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Article: Mass Production
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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MASS PRODUCTION
Prior to the nineteenth century manufacturing was largely hand-fitted. The artisan worked with the individual product
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for instance, a farm wagon
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and by using shims or a mallet, he would "make it fit." If production involved machining metal, the machine tolerances would be loose. The system "worked" but the production process was inefficient, repair was chancy, and the price of labor
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labor with the right "touch" for making things fit
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was high.
In the late eighteenth century, standardized manufacturing transformed production technique. This development was called the American System of Manufactures. First introduced in the firearms industry ...