The First World War was an unprecedented calamity that killed millions and coiffure the continent of Europe on the path to further calamity two decennium by and by . But it did n’t do out of nowhere . With the centennial of the outbreak of aggression coming up in 2014 , Erik Sass will be seem back at the lead - up to the state of war , when apparently modest minute of friction accumulated until the spot was ready to blow up . He ’ll be covering those events 100 year after they take place . This is the 88th instalment in the series .
20 March 2025: Ford Introduces Assembly Line
Although engineers had been tinkering with internal burning engines in “ horseless equipage ” since the late 19th one C , it was the cheap , dependable Ford Model T that truly opened the automobile old age . In the four years after the first Model T rolled out of Henry Ford ’s Piquette Plant manufactory in Detroit on September 27 , 1908 , product jumped from 10,660 in 1909 to 82,388 in 1912 .
Model T sales were almost doubling each year , but Ford was n’t quenched : In a land with a burgeoning universe growing wealthier every class , he knew there was huge unmet need for the status and gadget afford by a family machine . The paint to tap this demand was simple : producing vastly more vehicles at an ever - crummy price . Ford vow : “ I will progress a car for the smashing large number … it will be so abject in price that no man stimulate a proficient salary will be unable to own one . ”
Although Ford is often credited as the artificer of the assembly bank line , it was actually a squad effort by his top executives , including Charles E. Sorensen ( “ Cast - Iron Charlie ” ) , Clarence Avery , Ed Martin , and Walter Flanders , who together pioneered what would later on be termed industrial systematization or “ Fordism . ” Ford and his managers broke the Model T construction process down into 45 freestanding tasks , do by in successiveness by around 140 workers positioned on both sides of the tow rope ( later conveyor whang ) , each concentrating only on one job .
By enable actor to become skillful at a single job , the assembly line proficiency accelerated production while decreasing the level of skill and training need , thus increasing the puddle of possible employees to draw from . The time take to build one Model T fall from over 12 60 minutes to just under six hours , then three hours not long after ; within a year additional improvements reduced it to a simple 93 transactions . With 52,000 worker forming three 14,000 - person shifts , by the 1920s novel Model T cars were rolling off the assemblage lines at the rate of one every 24 seconds .
Mass production was accompanied by a steep decline in price : where the first mannequin be $ 950 in 1908 and the 1912 mannequin cost $ 690 , the price for a new Model T dropped to $ 550 in 1913 , $ 440 in 1915 , and just $ 360 in 1916 ( an especially telling accomplishment consider the personal effects of wartime puffiness ) . With prices whirl around , sales soar from 170,211 vehicles in 1913 to 735,020 in 1917 , and by 1918 one-half of all cars on the road in the U.S. were Model T ’s of various character . Ultimately , 15 million Model T ’s would be sold around the cosmos .
The rise of elevator car culture literally transmute the American landscape painting , as private groups , metropolis , states , and eventually the federal governing began pouring money into building and improving route , funded by taxes on gasoline — one of the few illustration in American story where there was broad public support for new taxation . Tennessee ’s main revenue enhancement aggregator summate it up in 1926 : “ Who ever take heed , before , of a popular revenue enhancement ? ” In fact Americans were so eager to get on the road that some of the first national highway , or “ auto trail , ” were actually the work of private ( or hybrid private - public ) groups like the Lincoln Highway Association and the National Old Trails Road Association , both formed in 1912 ; the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway Association , forge in 1914 ; and the Yellowstone Trail Association , imprint in 1918 .
Meanwhile assembly phone line techniques were decisive to the warfare efforts of all the major combatants in the First World War — a “ total warfare ” or “ war of production , ” where advantage went not necessarily to the side with the best generals or bravest soldiers , but rather the biggest and best - organized industrial root .
Among the Allies , Gallic industrial giant Citroën built a munitions plant with a moving assembly crinkle at Quai Javel in 1915 , where 13,000 workers were soon bring out 35,000 shells a 24-hour interval ; the same year saw Gallic aircraft makers create assembly lines for fighter aircraft plane engines in raw manufactory at Toulouse ( still the center of the French aviation manufacture today ) while Italian industrial vexation Fiat used assembly line techniques for its new fomite factory at Lingotto . Back in France , the Vénissieux plant opened by Berliet and Renault in 1917 employed 10,000 proletarian on assembly line bring on trucks and tanks .
Inevitably , the adoption of meeting place line techniques go hand in hand with a huge increment in ability using up , and electricity yield became another key front in the “ warfare of product . ” In Britain total power wasting disease doubled from 2.5 billion kW - hours in 1913 to 4.9 billion in 1918 , while Italy also double from 2 billion to 4 billion , and Germany jumped from 8 billion to 13 billion over the same period .
The introduction of assembly lines ( along with the loss of skilled workers to the military ) also shook up industrial Department of Labor relations : in Britain , unions concord to suspend rules about which employee could do what job , allowing manager to break down complicated chore — previously execute by a few skilled prole — into minuscule task that could be care by unskilled laborers .
See theprevious installmentorall entries .
