the end of a long sequence starting with harvesting the plants or shearing a sheep, washing the fiber, bleaching, combing, spinning into yarn, dyeing, color-fixing (with alum) and weaving on looms – not necessarily in that order. Bricks and ceramics are the end product starting from clay and sand, mixing with water, dewatering and pressing into molds, followed by baking to initiate a chemical reaction at high temperatures. Leather is produced from the skin of an animal, after washing, hair removal, and chemical treatment (tanning) to fix the protein in the skin and stop it from decay.

The second category consists of products involving a biochemical transformation depending on anaerobic organisms (e.g. yeast) that convert sugar by fermentation into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This applies to bread, beer, wine and other beverages. The sequence starts with harvesting grain, potatoes or fruit (e.g. grapes), threshing (in the case of grain), crushing, grinding, mixing with water (in the case of beer) and confinement in an enclosed anaerobic volume for the fermentation to take place. Grain for beer may be roasted. Bread is baked after the dough “rises” thanks to fermentation by the yeast. The baking process for bread breaks up large molecules and makes them more digestible.

In all the above cases there is a considerable need for energy in useful form (the technical term is exergy) beyond the energy-content of the raw original material. Energy is needed especially for the washing, bleaching and baking steps. Note that all of these are “batch” processes, based on a recipe, but that no two batches were ever identical. Technological improvements over time have made some of the mechanical steps (like crushing, spinning and weaving) more efficient, but usually by increasing the mechanical energy required.

Bread, beer and wine are consumed as such. But more complex objects were made from wood, paper, fabrics, leather, by craftsmen, possibly with help from apprentices. Clothes for the rich were made by tailors or dress-makers. Shoemakers made shoes and boots. Horse-shoes and other farm implements, were made by blacksmiths, knives and swords were made by armorers. Books were copied individually (by monks). Items of furniture were made by carpenters and cabinet-makers.

The “division of labor”, observed by Adam Smith in 1776, had barely begun by 1500 CE except in textiles, construction, ship-building, sailing long distances and military operations. Most things, like shoes or guns, were made by craftsmen one at a time. The problem of replication, even of simple mechanical designs, had not yet been recognized, still less solved.

The problems of standardization and replication (especially of interchangeable metal parts), became more difficult as the objects to be manufactured became more complex, with different shapes requiring different materials (ibid). For instance, a Jerome clock c. 1830 might have had 100 different metal parts, ranging from threaded nuts and bolts, to axles, washers, rivets, sleeve bushings and various stampings, plus several complex components such as escapements and gear wheels that had to be machined more accurately {Ayres, 1991 #439}. The nuts and bolts and washers were probably purchased from another firm. A sewing machine (c. 1840) had 100-150 parts, including some product-specific castings and machined parts like gear-wheels, plus a number of stampings and screw-type items that could have been mass-produced elsewhere [ibid].

The Springfield rifle of 1860 had 140 parts, many of which were specialized castings. Next in increasing complexity, and later in time, were typewriters, bicycles, automobiles and airplanes. IBM’s “Selectric” typewriter (no longer in production) had 2700 parts [ibid]. Very complex objects such as Boeing’s 747 jet aircraft may contain several million individual parts (nobody has counted them). A firm like AMP that only makes electrical connectors, has over 100,000 different types in its catalog. Nowadays, only 10-15% of the parts of a complex modern product are typically made in the same factory as the final assembly.

The technical problem of standardization was still vexing manufacturers until late in the 19^th century. It was the Connecticut hand-gun manufacturers, notably Colt and Remington, who were the pioneers of the so-called “American system of manufacturing” {Rosenberg, 1969 #4341} {Hounshell, 1984 #2506}. The solution of the interchangeability problem, for guns, clocks, and more complex products, was basically a question of material uniformity and mechanical machine tool precision and accuracy. It began with artillery manufacturing, under the rubric “systeme Gribeauval” for the French artillery general who introduced it in 1765. Gribeauval’s system was further developed in France by Honoré Blanc, to achieve uniformity of musket parts at an armory in Vincennes. Thomas Jefferson, who was in France at the time, learned about Blanc’s work and after the Revolution it was quickly adopted and imitated in the US by Eli Whitney (c. 1798). Whitney’s efforts were obstructed by the lack of machine tools. The general purpose milling machine was his invention (1818).

The most important pioneer of mass production was Samuel Colt, who invented a pistol with a revolving breech (the “Colt 44”) that could fire multiple shots without reloading. This was a huge advantage over muskets. It was said that a Comanche Indian warrior could fire six arrows in the time needed to reload a musket. Colt’s factory was the first to mass produce a complex metal object. His methods became known as the “American system of manufacturing”. In fact the British Parliament sent a delegation to Connecticut to visit Colt’s factory in 1854 and later invited him to build a similar factory in England {Hounshell, 1984 #2506}.

The “systems” concept, in which a manufacturing plant was designed for each product or family of products was truly revolutionary. It enabled American manufacturers in the 19^th century to take the lead in a variety of manufacturing sectors, such as machine tools (Pratt & Whitney), watches and clocks (Waltham, Hamilton), sewing machines (Singer), typewriters (Underwood, Remington), calculators (Burroughs), bicycles ( Schwinn), motorcycles (Harley-Davidson), agricultural machinery (International Harvester, John Deere, Caterpillar), automobiles (Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Ford, Chrysler) and finally aircraft.

There were other important innovations later in the 19^th century. The “division of labor” was advanced especially by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the pioneer of time and motion studies, who advocated scientific management, based ont he application of engineering principles on the factory floor (“Taylorism”). Taylor’s ideas strongly influenced Henry Ford, who adapted them to the mass production of automobiles starting in 1908. Ford is credited with innovating the moving assembly line.

Mechanization of industry yielded enormous productivity gains between 1836 and 1895, according to a massive study by the US government {Commissioner of labor, 1898 #7824}. A few examples make the point. Comparing the number of man-hours required in between the year of earliest data and 1896 the productivity multiplier for cheap men’s shoes was 932 (1859-96), for axle nuts 148 (1850-95), for cotton sheets 106 (1860-96), for tire bolts 46.9 (1856-96), for brass watch movements 35.5 (1850-96), for rifle barrels 26.2 (1856-96), for horseshoe nails 23.8 (1864-96), and for welded iron pipe 17.6 (1835-95). While these are just the most spectacular examples, they make the point. Mechanization was driving US industrial output in the latter half of the 19^th century. Other countries, especially Germany, were close behind.

The outstanding change in manufacturing technology in the twentieth century has been programmable automation, initiated during the second world war.

In summary, the invention of printing, followed by large-scale manufacturing of goods with division of labor, standardization and interchangeable parts, is somewhat analogous to the “invention” of cellular (RNA and DNA) replication in biological evolution. The analogy is rough, but the emphasis in both cases was on copying accuracy and error minimization