3 Tool Evolution
4.1Phase 3. Differentiation and evolution of machine tools–the integration of these tools into the industrial complex; review and analysis of generalized and specialized tools–automated processes and control systems–redesign and replanning of total world tool complexes and instrumentation systems, i.e., total buildings, jig assembled by computer within optimum environment control air delivered ready to use in one helilift. R.B. Fuller (1964)
4.2 The evolution of tools is closely interwoven with the evolution of man himself. Other animals have, in general, adapted to their environment by continual physical changes in the organism itself. Man has tended, from the moment he began to use tools, to free himself from any further physical evolution imposed by external environmental factors. He has externalized part of his evolutionary pattern into tools which ’do his evolving for him....The human hand is the adaptation to end all adaptations: the emanicpated hand has emancipated man from any other organic evolution whatsoever’.42
4.3 Whether or not this viewpoint is wholly tenable, it does give certain insights into the overall evolution of tools–from the simple hand tool to the developed industrial tool-plant whose organic complexities and extensions parallel those of the human organism itself. We may observe also that through his tool development man has massively adapted the physical environment to serve his own evolutionary purpose. With the great tool system now available to him, he may even be able to exercise conscious control over his own forward evolution.
4.4 In this phase of the program, we are specifically concerned with the ways in which he has directly augmented his capacities, and increased his performance, by externalizing and amplifying his organic functions through technological means. One of the simplest examples of such augmentation would be the primitive hand tool which directly amplifies the hitting, grasping and leverage power of the human arm and hand. Such simple tools have developed into families of tool systems, which amplify many-fold the combined energies of large numbers of men, i.e. the automated factory is not only a series of augmented ’hands’ but also an extra ’brain’ or control system.
4.5 The augmentation of organic capacity is, however, not confined solely to the evolution of physical tools but includes also those ’invisible’ tools which have had as powerful an effect in transforming man’s condition. Such invisible tools as language, number, symbol and image systems are also extensions of human internal processes and have through the larger conceptual systems–religion, philosophy, science, etc.,–extended man’s control over environment. We might even view the growth of social institutions as part of such psycho-physical extension–the development of cities, states, ’families’ of nations. Certainly the development of the ’systems’ capability of coordinating large scale, long-term complex enterprises, as in aerospace, long-range national and international planning, emerges as a powerful new technology. Also, where the hand tool, lathe, grinder, etc., extend physical capacities, our communication networks of radio, telephone, television and linked computer systems are extensions of the human senses and nervous system.
4.6 42 "The Human Animal", LaBarre, Weston, University of Chicago, p89, 1954.
4.7 Through his instrumented monitoring of the electro-magnetic spectrum, man can now ’see’ in the infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray frequencies, ’hear’ in the radio frequencies, and more delicately ’feel’ through electronic metering than with his most sensitive skin areas.
4.8 As man has extended his immediate physical control over the material environment, he has also extended his range of psychic mobility in space and time–to almost the same degree that he ’opens’ up his future, he also extends himself into the past through refined archaeological techniques and ancillary instrumentation.
4.9 The latest phases of technological development now return upon the organism itself as man begins to directly repair, restore and to replace his internal organs, either through transplantation from others or by artificial devices. His bio-technical tool services now range through plastic valves, tubes, filters, etc., to ’pacemakers’ for the heart, external ’kidneys’ and various prosthetic attachments which approach the natural limb capabilities.
4.10 Within the above review, we may discern two strands in overall tool development. One is the evolution of ’soft ware’ tools, such as language and other symbolic systems and processes, the other is the ’hardware’ tool development. Both are terms of descriptive convenience rather than actual type divisions, as they interweave dependently in the evolutionary pattern.
4.11 In distinguishing ’types’ of tools, Fuller suggests that their essential developmental difference lies in their ’use’ pattern. His analysis may be summarized as follows:
4.12 "Apart from language, which one may term the first industrial tool as it involves a plurality of men, and is a prior requirement for the integrated effort of many men, early tools were local handcraft tools. They could be made and used by one man, or a few men, and could evolve from the limited set of experiences and materials of a geographically limited group of men, e.g., a dug-out canoe. The major industrialized tools, like an airline or telephone system, can only be made and operated by the coordinated effort of a great many men. They require drawing upon the material resources of the entire world for their creation, and they comprise within themselves the integrated experience, the science, which is drawn from the whole of man’s universal experience. They are comprehensive systems, rather than local, and function most efficiently when organized in their largest universal patterns or networks."
4.13 Much of the extraordinary evolution of our complex industrial tools has taken place in the past 200 years. Though, by definition we might say that the first technological revolution comes, literally, with the invention of the wheel some 3,000 years ago,ş our present period of accelerated development begins when the wheel is augmented by the steam engine towards the end of the 18th Century.
4.14 ş Strictly speaking, this should be expanded to include the discovery of fire, boats, spear-throwers, bows and arrows, over 50,000 years ago; animal domestication and agriculture, over 10,000 years ago, etc.
4.15 62
4.16 FIRST Technological revolution The discovery and use of the wheel
4.17 Tusk, horn, and bone hand tools All purpose stone & wood fist axes Special purpose stone & wood hand tools Bronze
4.18 SECOND Technological Rev The discovery of methods f alloys and forged tools and Metal handtools with energ
4.19 THE LINE OF HIGH ADVANTAGE MOBILE ENVIRON CONTROL DEVELOP
4.20 MODE Sailing Ships
4.21 TIME PERIOD 2,500 BC 500 BC 1,000 AD 1400 1500
4.22 AVERAGE TONNAGE 150 250 30 300 100-500
4.23 HORSE POWER 80 120 30-90 150-250 ....
4.24 AVERAGE SPEED 8 knots 8 knots 12 knots 10 knots 10 knots
4.25 DOMINANT AGES MODERN CRAFT 1,000 - 1784 MACHINE AGE 1785 - 18
4.26 POWER Human and Animal Muscle Wind and Water Multiple Horse Teams and Steam Engines
4.27 TOOLS Hand Wrought Iron and Wooden Machine Wrought Iron and
4.28 WORK SKILLS All-Around Skilled Craftsmen and Unskilled Manual Workers Subdivided Manufacturing Pr Replace Skilled Craftsmen V Semiskilled Machine Operat
4.29 MATERIALS Wood, Iron and Bronze Steel and Copper
4.30 TRANSPORTATION Walking, Use of Animals by Dirt Road or Via Waterways by Sailboat Horse and Buggy, Steam T Via Steel Rails, and Steam Via Ocean Ways
4.31 COMMUNICATION Word of Mouth, Drum, Smoke Signals, Messenger and Newspaper Mail by Train and Ship, Mec Printed Newspaper, Telegra Telephone
4.32 Sources: (1) Science and Engineering and the Future of Man. W. Taylor Thom Jr.. Science and the Future of Mankind, W.A.A.S.,1963. (2) Th Hans C=
4.33 STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY
4.34 THIRD The Industrial Revolution FOURTH Chemicals & Chemical Engineering FIFTH Electrical Transmission & Telecommunications SIXTH Transportation SEVENTH Limitless age
4.35 end of Franco-Prussian war World War I. World War II. controlled atomic fission
4.36 AUTOMATION STAGE V DEVELOPED SOCIETIES Industrial Economies of Abundance
4.37 MECHANIZATION STAGE IV
4.38 DIVERSIFICATION STAGE III UNDERDEVELOPED SOCIETIES Agriculturally Based Marginal Economies
4.39 DOMESTICATION STAGE II
4.40 ADAPTATION STAGE I
4.41 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1965 965 Years Before Present
4.42 MENT WHICH GOES FROM SHIP, TO AIRPLANE, TO ROCKET, TO MANNED SPACE VEHICLE
4.43 Clipper Steam Ships Airplanes Saturn V Rocket
4.44 1700 1800 1900 1940 1940 1950 1965
4.45 1,000 2,100 2,500 4,500 Propeller Jet 3,000 Tons
4.46 750 .... 1,200 1,400 3,500 12,000 200,000 lbs.thrust
4.47 12 knots 17-22 knots 16 knots 20 knots 300 m.p.h. 600 m.p.h. 25,000 m.p.h.
4.48 POWER AGE 1870 - 1952 ATOMIC AGE 1953 - 1965
4.49 Gasoline Engines and Electric Motors Atomic Energy and Fossil Fuel Burning Equipment Used to Produce Electric Power and Heat - Fuel Cells
4.50 Multiple Machine Tools and Automatic Machines Cybernated Factories with Computer Closed Feedback Control Loops
4.51 Human Feeder or Tender Replaced by Skilled Inspector - Mechanic Highly Trained Engineer - Designers and Skilled Maintenance Technician Systems Specialist and Programmer
4.52 Alloyed Steels, Light Alloys, and Aluminum Plastics and Super Alloys (32 New Metals Used, Notably Magnesium and Titanium)
4.53 Automobile Via Paved Highways, Diesel Trains and Ships, and Airplane Via World Airways Rocket and Jet Vertical Take Off Aircraft, Atomic Ships, Ground Effect Craft, Helicopters and Automobiles
4.54 A.M. and F.M. Radio, Movies, Television, Magnetic Tape, Trans-ocean Telephone, and Microfilm Video - Phone, Data Phone, Telstar & Syncom, World Wide Communication Satellites, ’Graphic’ Computers
4.55 Process of Man’s Occupancy of the Earth. (3) Technology and Social Change. Allen and others. Dept. Geography, York Univ. Ontario,1964. Appelton-Century-Crafts, Inc., 1957.
4.56 63
4.57 This step towards a specifically industrial technology had its origin in the ’conceptual revolution’ during the 1600’s in Europe. It is important to note that this earlier ’renaissance’ was due, in no small part, to developments in maritime technology through which, around this time, man began to be newly aware of the extent of his globe. In considering the evolution of high performance tools, the ship comes early in the list, as giving a high energy conversion capacity not wholly dependent on human or animal muscle power. In considering the stages of technology as charted, we may preserve the emphasis on ’land’ technologies but should keep in mind the parallel picture, which could be drawn, of the line of high advantage ’mobile tool’ development which goes from ship to airplane to rocket to manned space vehicle.
4.58 The introduction of the ’modern’ steam engine gives a convenient bench mark for the onset of the Industrial Revolution. As the period in which man takes off from a marginal survival type of society to one based on machine provided abundance, it is perhaps one of the most important turning points in human history. In a significant comparison to the social upheavals, i.e., the French Revolution, with which it is coincident, the first Industrial Revolution has been termed ’the gentler revolution’ –as accomplishing eventual prosperity and increased wellbeing for more men with less of the direct savagery and suffering engendered in the ’social’ revolutions. It was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
4.59 The tool, and advanced machine, developments which accompany the steam engine, and swiftly evolve into the large-scale industrial process, are too numerous to consider in detail here. We may concentrate, for our present purpose, on the machine tool and its concomitant developments of precision, controlled tolerances, technical standardization and resultant higher production performance. Machine tools are the key to the industrialization of mass production. They are the ’generalized’ tools to make tools which are used to manufacture the prime movers and the mass production machinery itself. Machine tools are generally not mass produced as the number required does not warrant this. Mass production is carried out by the ’specialized’ machines which produce standard items. These may be ’end’ products, or components for assembly into larger mass produced items.
4.60 Through machine tools, industry really accomplishes self-lifting by its own boot straps. "On the lathe, man can make ten more lathes, instead of consumer products, and then ten men can go to work, each making ten more lathes, and each can be a better lathe than the one before. Thus, the whole world’s overall tool capacity is swiftly regenerated towards comprehensive and plenteous capacity."
4.61 The first basic machine tool is generally considered to be Wilkinson’s ’Boring Mill’ (1775) used to make accurate metal cylinders for Watt’s improved steam engine. The lower performance of earlier engines of this class was due to poor tolerances in such cylinder making. The boring mill was swiftly followed by the invention of the family of
4.62 Growth of the Scientific Method–the systematic derivation of scientific principles from observation and measurement of natural processes and their verification through experimental procedures.
4.63 "The Nineteenth Century World" )Part II, The Evolution of Technology by G.B.L. Wilson). ed., G.S. Metraux; F. Grouzet, for the International Commission for a History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Man. UNESCO/Mentor Books, 1963.
4.64 Ideas and Integrities, R. B. Fuller, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963.
4.65 G.B.L. Wilson; Op Cit; Early cylinders for Newcomen/Watt’s engines were built up and hand-shaped on wooden mandrels.
4.66 machine tool types which carry out basically the same operations today–drilling, turning, punching, reaming, milling, grinding and form cutting.
4.67 Of particular importance in machine tool development was the supporting concern with precise measurement and the use of standardized gauges, etc. In 1834, Whitworth raised accurate instrumented measurement (from Maudsley’s one thousandth of an inch of 1805) to one millionth of an inch; his standardized screwthread of 1841, with constant angle of 55 degrees, was universally in use until 1948 when a new English-American standard was adopted.
4.68 Mass production industrial technology has similar early beginnings, generally located with Whitney’s ’American System’ of 1798, used for the manufacture of muskets with interchangeable parts, and with North’s manufacture of 21,500 pistols by the same methods. Colt’s revolver of 1835 used this system and his Connecticut armory contained 1,400 machine tools. One of the first large-scale uses of the copying lathe, in 1818, was in the turning of gunstocks by Blanchard (U.S.).48 The mass production of clothing is also located around this period and associated with the U.S. Civil War uniform need. It is in- teresting to underline at this point the prior use of latest phase technologies as allocated to weaponry–a trend which continues to the present day.
4.69 The mass production of standard interchangeable components, then assembled through specialized division of labor into further complex units, remains in current practice. In the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, it spread and co-existed with the use of the machine to produce large amounts of ’materials’, i.e., textiles, which then underwent further ’handcraft’ processing.
4.70 The further development of mass production came with Henry Ford’s use of the Whitney methods, in 1909, to manufacture automobiles. Ford’s assembly line system first synthesized all the elements of the industrial process into a working whole; the division of labor, separation of work into specialized unit tasks; standardization of parts for interchangeability; precision tooling making standard parts of uniform ’fit’ possible; the assembly line itself, the line-flow method of moving items, to be processed, past workers and machines at a steady timed rate. He also endeavored to create mass demand by fixing wage rates so that the worker/producer of autos could also furnish the mass consumption required to sustain the overall mass production process.49
4.71 Ford was also important in extending his assembly line method to encompass the supply of materials from widely separated remote centers in a timed sequence of transport and processing operations to their required point of availability in the ’home’ production plant. Recognizing that the full development of industrialization implies global access to raw materials, he devised the ’mobile inventory’ flow line of necessary raw materials which were ordered and purchased at their various extraction and processing centers around the earth and dispatched at precisely related intervals to converge again at their local U.S. processing centers – thence to the end assembly plant. This ’organic’ extension of the industrial complex coincided also with the availability of adequate railroads, steamships, etc., and, in turn, encouraged their growth as part of the overall evolution of major tools.
4.72 48 ’The Wilkie Foundation’, Doall Co., Ill., USA. 49 ’Machines’, Life Science Library, 1964. 65
4.73 THE NARROWING INTERVAL BETWEEN DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE
4.74 1821 Electric Motor = 65 yrs 1886 Vacuum Tube = 33 yrs 1915 Radio Broadcasting = 35 yrs 1922 X-Ray Tubes = 28 yrs 1895 1913 Nuclear Reactor = 10 yrs 1932 1942 Radar = 5 yrs 1935 1940 Atomic Bomb = 7 yrs 1938 1945 Transistor = 3 yrs 1948 1951 Solar Battery = 2 yrs 1953 1955 Stereospecific Rubbers and Plastics = 3 yrs 1955 1958
4.75 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960
4.76 Source: Technology and Social Change. Eli Ginzberg. Columbia University Press, 1964.
4.77 66
4.78 Though we have, in swiftly reviewing, by-passed the important aspects of the chemical engineering, electrical and electronic technological revolutions, we may note the accelerated, but seemingly orderly, expansion of the whole industrial process from this point on.
4.79 Ford’s global mobile inventory flow system could not precede the railroad, which in turn required the steam and supporting machine tool development; the tools which improve the steam engine are preceded by the availability of metals and coal from the mines kept dry by the Newcomen engine, etc. All the various technological developments pace each other, and are paced in turn by scientific discoveries in the physical laws governing behaviors in energy exchange, metallurgy, alloying, fuel chemistries, etc.
4.80 This evolutionary process suggests an inherently ’organic’ governing principle, or series of principles, which may describe the overall pattern. Fuller has described industrialization as such a "mathematical principle in universe"–and defined it as: "The objective, exact synergetic reintegration into a common, regenerative advantage of man, of all the subjective, exact differentiated energy behaviors discovered by all the individual explorations of all history’s exact scientists." This ’reintegration’ of scientific discovery into engineered application has progressively shortened as industrialization has developed its momentum–the steam engine took about 100 years to full application; electricity less than 50 years; the internal combustion engine under 30 years; the vacuum tube only 15 years–present developments in electronics, plastics, etc., are integrated within less than a year.50 These decreases in time lags, or increased velocity of integration, are matched by corresponding velocity increases in other areas. In 1904, no man had gone faster than 110 mph. By 1964, man had reached 18,000 mph–an increase of 200 times. The computer can carry out calculations which would take a lifetime by hand–a factor of 10,000 increase in communication. By 1904, one man could reach 5,000 people; today, by satellite, he may talk to the world.
4.81 "Consider, for example, what is happening at present in certain fields, as typified, say, by the high energy accelerators of modern physics...In the late 1920’s, atomic particles could be accelerated to roughly 500,000 electron-volts of energy. Successive inventions raised the limit to about 20 million volts in the 1930’s; to 500 million by about 1950; and to 30 billion by the 1960’s. Today one machine under construction is designed for 50 billion volts. This is an increase by a factor of 100,000 in energy–a factor of 10–in these 35 years, or a multiplication of the energy by another factor of 10 in every 7 years."51
4.82 When we come to consider increased performance per unit of energy investment in the industrial process, we will find again such corresponding exponential growth rates. These growth rates are evidence of the regenerative principle of technological development which improves with every re-employment. Experience and new knowledge feeds back into the process giving increasing degrees of precision and gains in performance.52
4.83 50 "Machines and Men", by Wassily Leontief, Science American, Vol. 187, Sept., 1952
4.84 51 ’The Step to Man,’ John R. Platt (Prof. Biophysics and Physics: Univ. of Chicago)
4.85 52 Large scale systems engineering as presently applied in aerospace programs now endeavors to encapsulate this ’rate of integration’ development by anticipating forward requirements in materials, instrument development, etc.–by scheduling ’basic’ research, technical refinement and other appropriately timed ’growth’ developments within its long-range objective. This not only attempts to program discovery and integration but also to anticipate and incorporate ’invention’ on schedule!
4.86 67
4.87 TREND TOWARDS MINIATURISATION (MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE PER POUND OF UNIT RESOURCE)
4.88 TABLE OF PACKING DENSITY
4.89 CONVENTIONAL COMPONENTS
4.90 RELATIVE SIZE OF COMPONENTS IN INCHES
4.91 YEAR
4.92 1 Prewar valves with standard components. 1945 Wartime miniature valves with standard components. 1949 Transistors with subminiature components. MICRO-ELECTRONICS Micro-assemblies. 1952 Thin-film integrated circuits (achieved in equipment). ORDVAC parallel adder 1962 Semiconductor integrated circuits. Printed circuit for computer at Aberdeen Proving Grounds 1965 Achieved in equipment. Actual size of logic block (integrated circuit) (Silvania, Inc.) FUTURE Circuit fabrication using electron beam methods (theoretical). Neuron density in a human brain.
4.93 12" 24" 36" 48"
4.94 Single integrated circuit chip 0.040 sq. inches. Containing 22 active components and its relationship to a United States one cent piece.
4.95 Sources: (1) "Automation Surge", Science News Letter. (84:294) Nov 9, 1963. (2) "The Exchange", Frank Leary. New York Stock Exchange. Jan. 1965. (3) "Miniaturisation ad Infinitum". G.W.A. Dummer. New Scientist (432:500) Feb 25, 1965.
4.96 Each gain is also accomplished with less human and inanimate energy investment. In 1909, the year of the Model T Ford, the great shift to mass production by machine was immediately reflected in shorter manhours per output; by 1920, the U.S. overall manhour investment had leveled off and ’remained almost constant’ until the early 1940’s. Even at the peak (W.W.II), our total labor input with an enormously larger population was only ten per cent greater than in 1910.
4.97 Performance per pound is not only gauged in terms of actual performance delivered but also in reliability in performance. These two characteristics are particularly evident in the trend towards ’micro-miniaturization’ in communication electronics and computers. With the order of magnitude of components reduced more than ten to twenty fold, this field is becoming known as ’molecular electronics’; circuits are reduced to tiny micro-elements which are ’solid state’, with no soldered joints or loose wiring to invite ’failure’ and decrease reliability. By integrating the functions of many transistors, and circuits into one block, they also give gains in ’warmup’ and switching time efficiencies, etc. The ’Micropac’ computer employs over 10,000 such units, weighs 90 pounds and occupies 2 1/2 cu.ft. A typical missile guidance system may weigh 60 per cent less than previous units and complete with computer power supply, etc., occupy less than 1 cu.ft. One new computer is actually 150 times smaller and 48 times lighter than the device it replaced! From its original weaponry use such circuitry has already gone into many other areas, particularly medical electronics, and promises, within a relatively short period, to provide a new range of ’evolving contact products’ whose scale will go towards invisibility. Recent micro-machining research at Stanford University, into components only one micron across, gives an estimated packing of several million components per cubic inch. Such micro-miniaturization began to approach the dimensional complexity and performance per unit of nature itself. Dr. Arthur Kornberg, Stanford Nobel Laureate, summed up the D.N.A. molecule, as the ultimate in miniaturization of information coding....(which) might be compared to the reduction of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica to the size of a pinhead’.53
4.98 Again, examples of this type could be listed for many pages. They are significant only, in underlining, for our purpose, the progressive de-materialization and ephemeralization which seems also to be an inherent trend in technological development.
4.99 All these accelerations in the integration of discoveries, reduction of input energies, increase in performance per pound, and their associated gains in productive volume and use capacity, are reflected in the current state of global industrialization. We have noted that the industrialization works most efficiently on a world scale. To maintain this efficiency through the successive feedback of increased reuse and regenerative cycles, it is obvious that the larger the number of people served, the more successful the equation. ’As men become dis-employed as physical workers at one part of the scale, others are swelling in the ranks of scientific and industrial research which develops the next wave of evolutionary industrial transformations.’54
4.100 53 "DNA is Ultimate in Miniaturization"; D. Goldthorpe, National Institute of Health Record, Vol. XVII, No. 2, January, 1965.
4.101 54 Document One (1963)."Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs", p23; also contains charts of regenerative cycling.
4.102 69
4.103 The advanced nations of the West, however, are presently encountering some dislocation in their adjustment to the latest stage of industrialization–automation. Part of the difficulty lies in the hangover of obsolete installations, procedures and machine tools, due to their early industrial success and reliance on this as a seemingly ’static’ security in various sectors of their economy. Noting particularly ’that two-thirds of the metal working machinery in the U.S. is ten or more years old,’ Seymour Melman suggests that the machine tool industry must also consider mass production, both to refurbish existing inventories and to remain in the world market.55 Another report (New Scientist, Mar. 1963) indicates that about 60 per cent of Britain’s machine tools, and approximately 15 per cent of its steel-making capacities are similarly obsolete. The degree of relative modernization may also be examined relative to the rate of incorporation of computers in various countries.
4.104 The ’emerging’ nations tend on the other hand to leap frog into the industrial era without retracing earlier Western development; they take off higher on the technological scale with a faster integration rate than the older areas. Though Japan is not strictly an example of an emerging nation, both she and China have made considerable industrial progress in the past decade. The latter’s recent accession to nuclear energies is evidence of such capacity.
4.105 "History may record the industrialization of Japan, Mainland Asia and India as the great economic event of the Twentieth Century just as the Industrial Revolution marked the Eighteenth Century and the great expansion of world commerce begun with earlier marked the Nineteenth... In effect these two revolutionary developments which spanned more than two centuries in their unfolding for the Western world, are now being brought in their full impact in...a few decades upon the three countries of Asia with 40 per cent of the world’s people. The results must be far reaching."56
4.106 Integration of automation, as the latest phase of the industrial process, will undoubtedly hasten these developments. Defined as, "The mechanization of sensory thought and control processes".57 Automation, though it involves principles already operative in the first industrial revolution, e.g., Watt’s Governor as a self-regulating machine device, is essentially a new evolutionary stage in technology. As more directly the product of pure science, it embodies series of principles which have much wider applicability than previous industrial inventions like the steam engine or assembly line. It is not only that we may replace the sensory control of the worker in the assembly line by a more sensitive electro-mechanical device; but, also in that using the same principles on which such a device is based, we may replace progressively the various hierarchies of inventory control, production flow, organization and eventually major human executive decision over the whole plant, and plant-complex operations. The extraordinary range of new devices, processes, procedures and capabilities which the scientific discipline of cybernetics and its related fields have developed may not be more than touched upon here.
4.107 55 "Professional Industrial and Management Engineering, Columbia University, Author of ’The Peace Race’. 1961.
4.108 56 "Industrialization in Japan, China Mainland and India-Some World Implications"; John E. Orchard. Columbia University; Annals of Association of American Geographers, Vol. 50, No. 3, September, 1960.
4.109 57 "Jobs, Men and Machines"; ed. Charles Markham, 1964.
4.110 COMPUTERS PER COUNTRY
4.111 U.S.A. 120 Switzerland 80 Sweden 60 France 56 Norway 50 W. Germany 47 Netherlands 46 Denmark 44 Belgium 43 Italy 38 U.K. 28 Austria 24
4.112 Computers per million working population as of January 1964
4.113 Source: "Computer Comeback". David Fishlock. New Scientist, England, Jan. 1964.
4.114 IN OPERATION MACHINE TOOLS
4.115 % of Machine Tools Over 10 yrs. of Age
4.116 % of Machine Tools Under 10 yrs. of Age
4.117 100% 100% 90 90 80 -38%- 80 70 -43%- 70 60 -50%- 60 50 -60%- 50 40 -64%- 40 30 30 20 20 10 10
4.118 1945 1949 1953 1958 1963
4.119 United States Machine Tools
4.120 COMPARATIVE
4.121 100% 100% 90 90 80 -15%- 80 70 -41%- 70 60 -42%- 60 50 -64%- 50 40 -59%- 40 30 -58%- 30 20 -36%- 20 10 -85%- 10
4.122 U.S.A. U.K. France W. Germany U.S.S.R.
4.123 1963 Comparative National Machine Tools
4.124 Source: "Industry-Tooling Up", Time Magazine. May 10, 1963.
4.125 71
4.126 Significantly arising out of weaponry needs in World War Two, the process of automation has many strands of development.
4.127 We may identify two main source areas as: One, that of electronics, and more specifically, radar and its attendant self-correcting anti-aircraft gun control devices which lead on through to the hardware development of the computer and many auxiliary technologies. From this area comes also the theory of ’feedback’, which is the distinguishing feature of all that we are discussing here. Feedback may be defined, as the return to input of part of the output of an operation, or, as that information on performance which reports discrepancies between intended and actual operations so as to reinforce or modify the action of the operation, i.e., as self-correcting action. Two, the growth of operations research which arose from the application of the methodology of the physical sciences (e.g., logico-mathematical techniques, network theory, etc.) to the scheduling of military and logistics operations. This new software tool evolved swiftly into the post war ’systems’ approach and its proliferated concepts of systems analysis, decision and gain theory, cost effectiveness, etc.
4.128 Automation is, at the level of industrial application, the fusion of these tools into a powerful new compound tool, rendering man obsolete as a ’mechanical’ energy converter, industrial production worker or ’routine’ worker. In the same manner the steam and internal combustion engines obsoleted the horse and draught animal as main muscle machine of the previous period. Within the machine process itself, it also introduces many revolutionary changes. The machine tool industry is now faced with a new range of technical advances in ’numerical control, modular design, electronic, high energy rate forming, electro-chemical milling and electro-discharge machining,’ which tend to change the character of the tools themselves.58 Various combinations of tool capacities are now possible. With the introduction of automatic controls we may now combine automated general purpose tools with high production specialized tools in a manner which enables us to mass produce not only standardized identical items, but at the same rate, to produce series of ’tailored’ items with different conformations and qualities. Developments in ’throw away’, expendable tooling, now in process, are likely to expand this capacity–which could give any required variety within a mass production run.
4.129 The above capacities, plus many other refined tools, are now available to the overall planning of comprehensively designed environment systems and for the ’tailored’ production of very large-scale complex units.59
4.130 The designer may now deal with the ’design of the whole’ once more. During the past period, in the design of large scale complex units, his function has been largely relegated to that of a coordinator of various specialists–structural, lighting, air conditioning and other engineers, etc. The special information of such specialists may now be incorporated in the memory storage unit of a computer and called upon as required. The direct design function which had also been reduced, in many cases, to the assembly of standard parts out of manufacturers catalogues, is now renewed, even in large scale ’mass’ production, to the point where each item can be different and ’tailored’ to specification through computer aids.
4.131 58 "Science, Technology and Economic Growth", Clark E. Chastain, Impact: UNESCO, Vol. XIV, 1964.
4.132 59 One does not refer here to the present vogue in ’Industrialized systems building’, etc., which tends to be the same ’prefabricated craft’ unit mechanized and systematized to the extent that the ’boxes’ or wall units may be erected more quickly. 72
4.133 New computer developments now go beyond recent numerical drafting systems, which simply mechanized an already routine process, to ways in which the designer may interact directly with the computer; having his design decisions and calculations checked and adjusted against its data storage with recall and print out at any stage. They are developing to the point where design may be accomplished through, and by, the computer, then phased directly into unit production by automatic tools through automated jig assembly to machine inventorying, checking, dispatch and transport to destination.
4.134 Chief among the design tools contributing to these man/computer/production capacities are ’on line’ computer attachments such as Sketchpad, Rand Tablet, Calcomp and Grafacon, etc.60
4.135 The Sketchpad unit typifies the direction. Using this device whose communicating ’interface’ with the machine or a T.V. type display tube, the designer may sketch directly ’on’ the display tube surface with an electric eye light pen which produces a glowing fluorescent line. According to the machine’s instructions, such freehand lines are straight- ened up, circles are perfected, angles are made accurate. From the rough sketch, then, a precise figure is machine formed; it can then be altered, reduced, the whole or part enlarged (up to 2,000 times), and rotated so as to show other dimensional projections. For example, in designing a truss complex, the sketch may be drawn on the display face and various behavioral configurations under different loading conditions and different materials may be ’called up’ and shown directly on the drawing. For linked machine units, parts may move in relative motion at various high or slow speeds and their parts stress behavior adjusted immediately and accurately through access to such data as is in the memory bank. All modifications of sketches, etc., are also stored. They, or any part of the displayed drawing, may be ’printed out’ on command.
4.136 Rand Tablet operates in much the same way, with the refinement that the ’interface’ tablet can also be programmed to recognize handwritten symbols, e.g., in drawing a rough auditorium sketch, instructions and equations may be included, etc. The machine output on the display face will provide the ’revised’, acoustically correct, drawing, plus associated graphs and charts.
4.137 Grafacon and Calcomp are less complex devices, now in regular use, the first allows plans, graphs, etc., to be transmitted into computer memory and ’displayed’; the second makes a reproducible drawing of anything that appears on the T.V. display oscilloscope surface.
4.138 All these various units depend for their most efficient use on massive memory storage, into which has been placed all the relevant information necessary for the anticipated operations, e.g., present capacities around 100 million bits–anticipated, about a trillion bits, comparable to a thousand sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. Such memories may include information on thousands of standard calculations, available on possible machine parts, operations, etc.61
4.139 60 Detailed review of such units may be found in Fortune Magazine, May, 1964, "Machines That Man Can Talk With", J. Pfeiffer.
4.140 61 Interlinkage of such man/machine systems through various transcontinental centers is already established as forward development in computer services and will be more fuller discussed in Phase Four.
4.141 73
4.142 The above overall functions underlines the increasing obsolescence of man as a specialist, human ’information’ source and the more urgent requirement for his role as comprehensive designer and overall ’systems’ and ’pattern’ creator.
4.143 The concomitant development of generalized and specific ’systems’ analysis and formulation, which was earlier referred to as the ’software’ evolving from World War Two’s operations research, powerfully underlines this position also. Now officially referred to as a ’new social instrument’ for large scale planning, it has enabled governments and industries to schedule huge long-range programs with many alternate strategies, and complexly interacting variable factors of research, development and manufacture, and to accomplish such schedules with timed precision over periods of years.
4.144 Defined as briefly as possible, systems procedures are concerned with the design of a set of operations or activities, so organized as to satisfy definable functional requirements, and containing within their design various ’feedback’ sub-procedures which regulate the system towards the desired optimal ’end’ function. The process involves:
4.145 1. The definition and statement of a given problem, function or series of functions.
4.146 2. Definition of the hierarchy of sub-functions or systems within this.
4.147 3. The constraints on the system as identified by end/sub-function criteria and associated variables.
4.148 4. The comparison of this ’generating’ system with a ’model’ system to select out the most efficient procedures.
4.149 5. Finally, the evaluation of the overall system design for optimal function.
4.150 At each stage, information gained feeds back into the design of the system.
4.151 In practice, ’systems’ thinking has proliferated into a great variety of procedures using many different mathematical tools for analysis and simulation, plus auxiliary techniques from communications theory, etc. Applications range from the relatively simple analysis of specific engineering functions, through the ’programming’ of a missile system, to the analysis and simulation of regional and national working economies. They are now being particularly applied in the large-scale planning of those technical systems related to urban support-transportation communication and power supply, e.g., combination with automated methods, ’time required to introduce new designs of transport vehicles, power distribution schemes or construction systems can sometimes be reduced several fold. Plans for public works, which might otherwise take several years to achieve, may be expected in the future in weeks or months.’62
4.152 The engineering and automated production’follow up’to such comprehensive design capabilities is already well advanced. Where Fuller referred, in 1964, to ’total buildings, jig assembled by computer...air delivered, ready for use in one helilift,’63 this capacity is almost ready in use, for example, in aircraft and ship building.
4.153 62 "Conference on Space, Science and Urban Life", March, 1963, p.108, NASA Publ. SP-37, U.S. Government Printing Office.
4.154 63 See heading to this Chapter.
4.155 Airfreighter building programs using light weight glass fiber ’self-jigging’ assembly techniques, are producing large fuselage capacity units capable of carrying many tons. Such swiftly produced transport units, plus new helicopter lifting capacities, render the air-deliverable capacity of building of immediate practicality.
4.156 The actual computer ’jig assembled’ total building is also presaged in presently developing naval war ship building programs. Such ships come closer to floating cities in their complexity than just buildings! In reports on recent work, it is pointed out that it normally takes 18 months to construct the hull of such ships, with three quarters of this time allocated to hull ’fairing’ and full-scale loft drawing. Using computers this was cut to three days; complete structural designs could be completed in five days. Similar time/cost savings are indicated at each stage of such an overall operation, which requires approximately 5,000 separate job listings and more massive and complex inventories than are ever likely in buildings. A report, in Time Magazine of October, 1962, of a new Swedish shipyard describes this as:
4.157 "The world’s most fully automated shipyard, capable of building colossal 140,000 ton ships on the industry’s first real assembly line. It throws out the old method of building ships on stationary ways from the keel up. Instead, ships will emerge from a giant assembly shed, stem first, in 45 ft. sections; as they move down the ways, everthing from deck plates to cabin carpets will be installed so that the ship does not have to spend months in a fitting dock after launching. As the bow of one is being completed, the stern of the next will start down the line. With a 40,000-ton tanker, the year will halve the normal 40-week period, between keel-laying and sea trials."
4.158 Within the ’warship’ computer program described above, a comparison is given of the time/manhour costs for a comparable industrial steel building structure of eight stories, as normally requiring 50 design drawings and 300 shop detail drawings–taking 8,800 man- hours and 61 weeks to complete. Using the specified computer program for construction, this was calculated to take only 1,700 manhours and could be completed in 5.5 weeks– with a minimum (critical path) program of three weeks.
4.159 The fully developed capacities to replan global ’tool’ systems of fully advantaged environment controls for man are therefore to hand. It is required only that the emergent student comprehensive designer acquaint himself with the correct techniques and prccedures to implement such full advantage for all men. As in swift review, we have traced tool evolution from the steam engine to the fully automated shipyard so he may trace out and familiarize himself with the evolution of the types of high advantage capacity that the task will require. This will necessitate, not only the necessary technical training in specific mathematical and engineering skills, but also the capacity to review and anticipate techno- logical change and the manner in which it may affect social change. Man and the satis- faction of his evolutionary purpose remains the central objective.
4.160 75
4.161 MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES
4.162 Character of Change | Technical Aspects | Possibilities arising | Effects on the Individual | Social aspects | Global aspects — | — | — | — | — | — Revolution in information: vast increases in computing and telecommunications capacity and wide use of electronic storage and retrieval of information. | Computers a good deal faster and easier to "converse" with. World-wide weather and disaster warning services using satellites. Computers linked in nation-wide and world networks. Messages by computer network (in digital code). Big increase in communications using millimetre radio, laser beams or communications satellites. | Television-telephones. "Dialling for news, books, etc. Ready access to information (a data store in the home?). Close surveillance by government computers? Use of television links instead of business travel. | "Abolition" of libraries, paper-work and typists. Wide use of computers in every field of activity. Increase in local broadcasting. No more newspapers as we know them? | World-wide instantaneous reporting. Language translation. Big investment in communications (but increasing nationalism in these services?). Revolutionary consequences of biology. | Understanding of living systems, including the human brain. Manipulation of genetic structure. Development of "bio-engineering". Understanding of ageing process. | "Biochemical machines" for food production, energy, transformation chemical manufacture and information storage. Alteration of cell heredity. Engineering controls modelled on biological systems. Transplantation of organs and wise use of artificial limbs and organs. Modification of the developing brain. Conquest of viruses, heart disease and cancer? | Longer life. Better treatment of mental disease. Inhibition of ageing or "medicated survival"? Loss of individuality by surgical implantation? | Better understanding of human behaviour. Need for moral criteria in biological manipulations. Danger of a racket in transplantable organs. Danger of "mind control". | Understanding of complexity of living systems. Opportunities for enlarging food production.
4.163 Extracted from: "1984: The Series Summarised". Nigel Calder. New Scientist, England. Aug. 20, 1964.
4.164 76
4.165 READINGS LIST
4.166 Phase 3. Tool Evolution
4.167 After the Seventh Day. Ritchie Calder. Mentor Books, 1961.
4.168 Bridges and their Builders. D. B. Steidman and S. R. Watson, New York, 1957.
4.169 The Chemical Elements. Helen Miles Davis. Ballantine Books, 1959.
4.170 The Chemical Revolution, a Contribution to Social Technology. A. Clow and N. Clow. London, 1952.
4.171 A Chronological History of Electrical Development. E. S. Lincoln, (ed.). New York, 1946.
4.172 Communication. Harry Edward Neal. Julius Messner, 1960.
4.173 Computers & Thought. Feigenbaum & Julian Feldman, (eds.). McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963.
4.174 Discovery of the Elements. M. E. Weeks. Easton, 1945.
4.175 The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller. Robert W. Marks. Reinhold Publishing Company, 1959.
4.176 The Earth and Its Atmosphere. D. R. Bates, (ed.). Basic Books, 1957.
4.177 The Foreseeable Future. Sir George Thompson. Cambridge University Press, 1955.
4.178 From Circuit Theory to System Theory. Zadeh. Proc. IRE, 50.5, May 1962.
4.179 History of American Technology. John W. Oliver. New York, 1956.
4.180 A History of Mechanical Inventions. Abbott Payson Usher. Beacon Press, 1959.
4.181 A History of Industrial Chemistry. F. Sherwood Taylor. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1957.
4.182 History of the Strength of Materials. St. P. Timoschenko. London, 1953.
4.183 History of Technology. 5 vols. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, (eds.). Oxford University Press, 1954.
4.184 A Hundred Years of Mechanical Engineering. E. Cresy. New York, 1937.
4.185 Logic Machines and Diagrams. M. Gardner. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1958.
4.186 Main Currents of Scientific Thought. S. F. Mason. Abelard-Schuman, New York, 1953.
4.187 77
4.188 On Human Communication. C. Cherry. Technology Press, M. I. T., John Wiley, Inc., 1957.
4.189 Plastics in the Service of Man. E. G. Couzens, and V. E. Yarsley. Penguin Books Ltd., 1956.
4.190 Realm of Measure. Isaac Asimov. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960.
4.191 The Rise of Chemical Industry in the Nineteenth Century. F. L. Haber, Oxford, 1958.
4.192 Science and Engineering and the Future of Man. William Taylor Thom, Jr. 1961.
4.193 Science Since Babylon. Derek J. deSolla Price. Yale University Press, 1961.
4.194 Short History of Marine Engineering. E. C. Smith. London, 1937.
4.195 Short History of the Steam Engine. W. H. Dickinson. London, 1938.
4.196 The Story of Water Supply. F. W. Robins, Oxford, 1946.
4.197 Technology & Social Change. John F. Cuber. Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1957.
4.198 Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Reyner Banham. Architectural Press, 1960.
4.199 Transport. Egon Larsen. Roy Publishers, New York, 1959.
4.200 The Unfinished Epic of Industrialization. Buckminster Fuller. Jargon Press of Jonathon Williams’ Nantahala Foundation, 1963.
4.201 Unprecedented Evolutions. Henry A. Murray. Columbia University Press, 1962.
4.202 Systems Engineering
4.203 Automation in Architecture. Architectural & Engineering News - entire March 1963 issue.
4.204 The Computer in Building Design. John W. Dawson, AIA. Architectural & Engineering News, December 1961.
4.205 A Computer-Based Building Process: Its Potentials for Architecture. J. P. Eberhard. Architectural and Engineering News, December 1962.
4.206 Information and Decision Processes. Machol. McGraw-Hill, 1960.
4.207 Man-Computer Symbiosis. J. C. R. Licklider. Institute of Radio Engineers Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics. Vo. HFE-1, No. 1, March 1960.
4.208 A Methodology for Systems Engineering. Arthur D. Hall. Van Nostrand, 1962.
4.209 Psychological Principles of System Development. Gagne (ed.). Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962.
4.210 System Engineering. Goode and Machol. McGraw-Hill, 1960.
4.211 Systems: Research & Design (Proceedings of the First Systems Symposium at Case Institute of Technology). Donald P. Eckman (ed.). John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1961.
4.212 78