Production Organizations Mining is almost as old as agriculture. The earliest mines were open-pit mines

2.1.3 Production Organizations Mining is almost as old as agriculture. The earliest mines were open-pit mines

where the miners worked to extract stones and metals from ores exposed to the sky. When these easy pickings were exhausted and miners started looking for precious metals, gems and salt, they turned to underground mines with vertical tunnels for descent and horizontal galleries that required ventilation and illumi- nation by torches.

The earliest known mine may be the “Lion Cave” in Switzerland from 43,000 years ago, which was the source of a red ochre pigment known as hematite. Later came the flint mines in northern France and southern England. The Grimes Graves in Norfolk, England (4000 BCE) consist of a pit some 12 m deep and additional pits connected by radiating tunnels. This was a tremendous industry for producing flint that must have employed many miners over a long period of time. Presumably the miners were full-time specialists who traded their flint for food and other daily necessities with buyers who may have come from far away.

A variety of tools and machinery were used in the ancient mines. In the Laurium silver mines near Athens (approximately 10 BCE), workers used ham- mers, picks with wood handles, and lamps. Workers accessed the mine by ladders and used pulley wheels to haul up ores. Underground mines also required ventila- tion to bring fresh air to miners. Sometimes, this was accomplished by giant bel- lows, but more advanced mines included separate shafts to introduce fresh air and to evacuate stale air. An underground mine was often flooded by rainwater from above, or from groundwater, which had to be removed quickly, often by slaves and convicted criminals. All of this had to be organized, which required the large-scale planning and coordination of different functions, and an investment over many years. Much of our knowledge of ancient mining and metallurgy came from the Roman Pliny the Elder who wrote Historia Naturalis in the year 77, from the Ger- man Agricola who wrote De Re Metallica in 1556, and from the Chinese Song Yingxing who wrote Tian Gong Kai Wu in 1637.

It is somewhat easy to dig soft clay and sedimentary rocks with metallic picks and shovels, but removing hard igneous rocks is much more difficult. The process of splitting hard rock was made easier by the technique of “fire-setting,” in which rocks are heated with fire and then drenched with cold water. The sudden tempera- ture change causes the rocks to split, revealing the stones inside. The greatest advance in mining technology came with the use of explosives to break down rocks and to create tunnels. Black gunpowder was used in this way for many centuries until the invention of modern high explosives such as nitroglycerine and dynamite.

A complex product, such as a revolver, has many parts that are designed to fit together smoothly with very small tolerance for error. In the traditional craft method, a single master smith will make all the parts, and fit them together with last minute adjustments at the end. When the demand is for hundreds or thousands of revolvers for a coming war, the craft method is not adequate as there may not be enough master smiths on hand, and not enough time to accomplish the task. There is

a long history to the concept of interchangeable parts through exact specifications and standards, and an assembly line to put them together.

57 One of the earliest assembly lines was put together around 215 BCE to produce

2.1 TOOLS AND METHODS

8000 life-sized terra-cotta soldiers and horses for the funeral of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi in the City of Xi’an in China. The separate body parts were interchange- able, assigned to different workshops to mold and bake the clay, and later assembled in a central facility. Each workshop inscribed its name on the part it manufactured to add traceability for quality control. However, each head was meant to represent a specific individual, and had to be hand crafted by different master sculptors. The result was an army of life-like individuals with distinct heads but interchangeable bodies. In the 1500s, when the Venetian navy needed many new ships for a coming war, the Venetian Arsenal employed about 16,000 people who were able to produce nearly one war galley each day, on an assembly line with standardized parts.

A muzzle loading musket or rifle receives loose gunpowder from the muzzle, to be followed by a bullet of soft lead. Making these firearms was a slow and expen- sive process, and two such guns did not need to have the same barrel diameter, as the soft lead bullet and loose gunpowder could be made to fit a range of diameters. In the traditional craft method, a single master gunsmith made the barrel, the revolving cylinder and the firing hammer, and then assembled them together. The craft method is fine for a small market such as an individual buyer or even a small group of buyers, but is not adequate for an army that needs thousands of revolvers for a coming war—there might not be enough skilled gunsmiths, or enough time for rapid and economic production.

The speed of fire is incomparably increased with a revolver, using a copper- clad cartridge of a standard fixed diameter. The Colt 45 has a barrel diameter of

11.4 mm, which must be precise. The revolving cylinder with bullets is designed to

be aligned with the barrel on one end, and with the firing hammer on the other end. It is critical to ensure that the hammer will strike the cap squarely at the back of the bullet, which will then fly out of the barrel. Samuel Colt set up his revolver factory in Patterson, New Jersey in 1836, and advanced the practice of interchangeable parts. This modern method of mass production evolved as a solution, which divides up the work. Each worker was responsible for producing only one part repeatedly to exact dimensions, and the results were later assembled on a line. The bullets also had to be made to the same dimensions, so they would fit any gun barrel.

At the beginning of motorcars in the United States, Ransom Olds patented the modern assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901. The same concept was observed in a Chicago slaughter- house, which can more accurately be described as a “dis-assembly line,” where ani- mals were butchered as they moved along a conveyor, and each worker removed only one organ or part repeatedly with great efficiency.