Mass production has been an indispensable science to mankind since its inception in industries around the world. Cars, computers, television sets, light bulbs and other common products including the important food items to feed the global population, that we take for granted are made with such methods. Without these methodologies, phenomenal levels of population and economic growths to-date would be otherwise impossible. Hence it has had a truly profound impact on civilization – warranting a closer look into its emergence.
By definition mass production is the process of increasing manufacturing capacity through innovative methods and new technology that can save time and resources beyond the limits of traditional manual labor. It began in Europe after the Enlightenment from various innovative ideas that evolved through the efforts of many pioneers and collaborated circumstantially.
Historically, Europeans had been mired in ignorant backwardness under their states’ repressive feudal systems for most of the Middle Ages. However, throughout the eighteenth century many European countries went through the Age of Reason. This period of time, also known as the Enlightenment, signified a shift of people’s beliefs in religion and the erroneous writings of Greek philosophers and saw a plethora of scientific discoveries that contributed to a new, mechanical and rational world view. The fundamentals of classical mechanics were defined when when the famous Sir Isaac Newton published his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation. French noble Antoine Lavoisier named oxygen and hydrogen, and helped establish both the metric system and the law of conservation of mass. English chemist Robert Boyle formulated Boyle’s law, which stated that the volume of a gas varies inversely with pressure. Scientists like these who contributed to a better understanding of basic physics and the working of gases would have great influence on prospective inventors.
The Essay on Newton's Second Law – Practical Report
... force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object..” Unlike Newton’s first law, the second law deals with objects and forces ... in this case according to Newton’s second law, is the inverse of the mass of the trolley (1/m). In an environment ... an inertial mass through the use of a trolley, ticker-timer and set of slotted masses. Introduction: Newton’s second law states ...
Several social, economic and political factors were vital to this movement in the beginning. Britain’s mighty empire spanned from the Americas to India, and saw a tremendous amount of trade with its colonies. However domestically Britain had a closed agriculture-based system, where restrictive commercial policies such as the Corn Laws meant the government held an iron fist on the national industry, agriculture. Many European states such as Prussia and Austria were often embroiled in conflicts. The only other great nation in the region, France, was in a disheveled state since its government, newly formed after the French Revolution and the dramatic rise and defeat of Napoleon, was weak in being controlled by other West European countries (More 22).
“Innovation and successful industrialization…provide opportunities for expansion and encourage a less restrictive commercial policy (Deane 219)”. Nevertheless, induced innovation, a key instigator of economic progress, was not present in Britain (Phillips 103).
Only natural disasters such as the corn, cotton and potato famines of 1840s, the most dramatic in British history as of yet, propagated the repeal of the protective Corn Laws in 1846 – this move towards free trade opened new markets around the world to Britain; English farmers, faced with the prospect of diminishing farmland and growing competition, were forced to invest their profits in modernizing farming techniques as opposed to merely sustaining their daily needs (Deane 215).
Their increasing dependency on chemical fertilizers, tractors and draining machines, all products of the manufacturing industry, raised yield dramatically and ironically supplanted the decline of the agriculture industry.
As the manufacturing sector came to the forefront in Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was accompanied by rapid demographic expansion. From 1842 to 1850 the population rose from about 18 ½ million to almost 21 million, so the British government started feeding its people with grain imported from farms in communist Russia and on the open prairies of North America; this globe-spanning feat was made possible with the advent of railroads and paddleboats (Deane 214 – 215).
The Coursework on Foreign Trade Britain British World
... factories were located. Cotton textile factories using newly developed steam-powered machines produced more goods at a lower cost per item. ... (CJD). BSE was first discovered in Britain in 1986, and the British government took steps to eradicate the disease ... combined with steam engines, which led to further technological innovations.An added advantage in the development of railroads in Britain was ...
These mechanized innovations in transportation are examples of a crucial concept behind mass production –the assistance or replacement of human labor with machines, known as automation.
Traditionally, trades were carried out in Europe by means of manual labor. Simpler crafts such as textiles were usually done at home; those that were more advanced such as watchmaking were based in small workshops. However, the rising demand that came with an ever-growing population around the world made such obsolete. In the transportation sector animal power and the sail became inadequate. Locomotives, paddleboats and industrial machines switched to the steam engine, a novel power source that was developed with the help of Enlightenment science.
The efforts of British engineers and inventors led to prototype steam engines. Coal was used to fuel a furnace. A water-filled boiler on the receiving end would create hot expanding steam that was led into a sturdy metal cylinder, producing mechanical power by pushing a piston. This was typically followed by the formation of a vacuum, pulling back the piston and the exhaustion of condensed steam that was recycled back to the boiler for reheating. The cycle resulted in reciprocating motion that was used in pumps, particularly those for draining coal mines (Stearns and Hinshaw 242).
Even more useful was that if a crank or crankshaft were attached to the piston, consistent circular motion could also be generated.
Early steam engines were low powered and expended an unrealistic amount of coal, but then British engineer James Watt’s modifications in 1763, notably the addition of a separate condenser, virtually doubled their efficiency (Weightman 55).
Only after this was the steam engine widely used to drive contemporary industrial machines.
The Term Paper on The British Phonographic Industry
The British phonographic Industry; Introduction and historical development The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) was launched in 1972, although was formally incorporated in 1973, and has since been representing the interests of British record companies. The industry started off with just five members and its principle aim was to fight the growing problem of music piracy. Since then, the BPI now ...
The British industries of the time that benefited the most from new automation technologies were in cotton and iron (Temin 63).
Cotton was a popular and common fabric due to its dye-ability, soft texture and ease of growth. The steam engine powered the feed mechanisms in the sewing machine, first patented by Englishman Thomas Saint in 1791 (Stearns and Hinshaw 224 -225).
The flying shuttle, patented by English inventor John Kay in 1733, eliminated the need for an apprentice in weaving any bigger pieces of fabric on a loom (Stearns and Hinshaw 95 – 96).
These inventions coupled with the power loom (Stearns and Hinshaw viii) and a multi-spool spinning wheel known as the spinning jenny (Stearns and Hinshaw 111), both devised in Britain in 1784, gave the British textile industry a massive boost in productivity. On the other hand there was a great need for iron in the production of manufacturing machines for manufacturing and agricultural industries alike. Such industry required skilled laborers to operate machinery like blast furnaces, and human capital including people like trained engineers from ever growing Western cities did exist.
The call for iron also came from numerous railroad building contracts with the conception of British and American railway networks (Stearns and Hinshaw 132).
English civil engineer George Stephenson built the first steam locomotive in 1814 (Weightman 122).
He also overlooked the construction of the pioneering Liverpool Manchester Line in the 1820s, a prelude to future railways in Britain; engineers adopted his ideas in the opening of the American West during the 1820s (Weightman 135).
American Robert Fulton, who established the first successful commercial paddleboat business on the River Hudson in 1807, set an example for many later routes (Weightman 100 – 101).
Early locomotives and paddleboats used steam engines that had incorporated Watt’s improvements. In the wake of free trade, they provided the effective modes of transport that growing manufacturing and agriculture industries in Europe and America required.
Now that automation and new technologies had revolutionized key economic sectors and open economies were in place, domestic workplaces such as those of early cotton industry coexisted with and were soon superseded by large factories, e.g. highly mechanized textile mills and ironworks (Barnett 220)that were sustained by new human capital. Since then mass production has progressed more than ever before, into the great, far reaching movement today that mankind relies upon for its livelihood.
The Essay on Media Source Effects On Airlines Industry British Airways
Media source effects on Airlines Industry. British Airways Airline operating business generates some of the highest revenues out of all types of truly global businesses. However, the revenues always have costs. Probably the highest costs of all for airline companies are those related to advertising. Today the market requires new approaches to the questing of correct product positioning and ...
Works Cited
Barnett, David. London, Hub of the Industrial Revolution. London; New York: British Academic Press/Tauris Academic Studies, 1998.
Deane, Phyllis. The First Industrial Revolution. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
More, Charles. Understanding the Industrial Revolution. London; New York: Routledge, 2000.
Phillips, H. William. “Induced Innovation and Economic Performance in Late Victorian British Industry.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 42, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History (Mar., 1982), pp. 97-103.
Stearns, Peter N. and Hinshaw, John H. The ABC-CLIO world history companion to the industrial revolution. Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, 1996.
Temin, Peter. “Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar. 1997), pp. 63-82.
Weightman, Gavin. The Industrial Revolutionaries: the Making of the Modern World. New York: Grove Press, 2007.
