9 Great Industrial Advances

A Brief History

On December 1, 1913, automaker and industrialist extraordinaire Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line to the world of manufacturing. This seemingly simple measure actually required careful thought and planning, with every aspect of the assembly line idealized for efficient production. This method of building cars allowed Ford to sell his product cheaply enough that it could be bought by the masses, resulting in half of all cars in the world being a Ford product by the 1920’s. Here we list 9 such monumental advancements in the world of industry, epic innovations that have made our modern world possible. (No particular importance attached to the order listed.) Apologies to computers. Those electronic wonders will have to be addressed another time!

Digging Deeper

Interchangeable Parts, 264 BC. Perhaps you were taught that Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame invented this concept to manufacture guns in the early 19^th Century, but the idea goes at least as far back as the Carthaginians in the First Punic War making ships with mass produced interchangeable parts. This idea appeared here and there throughout history, and became firmly entrenched in the 19^th Century. The moving assembly line could not exist without this concept.

Moving Assembly Line, 1913. As described above, this technique is pretty much how nearly everything is made today. Each person or machine/robot along the line performs just 1 or at least very few motions at his station, resulting in maximum efficiency. This is a micro example of the cultural concept of Division of Labor.

Division of Labor, Unknown. Somewhere along the line people got the clue that things could be done more efficiently if specialists performed certain tasks according to their abilities and talents instead of each person doing every single thing for themselves. In its most primitive sense, men would go out and hunt while women would tend the camp, the fire, and the children. At some point specialized jobs such as arrow maker, hunter, farmer, blacksmith (or some sort of metal wright), pottery maker, etc. developed. It only made sense for weaker or crippled people to perform tasks that did not require strength and agility, while the strong and agile did the heavy lifting. As society became more sophisticated, the number of specialist jobs also grew.

Bessemer Converter, 1856. Invented and patented by Englishman Henry Bessemer, his special oven created for transforming iron into steel was the first time in history that steel could be mass produced (previously only small batches could be made at a time). Steel allowed modern civilization as we know it to progress with buildings, motorized vehicles and modern weapons. This steel making process lowered the price of steel to about 1/6 of what it had been, making modern uses of the metal affordable. (The Bessemer Converter is now obsolete, as of about 1968.)

Hall-Heroult Process of Aluminum, 1888. Invented independently by Ohioan Charles Martin Hall (Note: Ohio has an incredible resume of inventors) and Frenchman Paul Heroult, this process allowed the mass production of aluminum from Bauxite ore for the first time. Prior to the H&H Process, aluminum was a novelty metal worth more than Gold. Without the mass production of aluminum we would not have modern airplanes or space vehicles, and of course we would still be using tinfoil in the kitchen! Special alloys of aluminum have made the metal both essential and ubiquitous in modern society.

Non-Muscle Provided Power, c. 300 BC. The water mill first appeared in Ancient Greece, using gravity of flowing water to turn a wheel or paddle arrangement which in turn was connected by gears to turn a mill wheel to grind grain (or anything else that needed grinding). Windmills followed circa 40 BC, again in Greece, unless you count the windmill driven irrigation plan of Hammurabi all the way back in the 17^th Century BC! (Not known to actually have been built.) Wind and water power allowed grinding, hammering, drilling and other functions that did not rely on people or animal power. Today these methods are widely used to make electricity and to pump water on rural locations. Wind and Water have been superseded by steam, internal combustion and electric powered motors. Modern industry could not exist without such electro-mechanical power to say the least. Later, powered hand tools have likewise continued this non-muscle powered revolution in industry.

Robots, 1937. The use of robotic devices to perform functions previously performed by a person was first created by American “Bill” Griffith Taylor, a 5 axis device that could grab and rotate parts according to instructions from punched out dots on paper tape (similar to a player piano and embroidery machines from the 18^th Century, as well as IBM cards and HP computer tape from the 1960’s and 1970’s). The robot used electric motor power and solenoids to actuate functions. This original industrial robot was basically a technology demonstrator, and the technique of using robots for manufacturing did not take off until the 1960’s, mostly in Japan, until the 1970’s when the method became more common in the US and Europe. These industrial robots are now computer controlled and programmed and often use lasers to guide functions and maintain quality control.

Plasma Welding and Cutting, 1957. Of course welding metals together by any means is an important advance for industry, and previous methods such as Oxygen-Acetylene torches proved quite useful, but the electric powered invention of Robert Gage in 1957 provided a level of precision previously unknown, as well as nifty techniques such as spraying a hardening metal onto another metal. These machines also allow for welding metals that cannot be welded by torches. Plasma welding, cutting, gouging, surfacing and spraying are all by products of this technology. Plasma cutting allows for speed and precision not found in mechanical cutting. (MIG and TIG welding, developed in the 1940’s (electric arc welding) are along the same lines, and were used to weld aluminum and non-ferrous metals. These methods are joined here as part of the electrical welding advances of the time.)

Lasers, 1960. First invented in 1960 by Theodore Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories in California (based on previous theoretical work by others), these light emitting devices have become common as laser pointers, bar code scanners, range finders, police speed detecting devices, CD’s and DVD’s, laser printers, medical surgery, military weapons, lighting displays and a myriad of applications. In industry, lasers are used to make precision cuts and to measure work being done to incredible tolerances. Lasers can also be used industrially to perform precision heat treating and no-touch measurements. Lasers can also be used for various communication applications as well.

Question for students (and subscribers): Which advance above do you consider the have been the most significant and why? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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