Download or read book The American Reaper written by Gordon M. Winder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Reaper adopts a network approach to account for the international diffusion of harvesting technology from North America, from the invention of the reaper through to the formation of a dominant transnational corporation, International Harvester. Much previous historical research into industrial networks focuses on industrial districts within metropolitan centres, but by focusing on harvesting - a typically rural technology - this book is able to analyse the spread of technological knowledge through a series of local networks and across national boundaries. In doing so it argues that the industry developed through a relatively stable stage from the 1850s into the 1890s, during which time many firms shared knowledge within and outside the US through patent licensing, to spread the diffusion of the American style of machines to establishments located around the industrial world. This positive cooperation was further enhanced through sales networks that appear to be early expressions of managerial firms. The book also reinterprets the rise of giant corporations, especially International Harvester Corporation (IHC), arguing that mass production was achieved in Chicago in the 1880s, where unprecedented urban growth made possible a break with the constraints felt elsewhere in the dispersed production system. It unleashed an unchecked competitive market economy with destructive tendencies throughout the transnational 'American reaper' networks; a previously stable and expanding production system. This is significant because the rise of corporate capital in this industry is usually explained as an outworking of national natural advantage, as an ingenious harnessing of science and technology to solve production problems, and as a rational solution to the problems associated with the worst forms of unregulated competition that emerged as independent firms developed from small-scale, artisanal production to large-scale manufacturers, on their own and within the separate and isolated US economy. The first study dedicated to the development and diffusion of American harvesting machine technology, this book will appeal to scholars from a diverse range of fields, including economic history, business history, the history of knowledge transfer, historical geography and economic geography.
Download or read book From the American System to Mass Production 1800 1932 written by David Hounshell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book From the American System to Mass Production 1800 1932 The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States written by David Hounshell and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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
Download or read book Harvesting History written by Daniel P. Ott and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvesting History focuses on the example of Cyrus McCormick’s invention of the mechanized reaper in 1831 to reveal connections between the historical profession and economic power in the competitive harvesting machine industry of the late nineteenth century.
Download or read book The National Union Catalog Pre 1956 Imprints written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Trading Environments written by Gordon M. Winder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines dynamic interactions between the calculative and speculative practices of commerce and the fruitfulness, variability, materiality, liveliness and risks of nature. It does so in diverse environments caught up in new trading relationships forged on and through frontiers for agriculture, forestry, mining and fishing. Historical resource frontiers are understood in terms of commercial knowledge systems organized as projects to transform landscapes and environments. The book asks: how were environments traded, and with what environmental and landscape consequences? How have environments been engineered, standardized and transformed within past trading systems? What have been the successes and failures of economic knowledge in dealing with resource production in complex environments? It considers cases from northern Europe, North and South America, Central Africa and New Zealand in the period between 1750 and 1990, and the contributors reflect on the effects of transnational commodity chains, competing economic knowledge systems, environmental ignorance and learning, and resource exploitation. In each case they identify tensions, blind spots, and environmental learning that plagued commercial projects on frontiers.
Download or read book The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac for the Year written by and published by . This book was released on 1856 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rural New Yorker written by and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Farmers Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 902 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Farmers Guide written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Moore s Rural New Yorker written by and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boiler Maker and Sheet Metal Worker written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Agriculturist written by and published by . This book was released on 1857 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Threshermen s Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Country Gentleman written by and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 1292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Farmer s Advocate and Home Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 1012 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Agricultural Gazette and Modern Farming written by and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
