6 ms·

Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing?

102 points by jackgavigan 9y ago

tradersam 9y ago
> But given the huge investment this involved, they were often disappointed with the savings. Well, makes sense. Pretty easy to guess, and not really worth reading the article for the one line answer to the title.
- krab 9y ago
  I think the article proposes that the reason is rather in the need to change your processes if you really want to take advantage of the new technology. Just replacing your main steam engine with electric one isn't going to bring real gains and you're giving away some control. On the other hand, it allows you to organize the factory anew - which takes time.
Animats 9y ago
An article from someone who knows little about the history of electric motors. I recommend "Men and Volts - A History of the General Electric Company" on this. Early motors had serious limitations. DC motors wouldn't maintain constant speed as the load varied, had major brush wear problems, and tended to require frequent brush adjustment. Sprague, and the unknown person who invented carbon brushes, fixed that. AC motors wouldn't start under load. Tesla, Scott, and Steinmetz fixed that. Insulating materials were not very good. They were either flammable and subject to aging (varnished cambric, wood, paper) or not oil-tolerant and subject to aging (natural rubber). This limited the power density to less than 10% of what ordinary modern motors achieve. The materials problem was particularly difficult. We're used to having quite good materials available for almost all purposes - insulators which can handle high temperatures and aren't brittle, wire that isn't brittle, low-cost ball bearings that run for years without oiling, all with consistent, repeatable properties from batch to batch. That was not the case up to WWII at all. They did have asbestos, though. General Electric Deltabeston Wire. [1] "Will not age or crack." This was a high-end product around 1920. [1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-MAGNET-WIRE-VINTAGE-ART-AD-/272694282246?nma=true&si=2I0OYVyjQUHB%252F25t6tWPyk1oKCM%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-MA...
- anitil 9y ago
  Fantastic comment, would love to hear more
  - Animats 9y ago
    I could write more, but this isn't the place for an essay on electric motor history. Since many VCs are on here, I suggest "The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875-1900 A Study in Competition, Entrepreneurship, Technical Change, and Economic Growth", by Harold C. Passer. This is a Harvard Business School book. It's like reading about the dot-com era, a century earlier. All the little startups, the patent battles, the consolidation, and finally duopoly - Westinghouse and General Electric. That book has Edison's business plan numbers for the first power station, Pearl St. in NYC. Overoptimistic payback calculations and all. The margins were quite high. Gas lighting was expensive and electric light was much cheaper to provide, so Edison could and did mark it up a lot. Electric lighting was very profitable, which sped deployment. Initial sales were slow, though. The bottleneck was marketing, not the technology. [1] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674423640 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674423640
    - treme 9y ago
      Much appreciated.
    - anitil 9y ago
      Great thanks
- narag 9y ago
  ...wire that isn't brittle... That's funny. I need to change regularly the audio connection from the computer to the stereo. It always ends making an annoying noise. I guess I could buy the parts and a soldering iron and making a decent one myself...
- shellac 9y ago
  The sources for this article are provided: Robert M. Solow - 'We'd better watch out' New York Times Book Review, 12 July 1987 Robert Gordon - The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Oxford: Princeton University Press) 2016 p546-7 Paul A. David - The Computer and the dynamo: An historical perspective American Economic Review, May 1990 Paul A. David and Mark Thomas - The economic future in historical perspective OUP/British Academy, February 2006 Erik Brynjolfsoon and Lorin M. Hitt - Beyond Computation: Information technology, organizational transformation and business performance Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000
simonh 9y ago
"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." - Vladimir Lenin Therefore Soviet Power = Communism - Electrification And Electrification = Communism - Soviet Power
loudouncodes 9y ago
I ran across this idea a couple of weeks ago in the book 'Machine, Platform, Crowd". I'm drawing out idea for presentations to my com Sci high school students.
raverbashing 9y ago
TL;DR >> Two economists, Eric Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt, published research showing that many companies had invested in computers for little or no reward while others had reaped big benefits. >> What explained the difference was whether the companies had been willing to reorganise to take advantage of what computers had to offer.
SeanDav 9y ago
From the article: > "By 2000 - about 50 years after the first computer program - productivity was picking up a bit." I think what made computers and productivity with computers really take off was down to 3 things: - The PC and continued drops in price and increases in power. - Spreadsheets - Internet
- HerpDerpLerp 9y ago
  I would say your last point balances out the others to show why productivity did not increase as much as you would expect!
  - nobodyorother 9y ago
    Nah, spreadsheets did that on their own. Have you ever actually found a usable spreadsheet?
    - mjevans 9y ago
      Different levels of usability. Spreadsheets as simple ledgers? Wonderful, assuming you know about using ranges and how to use $ (or not) as part of reference statements. Even that level of complexity seems like wizardry to most office drones. However a spreadsheet is weak compared to a true relational logic engine; a modern database. Databases /have/ had the decades of refinement and are very good tools. Yet for those tools you kind of nail it. Specialists are required to correctly harness that potential.
gwbas1c 9y ago
I think this article demonstrates the 80/20 principle: Just having a technology on the marketplace is 20% of the way there. The other 80% is solving small, but critical problems, needed prior to adoption.
- littlestymaar 9y ago
  I wish we could stop abusing Pareto's law … Rule of thumb for the 80-20 principle: 80% of the usage of this principle in a discussion is bullshit and only 20% of people talking about it ever heard of Pareto ;)
xemdetia 9y ago
Something I only came across only in the last few years on how quite straightforward a steam line shaft shop would have operated. This guy is running one out of his shed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM. If you watch this you can also see how straightforward it was to retrofit electric motors to the existing belt drive mechanism, but you can see why it was slow to adopt. If you take into the early adopter concerns, the mains reliability concerns and a general risk-averse outlook lightbulbs are a better sell then electric motors.

102 points by jackgavigan 9y ago

> But given the huge investment this involved, they were often disappointed with the savings. Well, makes sense. Pretty easy to guess, and not really worth reading the article for the one line answer to the title.

krab 9y ago
I think the article proposes that the reason is rather in the need to change your processes if you really want to take advantage of the new technology. Just replacing your main steam engine with electric one isn't going to bring real gains and you're giving away some control. On the other hand, it allows you to organize the factory anew - which takes time.

Animats 9y ago

An article from someone who knows little about the history of electric motors. I recommend "Men and Volts - A History of the General Electric Company" on this. Early motors had serious limitations. DC motors wouldn't maintain constant speed as the load varied, had major brush wear problems, and tended to require frequent brush adjustment. Sprague, and the unknown person who invented carbon brushes, fixed that. AC motors wouldn't start under load. Tesla, Scott, and Steinmetz fixed that. Insulating materials were not very good. They were either flammable and subject to aging (varnished cambric, wood, paper) or not oil-tolerant and subject to aging (natural rubber). This limited the power density to less than 10% of what ordinary modern motors achieve. The materials problem was particularly difficult. We're used to having quite good materials available for almost all purposes - insulators which can handle high temperatures and aren't brittle, wire that isn't brittle, low-cost ball bearings that run for years without oiling, all with consistent, repeatable properties from batch to batch. That was not the case up to WWII at all. They did have asbestos, though. General Electric Deltabeston Wire. [1] "Will not age or crack." This was a high-end product around 1920. [1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-MAGNET-WIRE-VINTAGE-ART-AD-/272694282246?nma=true&si=2I0OYVyjQUHB%252F25t6tWPyk1oKCM%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-MA...

anitil 9y ago
Fantastic comment, would love to hear more
- Animats 9y ago
  I could write more, but this isn't the place for an essay on electric motor history. Since many VCs are on here, I suggest "The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875-1900 A Study in Competition, Entrepreneurship, Technical Change, and Economic Growth", by Harold C. Passer. This is a Harvard Business School book. It's like reading about the dot-com era, a century earlier. All the little startups, the patent battles, the consolidation, and finally duopoly - Westinghouse and General Electric. That book has Edison's business plan numbers for the first power station, Pearl St. in NYC. Overoptimistic payback calculations and all. The margins were quite high. Gas lighting was expensive and electric light was much cheaper to provide, so Edison could and did mark it up a lot. Electric lighting was very profitable, which sped deployment. Initial sales were slow, though. The bottleneck was marketing, not the technology. [1] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674423640 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674423640
  - treme 9y ago
    Much appreciated.
  - anitil 9y ago
    Great thanks
narag 9y ago
...wire that isn't brittle... That's funny. I need to change regularly the audio connection from the computer to the stereo. It always ends making an annoying noise. I guess I could buy the parts and a soldering iron and making a decent one myself...
shellac 9y ago
The sources for this article are provided: Robert M. Solow - 'We'd better watch out' New York Times Book Review, 12 July 1987 Robert Gordon - The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Oxford: Princeton University Press) 2016 p546-7 Paul A. David - The Computer and the dynamo: An historical perspective American Economic Review, May 1990 Paul A. David and Mark Thomas - The economic future in historical perspective OUP/British Academy, February 2006 Erik Brynjolfsoon and Lorin M. Hitt - Beyond Computation: Information technology, organizational transformation and business performance Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000

simonh 9y ago

"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." - Vladimir Lenin Therefore Soviet Power = Communism - Electrification And Electrification = Communism - Soviet Power

loudouncodes 9y ago

I ran across this idea a couple of weeks ago in the book 'Machine, Platform, Crowd". I'm drawing out idea for presentations to my com Sci high school students.

raverbashing 9y ago

TL;DR >> Two economists, Eric Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt, published research showing that many companies had invested in computers for little or no reward while others had reaped big benefits. >> What explained the difference was whether the companies had been willing to reorganise to take advantage of what computers had to offer.

SeanDav 9y ago

From the article: > "By 2000 - about 50 years after the first computer program - productivity was picking up a bit." I think what made computers and productivity with computers really take off was down to 3 things: - The PC and continued drops in price and increases in power. - Spreadsheets - Internet

HerpDerpLerp 9y ago
I would say your last point balances out the others to show why productivity did not increase as much as you would expect!
- nobodyorother 9y ago
  Nah, spreadsheets did that on their own. Have you ever actually found a usable spreadsheet?
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Different levels of usability. Spreadsheets as simple ledgers? Wonderful, assuming you know about using ranges and how to use $ (or not) as part of reference statements. Even that level of complexity seems like wizardry to most office drones. However a spreadsheet is weak compared to a true relational logic engine; a modern database. Databases /have/ had the decades of refinement and are very good tools. Yet for those tools you kind of nail it. Specialists are required to correctly harness that potential.

gwbas1c 9y ago

I think this article demonstrates the 80/20 principle: Just having a technology on the marketplace is 20% of the way there. The other 80% is solving small, but critical problems, needed prior to adoption.

littlestymaar 9y ago
I wish we could stop abusing Pareto's law … Rule of thumb for the 80-20 principle: 80% of the usage of this principle in a discussion is bullshit and only 20% of people talking about it ever heard of Pareto ;)

xemdetia 9y ago

Something I only came across only in the last few years on how quite straightforward a steam line shaft shop would have operated. This guy is running one out of his shed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM. If you watch this you can also see how straightforward it was to retrofit electric motors to the existing belt drive mechanism, but you can see why it was slow to adopt. If you take into the early adopter concerns, the mains reliability concerns and a general risk-averse outlook lightbulbs are a better sell then electric motors.