FROM THE ARCHIVES

February 1902

For years, the morning drumbeat of England has echoed around the globe, however now that martial sound is adopted by a mightier one—the whir of the American machine instrument. The wars of the longer term is not going to be struggles by armed males for the management of territory, however contests through which computerized machines—computerized factories, even—will battle for the commerce of the world. In preliminary skirmishes of this cold warfare, to be waged extra fiercely than have been any of the wars of conquest of the ancients, America has so signally triumphed that the Previous World rulers are alarmed by the rising cloud of their business skies, to which they refer as “the American hazard.’’

That is an age of metal. Wherever plenty of iron and metal and brass are being formed into advanced issues helpful to man, from delicate watch bearings to huge propeller shafts for ocean greyhounds, there will likely be discovered American brains represented by power-driven instruments of great building, machines that work with split-hair accuracy and electrical pace. The human hand can by no means carry out an operation twice alike, however these palms of metal, when as soon as given their work, minimize and bore and grind for days and weeks, turning out in duplicate many 1000’s of issues, of advanced formation, that don’t differ a thousandth of an inch from the unique sample.

Ten years in the past, the American machine instrument was little recognized exterior of our personal outlets. When our captains of trade started to wage warfare on the markets of the Previous World, our antagonists despatched brokers right here to learn the way we make locomotives and bridges and typewriters and watches faster and cheaper than they. They discovered that we’ve a formidable mixture of cheaper uncooked supplies, extra environment friendly workmen and great machine instruments. They’ve taken the one weapon we might share with them—the machine instrument—and now many hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of American instruments are being utilized in international factories all through the world.

In all the commercial cities of the British Isles, wide-awake manufactur­ers are recognizing the worth of our machine instruments. They’re making armor plates for the British navy, weapons for the British military, locomotives for British railways and equipment for the British service provider marine. On the continent, American machine instruments are penetrating into the remotest manufacturing cities.  In France, they’re put in in car and gun factories; in Germany, in shipyards and electrical works; in Russia, in railroad outlets and arsenals. Go into any of the good factories of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Italy or Spain, and you will see that the marks of American toolmakers. Even in far-off China and Japan, in Australia and New Zealand, within the Hawaiian lslands—in no matter nook of the earth metal is formed—the whir of the American instrument is heard.

To the layman, a instrument is a chisel, drill, hammer, noticed, punch or aircraft that can be utilized by hand, however a machine instrument is a really completely different factor. It could be a fragile piece of equipment that types a small brass screw for a watch motion or an enormous factor, weighing a whole bunch of tons and as excessive as a home, that bores and planes an ideal metal ingot as a boy would whittle a stick of wooden. A machine instrument is a power-driven instrument for reducing steel. The reducing elements, original in diversified methods, are fabricated from instrument metal of nice power and hardness.

These machines appear to assume sooner and extra precisely than males

Probably the most extremely developed of machine instruments is the automated screw machine, and like many one other contrivance for saving labor, its house is New England. It’s a growth of the extraordinary steel-working lathe, the intermediate step being the monitor lathe, through which the assorted reducing instruments protrude from the aspect of a metal turret like 13-inch weapons from a battleship turret. Within the nonautomatic screw machine, the turret is revolved by the operator, in order to convey every instrument into play, simply because the turret on the previous Monitor was revolved to convey one gun after one other into motion. However within the computerized machine, the work is finished with out human steerage.

In making screws, nuts, bolts, studs and different small items that should be turned, drilled or threaded for watches, clocks, typewriters, electrical devices and different mechanisms, all of the operator has to do is to feed the inventory, an extended, skinny rod of metal or brass, to the machine.

Our grandfathers didn’t dream of manufacturing facility automatons that may do the work of males. The making of a screw was a tough activity, occupying 20 or half-hour, and no two screws could possibly be made precisely alike. In these days, “handmade” was a mark of superiority. That is the day of interchangeable elements. In a specific sort of bicycle, the screw in a cer­tain place will slot in the identical place in any considered one of a thousand different bicycles of comparable sort. To make machine instruments that can produce correct duplicate work, the instrument producers use measuring machines of nice ac­curacy.

Errors might be detected inside one fifty-thousandth of an inch

What the screw machine has accomplished within the turning of small items of mechanisms, the fashionable milling machine has accomplished in shaping flat and ir­common surfaces. It’s this instrument that has made potential the fashionable bicycle, typewriter, firearm, stitching machine and watch. Have been there no milling machines, these on a regular basis articles might solely be made at 5 or 6 occasions their current price.

American machine instruments rank among the many nice achievements of the age. They’re the inanimate foundation of our industrial supremacy. Quickly, they’re taking the locations of males, and in our nice factories, the place previously stood lengthy traces of males on the lathes, now are seen solely rows of whirring automatons with right here and there a stray attendant. The day of the manless manufacturing facility appears to be close to. In America, we’ve discovered that labor-saving equipment, whereas it might work short-term hardship for a time, in the long term helps to boost the usual of residing and makes all males richer as a substitute of poorer. 

This excerpt has been edited for size and readability.

This text initially appeared within the January/February 2024 problem of SUCCESS Journal.