Manufacturing the Muse


Book Description

How a 19th century instrument helped to shape New World culture.




Manufacturing Advantage


Book Description

How manufacturing textiles and guns transformed the United States from colonial dependent to military power. In 1783, the Revolutionary War drew to a close, but America was still threatened by enemies at home and abroad. The emerging nation faced tax rebellions, Indian warfare, and hostilities with France and England. Its arsenal—a collection of hand-me-down and beat-up firearms—was woefully inadequate, and its manufacturing sector was weak. In an era when armies literally froze in the field, military preparedness depended on blankets and jackets, the importation of which the British Empire had coordinated for over 200 years. Without a ready supply of guns, the new nation could not defend itself; without its own textiles, it was at the economic mercy of the British. Domestic industry offered the best solution for true economic and military independence. In Manufacturing Advantage, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele shows how the US government promoted the industrial development of textiles and weapons to defend the country from hostile armies—and hostile imports. Moving from the late 1700s through the Mexican-American War, Schakenbach Regele argues that both industries developed as a result of what she calls “national security capitalism”: a mixed enterprise system in which government agents and private producers brokered solutions to the problems of war and international economic disparities. War and State Department officials played particularly key roles in the emergence of American industry, facilitating arms makers and power loom weavers in the quest to develop industrial resources. And this defensive strategy, Schakenbach Regele reveals, eventually evolved to promote westward expansion, as well as America’s growing commercial and territorial empire. Examining these issues through the lens of geopolitics, Manufacturing Advantage places the rise of industry in the United States in the context of territorial expansion, diplomacy, and warfare. Ultimately, the book reveals the complex link between government intervention and private initiative in a country struggling to create a political economy that balanced military competence with commercial needs.




Manufacturing the Muse: Estey Organs & Consumer Culture in Victorian America


Book Description

The Estey Organ Company (1846-1960) produced over a half-million reed organs and 3,000 pipe organs in Brattleboro, Vermont. Dennis Waring's scholarly treatise on the Estey company reveals important connections between music and musical instruments with evolving American sensibilities, manufacturing and technological industrialism, marketing and advertising, international trade, social stratification, gender issues, emerging popular culture and general insight into Victorian Americana.




Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity


Book Description

Eastern European prefabricated housing blocks are often vilified as the visible manifestations of everything that was wrong with state socialism. For many inside and outside the region, the uniformity of these buildings became symbols of the dullness and drudgery of everyday life. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity complicates this common perception. Analyzing the cultural, intellectual, and professional debates surrounding the construction of mass housing in early postwar Czechoslovakia, Zarecor shows that these housing blocks served an essential function in the planned economy and reflected an interwar aesthetic, derived from constructivism and functionalism, that carried forward into the 1950s. With a focus on prefabricated and standardized housing built from 1945 to 1960, Zarecor offers broad and innovative insights into the country's transition from capitalism to state socialism. She demonstrates that during this shift, architects and engineers consistently strove to meet the needs of Czechs and Slovaks despite challenging economic conditions, a lack of material resources, and manufacturing and technological limitations. In the process, architects were asked to put aside their individual creative aspirations and transform themselves into technicians and industrial producers. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity is the first comprehensive history of architectural practice and the emergence of prefabricated housing in the Eastern Bloc. Through discussions of individual architects and projects, as well as building typologies, professional associations, and institutional organization, it opens a rare window into the cultural and economic life of Eastern Europe during the early postwar period.




Manufacturing Facilities Design and Material Handling


Book Description

This project-oriented facilities design and material handling reference explores the techniques and procedures for developing an efficient facility layout, and introduces some of the state-of-the-art tools involved, such as computer simulation. A "how-to," systematic, and methodical approach leads readers through the collection, analysis and development of information to produce a quality functional plant layout. Lean manufacturing; work cells and group technology; time standards; the concepts behind calculating machine and personnel requirements, balancing assembly lines, and leveling workloads in manufacturing cells; automatic identification and data collection; and ergonomics. For facilities planners, plant layout, and industrial engineer professionals who are involved in facilities planning and design.




Manufacturing Suburbs


Book Description

Urban historians have long portrayed suburbanization as the result of a bourgeois exodus from the city, coupled with the introduction of streetcars that enabled the middle class to leave the city for the more sylvan surrounding regions. Demonstrating that this is only a partial version of urban history, "Manufacturing Suburbs" reclaims the history of working-class suburbs by examining the development of industrial suburbs in the United States and Canada between 1850 and 1950. Contributors demonstrate that these suburbs developed in large part because of the location of manufacturing beyond city limits and the subsequent building of housing for the workers who labored within those factories. Through case studies of industrial suburbanization and industrial suburbs in several metropolitan areas (Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, and Montreal), "Manufacturing Suburbs" sheds light on a key phenomenon of metropolitan development before the Second World War.




American Paper Mills, 1690-1832


Book Description

A comprehensive account of early papermaking in America




Urban Re-industrialization


Book Description

Urban re-industrialisation could be seen as a method of increasing business effectiveness in the context of a politically stimulated 'green economy'; it could also be seen as a nostalgic mutation of a creative-class concept, focused on 3D printing, 'boutique manufacturing' and crafts. These two notions place urban re-industrialisation within the context of the current neoliberal economic regime and urban development based on property and land speculation. Could urban re-industrialisation be a more radical idea? Could urban re-industrialization be imagined as a progressive socio-political and economic project, aimed at creating an inclusive and democratic society based on cooperation and a symbiosis that goes way beyond the current model of a neoliberal city?In January 2012, against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, Krzysztof Nawratek published a text in opposition to the fantasy of a 'cappuccino city, ' arguing that the post-industrial city is a fiction, and that it should be replaced by 'Industrial City 2.0.' Industrial City 2.0 is an attempt to see a post-socialist and post-industrial city from another perspective, a kind of negative of the modernist industrial city. If, for logistical reasons and because of a concern for the health of residents, modernism tried to separate different functions from each other (mainly industry from residential areas), Industrial City 2.0 is based on the ideas of coexistence, proximity, and synergy. The essays collected here envision the possibilities (as well as the possible perils) of such a scheme.TABLE OF CONTENTS //Introduction: Urban Re-industrialization as a Political Project (Krzysztof Nawratek)PART 1: Why Should We Do It? / Re-industrialisation as Progressive Urbanism: Why and How? (Michael Edwards & Myfanwy Taylor) - Mechanisms of Loss (Karol Kurnicki) - The Cultural Politics of Re-industrialisation: Some Remarks on Cultural and Urban Policy in the European Union (Jonathan Vickery)PART 2: Political Considerations and Implications / 'Shrimps not whales': Building a City of Small Parts as an Alternative Vision for Post-industrial Society (Alison Hulme) - 'Der Arbeiter': (Re) Industrialisation as Universalism? (Krzysztof Nawratek) - Whose Re-industrialisation? Greening the Pit or Taking Over the Means of Production? (Malcolm Miles) - Crowdsourced Urbanism? The Maker Revolution and the Creative City 2.0. (Doreen Jakob) - Brave New World? (Tatjana Schneider) - The Political Agency of Geography and the Shrinking City (Jeffrey T. Kruth)PART 3: How Should We Do It? / Beyond the Post-Industrial City? The Third Industrial Revolution, Digital Manufacturing and the Transformation of Homes into Miniature Factories (John R. Bryson, Jennifer Clark, & Rachel Mulhall) - Conspicuous Production: Valuing the Visibility of Industry in Urban Re-industrialisation Strategies (Karl Baker) - Industri[us] (Christina Norton) - Working with the Neighbours: Co-operative Practices Delivering Sustainable Benefits (Kate Royston) - Low-carbon (Re-)industrialisation: Lessons from China (Kevin Lo & Mark Yaolin Wang




The Jet Makers


Book Description

This volume presents the history of the American jet aircraft manufacturing industry from World War II to 1972, documenting the evolution of its technology and covering the intricacies of its management, economics, and relations with the government. A valuable contribution to general aviation history, it also provides a unique opportunity to study the dynamic of a major U.S. industry. Charles D. Bright traces the momentous revolution of the aerospace era from birth to maturity, using as a base the jet aircraft industry. He investigates all significant aspects: the coming-of-age of aviation during World War II, including global transportation and aerodynamics; the development of jets and missiles from the Truman era to the Vietnam War; the controlling influence of national military strategy; the U.S. Air Force and other government markets; the mechanics of government procurement—bidding, pricing, buying; difficulties in the commercial airliner business; the ordering of technology and the prevailing “design or die” philosophy; and different systems of production through the years. Special attention is given to major problems such as the industry’s need for diversification and the skyrocketing costs that threaten to make aerospace products uneconomical. The conventional economic concerns of entry into and exit from the industry are treated in depth. Bright focuses on the overall economic pattern, from the first demand for aerospace machines for military, space, and commercial uses to the failures of recent times as the industry entered recession and peacetime equilibrium. He tells of the desperate competition among giants of the industry, those companies on the frontiers of technology that manufactured fixed-wing aircraft of their own design. This is the group that bore the brunt of adaptation to the jet age: Boeing, Curtiss-Wright, Douglas, Fairchild, General Dynamics, Grumman, Lockheed, martin, McDonnell, North American Northrop, and Republic. Central to the story are the reasons for America’s leadership in the jet age: enterprising business managers, scientists, and engineers; the pressure of economics; and manifold competition brought on by economics; and manifold competition brought on by the cold war. Bright points to an industry that has responded to incredible demands and that has shown the strength to weather storms. This volume is illustrated with fifty-five photographs depicting the growth in aircraft technology from 1945 to 1972. As a unique blend of aeronautic, economic, business, and military history, ikt will fascinate not only those connected with aviation and the aerospace industry, but also those interested in the history of technology, business management, and government-military-business relations. The Jet Makers received Honorable Mention in the 1977 History Manuscript award competition of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.




Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline, Second Edition


Book Description

New edition of the classic ethnographic study of Malay women factory workers. In the two decades since its original publication, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline has become a classic in the fields of anthropology, labor, gender and globalization studies. Based on intensive fieldwork, the book captures a moment of profound transformation for rural Muslim women even as their labor helped launch Malaysia’s rise as a tiger economy. Aihwa Ong’s analysis of the disruptions, conflicts, and ambivalences that roiled the lives of working women has inspired later generations of feminist ethnographers in their study of power, resistance, religious upheavals, and subject formation in the industrial periphery. With a critical introduction by anthropologist Carla Freeman, this new edition upholds an exemplary model of anthropological inquiry into cultural modes of resistance to the ideology, discipline, and workings of global capitalism. “This work remains powerful for its refusal to over-simplify the complexities of export industrialization as a model for economic development, and for its demonstration of the intimate dialectics of culture, economy, gender, religion, and class, and the meaningfulness of place amid the swirling forces of global capitalism [It] opened up many of the questions that should continue to inspire our analyses of globalization today. Indeed, these questions are equally compelling for the reader returning to this work after twenty years and for the reader new to this text and to the intriguing and complex puzzles of globalization.” — from the Introduction by Carla Freeman