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America's Assembly Line

Author

Listed:
  • Nye, David E.

    (University of Southern Denmark)

Abstract

The assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin’s little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America’s Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line—developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts—first created and then served an expanding mass market. It inspired fiction, paintings, photographs, comedy, cafeteria layouts, and cookie-cutter suburban housing. It also transformed industrial labor and provoked strikes and union drives. During World War II and the Cold War, it was often seen as a bastion of liberty and capitalism. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of “lean manufacturing”; American industry reluctantly adopted this new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford’s pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.

Suggested Citation

  • Nye, David E., 2013. "America's Assembly Line," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262018715, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:0262018715
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Pfeiffer, Sabine, 2016. "Robots, Industry 4.0 and humans, or why assembly work is more than routine work," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6(2 (Articl), pages 1-26.
    2. Kanger, Laur & Bone, Frédérique & Rotolo, Daniele & Steinmueller, W. Edward & Schot, Johan, 2022. "Deep transitions: A mixed methods study of the historical evolution of mass production," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    3. Kanger, Laur & Sillak, Silver, 2020. "Emergence, consolidation and dominance of meta-regimes: Exploring the historical evolution of mass production (1765–1972) from the Deep Transitions perspective," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Alan L. Olmstead & Paul W. Rhode, 2014. "Were Antebellum Cotton Plantations Factories in the Field?," NBER Chapters, in: Enterprising America: Businesses, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 245-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Huo, Jingjing, 2015. "How Nations Innovate: The Political Economy of Technological Innovation in Affluent Capitalist Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198735847.
    6. Sabine Pfeiffer, 2016. "Robots, Industry 4.0 and Humans, or Why Assembly Work Is More than Routine Work," Societies, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-26, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    history of technology; business; social history;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

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