Word: whitney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...principles of mass production were laid down in 1799 by that largely home-taught genius Eli Whitney, when he set up a factory to make muskets. Whitney established the American vernacular: economy, simplicity and flexibility, which, in industrial terms, were translated as quantity, standardization and interchangeability of parts. Watching clumsy workmen fumble the parts of the cotton gin, which he invented, Whitney realized that he had to put his own skill into every untaught hand, and to do this he had "to substitute correct and effective operations of machinery for that skill of the artist which is acquired only...
...Whitney's method, which became known as "the American system," was the prototype for hundreds of manufacturing centers round the country. It also became the model 50 years later for the mass production of watches. The fine, precise machine tools used by watchmakers to create the cheap timepieces that eventually sold for a dollar were directly descended from the Whitney musket factory. By 1876 the American wind-up alarm clock had been invented at the Seth Thomas Clock Co. in Connecticut. The morning would never be the same again...
Taylor's essential idea was to organize the work unit along the same lines that Eli Whitney had organized production. Traditional management had little exact knowledge of the time a job should take, the tools best adapted to a task or the pace at which a man should work. Taylor's innovation-time-and-motion study-was based on a painstaking analysis of work: the exact number of elementary operations or motions, the time required to do these, the elimination of waste motions and the recombination of these times and motions into a mathematical formula...
...Spindrift, Whitney...
...Spindrift, Whitney...