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One hot afternoon in July 1785, officials, dignitaries, and angry gunmen gathered in the gorgeous castle Château de Vincennes, east of Paris.
They demonstrated a new type of flint rock rifle designed by Honoré Blanc, the gunman of Avignon.
In a cool place in the castle cellar, Monsieur Blanc produced 50 locks. The lock is a launch mechanism in the center of a flint weapon.
Actively, he took half of it and put the components in the box, displeased by the French.
There were winding boxes, boxes for hammers, boxes for faceplates and boxes for gunpowder fans.
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Like a master of rituals provoking a jar full of numbered lottery balls, Monsieur Blanc shook the box and mixed the components together. Then he calmly took out the parts and began to reassemble them with flint.
What did he think?
Everyone knew that a hand-made gun was unique. You couldn't just fit parts from one gun to another and expected it to work either way. But they did. Blanc suffered tremendously to make sure that all the parts are exactly the same.
It was a great demonstration of the power of replaceable parts.
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One of the dignitaries visited, that is, the impact on the French envoy and future president of the American emerging nation Thomas Jefferson did not go away.
Jefferson was willing to write to US Foreign Minister John J .: “The rifle construction improved at the General Assembly was improved. Can be used for every musket of a magazine.
"I took the pieces that were at risk when several people came in and put them in the most perfect way. The benefits of having to repair a weapon are clear."
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Thomas Jefferson quickly saw the potential battlefield benefits of Blanc's approach.
But such assets were not as clear as they thought, because Jefferson struggled to accept ideas from colleagues.
If so, what is the "clear" advantage of this system? Jefferson focused on battlefield repair issues that required complex equipment and skilled labor.
But in Blanc's system, in a matter of minutes you need the basic skills to loosen the musket screws, replace the defective parts with the same parts, and then screw them all together, like a new one.
No wonder Blanc's fellow guns were worried about the future of their job. And it's no wonder Thomas Jefferson is interested in repairing broken guns.
Blanc was struggling as Jefferson fought for support, and it was impossible to build each piece himself with the precision needed to get the system working.
If you only understand Blanc, the solution already exists. It will allow not only the rapid repair of broken weapons, but also the revolution of the world economy.
Ten years ago by Blanc's protests, a metal worker, nicknamed John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson, became famous in Shropshire on the border between England and Wales. He was known for his iron boats, iron pulpits, iron desks and even iron caskets.
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Indeed, in 1774 he gained a much greater reputation for inventing how to make holes straight and true every time by punching holes in a punched iron mass.
It was militaryly valuable. But Iron-Mad Wilkinson is not over yet.
A few years later, he ordered one of his steam engines from a neighboring business that started a new business.
But they had a hard time getting it to work. The piston cylinder, formed from a metal panel bent by hand, had a perfect circular cross section, which caused steam to leak from all around the piston head.
John Wilkinson gave it here, using his cannon drilling method to create a pleasantly round piston cylinder.
His supplier, James Watt, Scotsman, never looked back. The industrial revolution, with Watt's brilliant and efficient steam engine and Wilkinson's precisely boring cylinders, entered a higher gear.
Wilkinson and Watt did not worry about replaceable parts. They wanted a cannon for a cannon, a piston for a cylinder.
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But the engineering problems they are solving are also the key to Blanc's invaluable interchangeability, but it was costly to achieve.
Wilkinson built machine tools to automate the manufacturing process.
It consisted of a very sharp drill, a water mill and a system for fixing one object while gently rotating the other.
But as Simon Winchester observed in the history of precision engineering, this machine tool had some interesting side effects that helped skilled craftsmen get out of many jobs.
Fellow guns at Monsieur Blanc were worried about losing profitable repair work. But they also tried to lose manufacturing jobs.
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Not only was the machine tool better than the machine tool, there was no need to raise hands.
The second unexpected result occurred.
If you can use machine tools to produce fully interchangeable parts, as Jefferson has seen, you can make the assembly process simpler and more predictable, as well as simple electrical repairs.
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Blanc's demonstration Nine years ago, economist Adam Smith's famous description of the pin factory described each worker adding one step earlier.
But with interchangeable parts, these production lines can be a much faster, more predictable and automated process.
Throughout the Atlantic, Americans finally began to listen to Thomas Jefferson.
The promise he confirmed was eventually realized in the armory of Harper & # 39; s Ferry in Virginia. In the 1820s, according to Winchester, "the first mechanically produced production line object produced mechanically" began to be produced.
Blanc always had a gun, lock, inventory, bullet as intended.
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Henry Ford famously automates much of his Model T production process
It began to be known as the "American Manufacturing System," which produced Isaac Singer's sewing machine, Cyrus McCormick's reaper and harvester, and about a century later, Henry Ford's Model T.
Ford was the champion of interchanges, and without a precision machined interchangeable part, it would not have been possible to imagine a Model T production line.
In the case of the poor Honoré Blanc, he was canceled by the French Revolution of 1789. His dungeon was plundered by mobs and his political support was guillotine.
He desperately struggled with debt.
Blanc may have produced an economic revolution, but he did not see his ideas materialized by very different kinds of revolutions.
The author writes the Undercover Economist column of the Financial Times. 50 things that created the modern economy Broadcast from BBC World Service. You can find Additional Information About Program Sources and Listen to all episodes online or Subscribe to show podcasts.