Word: tooling
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...diamonds are not merely gems; they are also the hardest substance known to man, therefore the keystone of machine-tool production. In making automobile, aircraft, other products based on complete interchangeability of parts, only diamonds can bore pistons and connecting rods, dress grinding wheels to the necessary exactness. Diamond dies draw ignition wire to uniform size. Diamonds test the hardness of alloys in razor-blade and ice-skate factories. Diamonds tip the big drills that find gold under layers of rock. Diamonds cut tombstones and glass. Of the world's diamond production of around two and a half tons...
More than half of this comes to the U. S. A single New England machine-tool maker uses 100 carats a year (current price: $10-$50 per carat); the annual diamond bill of Detroit is in the millions. Hence many a U. S. industrialist had another reason for worrying about the news from Europe last week. The disruption of the Dutch and Belgian industry seemed sure to boost prices on industrial diamonds-some thought by as much as 250%. But worse than that: the conquest of England could tie the entire world diamond industry into a Nazi-controlled sheepshank...
Next most important war baby is the machine-tool industry, whose numerous small plants were rushed nearly to capacity by foreign buyers even before World War II began. Its first-quarter exports amounted to $48,014,000, up 76% from the first quarter of 1939. Of this, the Allies are now accounting for about half, but Russia and Japan were still substantial buyers of about $10,000,000 for the quarter...
...Walker innocently sent a memorandum on the subject to British GHQ. Because he suggested that the curved plate, if equipped with a handle, might also make an entrenching tool, his memo came to rest in the Munitions Ministry's office of Trench Warfare Supplies. There it might have remained until the End of Wars had not his friend, the late Arthur Asquith, discovered it and showed it to Winston Churchill. Impressed, War Lord Churchill offered Walker the post of Expert in Light Armour to the Forces. Dr. Walker declined. "As I remembered that it had taken two years...
...Lockheed (reported expecting $125,000,000 for pursuits and bombers), possibly Grumman and Consolidated, which makes flying boats and bombers. Also in line was many another plant, if not for its own product at least for farmed-out orders, or for aircraft parts. To labor, to the overworked machine-tool industry, to instrument makers like Sperry and Pioneer, to accessory builders will go an undetermined slice of the business. With a backlog of around $900,000,000 in unfilled orders, the aircraft industry is too busy to worry about who gets every dollar & cent...