Forces of Production

A Social History of Industrial Automation

David Noble

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138523647
• eBook ISBN: 9781351519601
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of a modern industrial economy—explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology.

Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers.

Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment—illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts—can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, Forces of Production is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society.

Part One

COMMAND AND CONTROL

We have merely used our new machines and energies to further processes which were begun under the auspices of capitalist and military enterprise. . . . Not alone have the older forms of technics served to constrain the development of the neotechnic economy, but the new inventions and devices have been frequently used to maintain, renew, and stabilize the structure of the old order. . . . Paleotechnic purposes with neotechnic means: that is the most obvious characteristic of the present order.

LEWIS MUMFORD, Technics and Civilization

Chapter One

The Setting: The War Abroad

For the United States, the postwar decades were an expansive time, fertile ground for technological achievement and enchantment. Infused with the pride, confidence, and triumphant optimism of victory, relatively unscarred by the actual horrors of war, and with the ruins of failed empires at their feet, Americans embarked upon their own ambiguous fling at empire. Assured for the time being of their unrivalled military, economic, and industrial might, their leaders laid claim to a boundless, prosperous, and secure future in which no goal, no vision, seemed beyond fulfillment. Yet, for all their dreams, they were haunted by nightmares of enemies without and within: of a world split in strife between two superpowers, of a humanity divided by the irrepressible antagonisms of capitalist production. “The problems of the United States can be captiously summed up in two words,” Charles E. Wilson, General Electric president, War Production Board vice chairman, and later White House advisor to President Eisenhower, declared in 1946: “Russia abroad, labor at home.” Not only optimistic dreams but paranoid nightmares defined the American outlook in the postwar decades and they colored as well the achievements of science and technology.¹

Russia, an ally of the United States, had been devastated by the war. Yet, well before the war was over, the putative threat of Soviet aggression and expansion had become, for U.S. military and foreign policy planners, the justification for a permanent, global, peacetime military establishment. Military planners especially had been pushing for a peacetime force for some time. They were haunted by memories of the precipitous postwar demobilization that followed World War I and the resulting American “weakness” which, they believed, encouraged German and Japanese aggression; they were determined not to have to repeat the desperate, traumatic experience of mobilizing the nation for the second great war; and they were obsessed with the dire implications of modern warfare based upon air power and missiles, which dictated a capacity for rapid mobilization and undercut reliance upon strong allies and wide oceans to afford time to prepare. Thus, even before the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Russian moves to secure a buffer zone in Eastern Europe, military leaders resolved to foster a permanent peacetime force capable of rapid defense mobilization, deterrence against aggression, and preemptive attacks, if necessary, to forestall potential threats to world peace. National security now entailed global policing. Thus, in 1943, Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal urged the development of a “police power and adequate strength for men of good will to curb the ruffians of the world.” “We have the power now,” he declared. “We must resolve to keep it.”²

By the war’s end, the atomic bomb and the spectre of Soviet expansion had become integral parts of this overall “ideology of national preparedness,” as historian Michael S. Sherry has called it. The bomb gave rise to a strategy of massive deterrence and retaliation while Russian efforts to insulate themselves from further attack (haunted as they were by the memories of U.S. and British invasion following World War I and now by the German onslaught, which had left twenty million dead) came to be seen by War Department Intelligence as “a naked lust for world domination.” Thus, U.S. leaders fashioned an active defense, one which required not only a state of constant readiness against Russian attack but an active role for America as the world’s policeman. This postwar posture rested upon nuclear deterrence, air power, global bases, peacetime conscription, and a capability for periodic intervention. In addition, it required a permanent war economy based upon close ties between the military and industry, war production in peacetime, especially in the area of aircraft and missiles, and ongoing peacetime weapons research, the military-sponsored scientific substrate for the arms race.³

This postwar scenario was endorsed by Dwight Eisenhower when he became chief of staff at the end of 1945 but it did not take hold all at once or immediately. As anticipated by the planners, a war-weary nation balked at calls for a postwar military buildup, and, for a few years, military strategies gave way to political and economic strategies for attaining global security and American prosperity. Thus, in 1947, the diplomat George Kennan formulated his famous plan for “containment” of communism by political and economic means (backed up by nuclear diplomacy), and shortly thereafter the Marshall Plan was proposed, designed to rebuild Europe, create and enlarge markets for American goods and services, and contain and co-opt the communist challenge then emerging throughout Europe by strengthening center-right forces. Russia’s blockade of West Berlin in 1948, its A-bomb test in August 1949, and the communist victory in China the same month, however, refuelled the postwar preparedness campaign. The National Security Council began earnestly to urge a military buildup to protect the “free world” from the “slave society” of communism, reflecting the fact that the hawkish views of diplomats like Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson were now ascendant. Finally, the onset of the Korean War in the summer of 1950, punctuated by the entry of the Chinese into the conflict, created a state of national emergency. The invasion was cast as proof positive of the existence of a Russian-led “international communist conspiracy,” the watchword of the Cold War, and the need for permanent preparedness. “Korea came along and saved us,” Acheson, speaking for the hawks, later recalled.⁴

Military manpower was increased dramatically while military-related industry grew once again to wartime proportions. The decision was made to develop the H-bomb, while aircraft production grew five-fold (along with accelerated missile development), armoured vehicles by four, and military-related electronics, four and a half times. The fiscal 1951 military budget swelled to nearly four times its anticipated size. Most important, “these war-time levels took hold permanently,” thus creating a permanent war economy. Between 1945 and 1970, the U.S. government expended $1.1 trillion for military purposes, an amount which exceeded the 1967 value of all business and residential structures in the United States. Moreover, a vast “military-industrial complex,” as Eisenhower named it, had sprung up, absorbing a massive proportion of industrial and technical talent; between 1945 and 1968, the Department of Defense industrial system had supplied $44 billion of goods and services, exceeding the combined net sales of General Motors, General Electric, Du Pont, and U.S. Steel.⁵

The permanent war economy and the military-industrial complex now affixed the military imprint on a whole range of heretofore civilian industrial and scientific activities, in the name of national security. First was the emphasis placed upon performance rather than cost in order to meet the requirements of the military mission, such as combat readiness, tactical superiority, and strategic responsiveness and control. Then there was the insistence upon command, the precise specification, communication, and execution of orders, uncompromised by either intermediary error or judgment. Finally, there was the preoccupation with so-called modern methods, high technology and capital-intensive, to guarantee performance and command objectives and thereby assure the success of the mission: national security against communism. Three industries in particular became caught up in the arms race and soon reflected these military requirements: aircraft, electronics, and machine tools.⁶

The recognition of the importance of aircraft as military weapons had been the major impetus behind the expansion of that industry. In 1939, there were 63,000 workers in the aircraft and parts industries (airframes, engines and accessories). During the war employment reached an all-time peak of 1,345,000 and then dropped to 237,000 in 1946. But by 1954, owing to the buildup during the Cold War, and the postwar emphasis upon strategic air power, there were over 800,000 aircraft workers, and the industry had become the country’s largest manufacturing employer. The military influence in this growth is indicated by the proportion of civilian to military aircraft produced. In 1939 approximately one-third of aircraft production was for military purposes. In 1946, the military proportion of airframe weight production was about one-half of total production. By 1953, this ratio had been inverted dramatically. Civil airframe weight production now amounted to a mere 7 percent of total output; 93 percent was now military production.⁷

Industry economist Frank A. Spencer has described the period 1946-60 as one marked by “an unlimited optimism about the future prospects of air transportation,” one in which “the economic environment was favorable to rapid growth.”⁸ The enthusiasm of the military had much to do with it. After a postwar contraction of the industry in 1945-47, the military aircraft production expansion program authorized by the Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Act of 1948 resulted in a tripling of output between 1946 and 1949. The new planes and missiles were far more sophisticated than anything produced before. In order to meet military performance requirements for sonic speeds, greater reliability, and superior tactical maneuverability, aircraft were equipped with electronic guidance and communications systems. More powerful jet engines and gas turbine engines were constructed of new lighter and stronger materials capable of withstanding the stresses, pressures, and temperatures of high-altitude and high-speed flight. Aircraft design, which included integrally stiffened structures for greater strength and refined airfoil surfaces needed for stable supersonic flight, reached new degrees of complexity. As a result, preflight engineering time in production in 1953 was twenty-seven times longer than was the case during the war and the proportion of technical staff to total production work force had increased from 9 percent in 1940 to 15 percent in 1954. Management had nearly doubled as well, in an effort to insure tighter control over production and thereby guarantee performance according to military specifications.⁹

The advances in aerodynamics, metallurgy, electronics, and aircraft engine design which made supersonic flight a reality by October 1947 were underwritten almost entirely by the military. In the words of industry historian John F. Hanieski, “Cold War conditions prompted a condition of urgency.”¹⁰ But science and engineering, and even experimentation, were not the same as production. As designs grew more sophisticated and complex, so too did tooling and production methods. As designs changed rapidly with advances in engineering, and with an escalating arms race, the need arose for more versatile and flexible methods, for special machines and special tooling to accommodate rapid redesign and short production runs. J. H. Kindel-berger, chairman of North American Aviation, well understood that such equipment was “beyond economic practicability for small peacetime orders,” that special machines were usually restricted to high-volume production where the volume output offsets the high capital cost. But he acknowledged the “unique aircraft requirement for large special purpose machine tools sometimes specific to a single type of aircraft,” knowing that national security and military objectives rather than conventional economics were the order of the day. “We must maintain a progressive attitude toward production methods improvements and continue to develop machinery and equipment adaptable to volume production. We should cooperate with each other in major industry-wide collaboration,” he urged his colleagues, “and with government in projects which offer wide applications and yet are too costly for financing by the companies.”¹¹

The imperatives behind aircraft development were matched by military subsidy of aircraft development, of airframe manufacturers like Boeing, Lockheed, North American, Douglas, Martin, and Republic, of engine producers like General Electric and Pratt and Whitney, and of parts and accessories companies such as Bendix, Wright Aeronautical, and Raytheon. By 1964, 90 percent of the research and development for the aircraft industry was being underwritten by the government, particularly the Air Force.¹² This influence spilled over inevitably into the electronics and machinery industries, the suppliers of the guidance and communications systems and of modern production equipment. All soon fell within the embrace of the military-industrial complex and learned the habits of performance and command, which in turn shaped technological development. “Usually the requirement for a mission to be performed by a guided missile is established by the military,” Aerojet-General Corporation president Dan A. Kimball explained in 1956. “If there were no requirement for a missile, it would not be developed. We find that the ‘state of the art’ depends upon military requirements. The requirement is needed to promote development and development is needed to further refine the requirement.”¹³

Prewar electronics meant, for the most part, radio, an industry that had come of age by the 1930s. During the war, the electronics industry swelled tremendously and in many directions. In the words of Electronics, the industry trade magazine, “it entered upon a period of extraordinary creativity and growth. Under the stimulus of a multi-billion dollar flow of funds, it changed from a timid consumer-oriented radio industry into an heroic producer of rugged, reliable military equipment.”¹⁴ The modern electronics industry, in short, like the aircraft industry, was largely a military creation. During the war, sales multiplied almost 2,000 percent and employment quintupled. The industry never again returned to anything like its prewar scale. Radar was of course the major development, costing the country $2.5 billion (compared to $2 billion for the Manhattan Project). Miniaturization of electrical circuits, the precursor of modern microelectronics, was promoted by the military for proximity fuses for bombs, a development that cost $1 billion and involved the participation of over one-third of the industry. Gunfire control devices, industrial controls, and walkie-talkies were other important wartime developments, along with sonar and loran. Perhaps the most significant innovation was the electronic digital computer, created primarily for ballistics calculations but used as well for atomic bomb analysis. After the war, the electronics industry continued to grow, stimulated primarily by military demands for aircraft and missile guidance systems, communications and control instruments, industrial control devices, high-speed electronic computers for air defense command and control networks (such as the SAGE, or Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system), and transistors for all of these devices. Electronics, in the understated words of Electronics, “has held an integral place in national defense since World War Two.”¹⁵ This was especially true during the twenty years following the war, a time, as TRW’s Simon Ramo recalled, “when decisions in the Pentagon charted the course of electronics.”¹⁶ In 1964, two-thirds of the research and development costs in the electrical equipment industry (e.g., those of GE, Westinghouse, RCA, Raytheon, AT&T, Philco, IBM, Sperry Rand) were still paid for by the government.¹⁷

The machine tool industry is tiny when compared to the aircraft or electrical equipment industries but it is central to a machine-based economy. For it is here that the metalworking (cutting and forming) machinery of production that is used to fabricate all metal products and parts is itself made. Like most of the metalworking industry of which it is a part, the industry is characterized by labor-intensive small-batch production. Whereas other metalworking firms use machine tools to produce an infinite array of products, this industry uses machine tools and other metalworking equipment to produce parts for machine tools. It is thus both a producer and user of machine tools. Although there were some larger firms in the industry, such as Cincinnati Mill (now Cincinnati Milacron), Warner and Swasey, Kearney and Trecker (now a subsidiary of Cross and Trecker), and Giddings and Lewis, most of the companies in the industry are small manufacturers of special-purpose machinery or standard general-purpose machinery (lathes, milling machines, drills, etc.). The market for machine tools is a boom-and-bust one. Because it supplies industry with capital equipment, and because manufacturers tend to buy new equipment when forecasts look promising and stick with their old equipment when projections look bad, the machine tool industry functions as something of an economic bellwether. It is often a sensitive reflector of economic and military trends in the larger economy.

Although the industry resisted expansion early in World War II—for fear that it would generate excess capacity and surplus and thus undercut demand—the pressures of war production, especially for aircraft, armaments, and tanks, necessitated a great surge in output. In 1940, only 28 percent of machine tools in use were less than ten years old; in 1945 the ratio had risen to 62 percent. As predicted, this created a postwar “hangover” for the industry. Three hundred thousand machine tools were declared surplus and thrown on the commercial market at cut-rate prices.¹⁸ Coupled with severely contracted aircraft industry production, the surplus dumping depressed demand and threw the industry into a serious postwar recession, only temporarily relieved by a rise in export sales. It was not until April 1950 that sales again reached 1945 levels. This postwar contraction furthered the longterm trend toward concentration in the industry, which had been accelerated during the war, and led to a drastic reduction of employment, especially of women.

The Cold War revitalized the industry. One major determining factor in its recovery was the great expansion of the aircraft industry, under Air Force aegis, with its requirement f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Transaction Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE COMMAND AND CONTROL
• PART TWO SOCIAL CHOICE IN MACHINE DESIGN
• PART THREE A NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGE
• Epilogue Another Look at Progress
• Appendices
• Notes
• Index