
Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing? - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694
======
Animats
An article from someone who knows little about the history of electric motors.
I recommend "Men and Volts - A History of the General Electric Company" on
this.

Early motors had serious limitations. DC motors wouldn't maintain constant
speed as the load varied, had major brush wear problems, and tended to require
frequent brush adjustment. Sprague, and the unknown person who invented carbon
brushes, fixed that. AC motors wouldn't start under load. Tesla, Scott, and
Steinmetz fixed that. Insulating materials were not very good. They were
either flammable and subject to aging (varnished cambric, wood, paper) or not
oil-tolerant and subject to aging (natural rubber). This limited the power
density to less than 10% of what ordinary modern motors achieve.

The materials problem was particularly difficult. We're used to having quite
good materials available for almost all purposes - insulators which can handle
high temperatures and aren't brittle, wire that isn't brittle, low-cost ball
bearings that run for years without oiling, all with consistent, repeatable
properties from batch to batch. That was not the case up to WWII at all.

They did have asbestos, though. General Electric Deltabeston Wire. [1] "Will
not age or crack." This was a high-end product around 1920.

[1] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-
MA...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-GENERAL-ELECTRIC-DELTABESTON-MAGNET-WIRE-
VINTAGE-ART-
AD-/272694282246?nma=true&si=2I0OYVyjQUHB%252F25t6tWPyk1oKCM%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557)

~~~
shellac
The sources for this article are provided:

Robert M. Solow - 'We'd better watch out' New York Times Book Review, 12 July
1987

Robert Gordon - The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Oxford: Princeton
University Press) 2016 p546-7

Paul A. David - The Computer and the dynamo: An historical perspective
American Economic Review, May 1990

Paul A. David and Mark Thomas - The economic future in historical perspective
OUP/British Academy, February 2006

Erik Brynjolfsoon and Lorin M. Hitt - Beyond Computation: Information
technology, organizational transformation and business performance Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000

~~~
Animats
All economists, no electrical engineers.

------
raverbashing
TL;DR

>> Two economists, Eric Brynjolfsson and Lorin Hitt, published research
showing that many companies had invested in computers for little or no reward
while others had reaped big benefits.

>> What explained the difference was whether the companies had been willing to
reorganise to take advantage of what computers had to offer.

------
simonh
"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." \-
Vladimir Lenin

Therefore

Soviet Power = Communism - Electrification

And

Electrification = Communism - Soviet Power

------
tradersam
> But given the huge investment this involved, they were often disappointed
> with the savings.

Well, makes sense. Pretty easy to guess, and not really worth reading the
article for the one line answer to the title.

~~~
krab
I think the article proposes that the reason is rather in the need to change
your processes if you really want to take advantage of the new technology.
Just replacing your main steam engine with electric one isn't going to bring
real gains and you're giving away some control. On the other hand, it allows
you to organize the factory anew - which takes time.

------
xemdetia
Something I only came across only in the last few years on how quite
straightforward a steam line shaft shop would have operated. This guy is
running one out of his shed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXHNBMLZZM).
If you watch this you can also see how straightforward it was to retrofit
electric motors to the existing belt drive mechanism, but you can see why it
was slow to adopt. If you take into the early adopter concerns, the mains
reliability concerns and a general risk-averse outlook lightbulbs are a better
sell then electric motors.

------
SeanDav
From the article:

> _" By 2000 - about 50 years after the first computer program - productivity
> was picking up a bit."_

I think what made computers and productivity with computers really take off
was down to 3 things:

\- The PC and continued drops in price and increases in power.

\- Spreadsheets

\- Internet

~~~
HerpDerpLerp
I would say your last point balances out the others to show why productivity
did not increase as much as you would expect!

~~~
nobodyorother
Nah, spreadsheets did that on their own. Have you ever actually found a usable
spreadsheet?

~~~
mjevans
Different levels of usability.

Spreadsheets as simple ledgers? Wonderful, assuming you know about using
ranges and how to use $ (or not) as part of reference statements.

Even that level of complexity seems like wizardry to most office drones.

However a spreadsheet is weak compared to a true relational logic engine; a
modern database. Databases /have/ had the decades of refinement and are very
good tools. Yet for those tools you kind of nail it. Specialists are required
to correctly harness that potential.

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gwbas1c
I think this article demonstrates the 80/20 principle: Just having a
technology on the marketplace is 20% of the way there. The other 80% is
solving small, but critical problems, needed prior to adoption.

~~~
littlestymaar
I wish we could stop abusing Pareto's law …

Rule of thumb for the 80-20 principle: 80% of the usage of this principle in a
discussion is bullshit and only 20% of people talking about it ever heard of
Pareto ;)

------
loudouncodes
I ran across this idea a couple of weeks ago in the book 'Machine, Platform,
Crowd". I'm drawing out idea for presentations to my com Sci high school
students.

