
The Fifty is awake again - mml
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/iron-giant/8886/
======
femto
Not mentioned in the article is that forging delivers a stronger part than
casting or machining, since the grain of the metal remains continuous. Hence
its use in turbine blades and so on.

If you ever want to see a true craftsman in action, it's a master blacksmith
in charge of a steam hammer. He can go from literally cracking an egg to
delivering a blow whose resonance nearly brings the building down. Combined
with with the way he manipulates the workpiece, it is poetry in motion.

~~~
Danieru
I would really like to see that. Unfortunately I don't think we have a
neighborhood blacksmith. Do you know of any videos on youtube?

~~~
extension
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmS3LgfdT7E>

That is one hot and noisy job.

~~~
ars
I think this one is better - you can see what they make, rather than just
fireballs.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBQQS7oMW2A>

------
jws
This PDF will tell you all about the press:
[http://files.asme.org/asmeorg/communities/history/landmarks/...](http://files.asme.org/asmeorg/communities/history/landmarks/5488.pdf)

~~~
femto
I love the pictures in that article. The views of Metsa machine tools creating
Metsa machine tools has a real "self replication" feel. Put iron into an
engineering shop and out pops a copy of the engineering shop.

Does the Metsa company still exist?

~~~
rpeden
The Mesta Machine Company is now part of WHEMCO - specifically, what used to
be Mesta is now WHEMCO Steel Castings Inc.

<http://www.whemco.com/whemco_steel_castings.aspx>

There's a bit of company history at
[http://todengine.websitetoolbox.com/post/Mesta-Machine-
Compa...](http://todengine.websitetoolbox.com/post/Mesta-Machine-
Company-3662333) .

------
jacques_chester
A fascinating read.

In _Warfighting_ , the USMC doctrinal manual, there is a discussion of war as
a process of seeking out and exploiting weaknesses in the enemy's system.

This press strikes me as such a weakness: it is the only one of its kind in
the US, a pretty clear industrial chokepoint. And there are lots of such
chokepoints. German military production was stunted during WW2 by the bombing
of ball-bearing factories.

~~~
siculars
Considering the decimation of the manufacturing base here in the USA, I
shudder to think what would happen were we required to make war on the scale
of the previous World Wars.

Virtually all our electronics are made somewhere else. We can't even build our
own infrastructure[0]. Who will build the Liberty Ships[1]?

[0][http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?pagewanted=all)

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship>

~~~
rdtsc
> war on the scale of the previous World Wars.

That will not happen again. It is a bygone era. Now it will either be country
to country attacks (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam) or full blown nuclear wipe-
out. In either case protecting Cleveland won't make much of a difference.

~~~
tpatke
People said the same thing after WWI. ...and they were right. WWII was fought
differently from WWI.

~~~
fuzzmeister
With WWI or WWII era technology, it would take a great power months, even
years to destroy the population of another. Now? Less than an hour.

------
lionhearted
Strategic resource storage and strategic industry development was a big part
of making me start questioning libertarianism. I then learned a bit about
common power dynamics and met a lot of people who felt trapped in bad
situations getting screwed around with, and the break was made for me.

I'm still sympathetic to the cause, and think libertarians are really
fantastic people who believe immensely in human potential. I also know the
counterarguments -- _at what cost?_ , etc, etc -- but I'm glad the USA built
industry that wouldn't necessarily be economical on the timeframes that
standard capital investments generally look for.

~~~
wisty
There's two kinds of Libertarians - the ones who actually think all government
interference is bad, and those who think that governments simply have a
tendency to go too far, so fighting government interference will probably push
them back to a more reasonable position. The first kind are louder.

~~~
ThomPete
But isn't the result the same?

I can't help think that we started without governments and ended up with them.
In fact it seems like governments beat every other known alternative power
structure.

In other words even if we removed all nation states and started from scratch
we would most likely end up with some sort of government.

The reasons for this are manifold, but especially the democratic state have
some inherent perceptual integrity since it allows for "resetting".

But of course as always these are not objective metrics at all. But the
problem with libertarians isn't their view but rather the idea it itself.

We started in many ways in a libertarian world. Evolution took us to the
states and technology will maybe take us through the state and to something
completely different but carried on from the current system.

~~~
natrius
You're arguing against anarchism, not libertarianism.

~~~
ThomPete
Not really. I am arguing against the idea of non-governments.

~~~
natrius
What does that have to do with libertarianism? Most libertarians want a
government.

~~~
ThomPete
My experience is the opposite.

------
rpeden
I'd love to have a chance to see it in action. Many of us here work as
engineers. Few of us are likely to be building something like this, a machine
that will be able to serve its purpose relatively unmodified for over a
century.

~~~
angersock
Agreed, barring a sudden resurgence in the use of COBOL.

------
ak217
Very neat, but I'd be more worried that the next generation of materials
manufacturing - carbon fiber and nanotube looms and autoclaves - will be
completely China based.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The more interdependent the world gets, the harder it will be for any one
nation to go rogue. That is a good thing. However, if, instead of a cyclical
graph, we wind up with a tree, things could get very ugly (but don't have to).

The US likes to think of itself as the root of the tree, and maybe it even was
for part of the 20th century (the US was central to a lot of manufacturing and
design), but those days seem to be over now. As a citizen of the US, I find
that scary, but only because I think many people in the US will fight tooth
and nail to try to keep being the root.

~~~
patrickk
" _The more interdependent the world gets, the harder it will be for any one
nation to go rogue._ "

The world pre-WWI was actually quite globalised[1], more so than most people
today would imagine that it was. Yet that wasn't enough to prevent the horrors
of WWI trench warfare. I think a similar fallacy exists today - that
globalisation will prevent WWIII. Violence and combat has existed for all of
human history and there's no reason to think it will ever disappear, sadly. In
a few decades anyone that remembers being alive during WWII will be dead and
the possibility of WWIII will become stronger, IMO.

Just like the Glass-Steagall act was enacted after the 1929 crash[2], but
repealed once the scars of the Great Depression had faded from the public's
consciousness, the spectre of the outbreak of WWIII will loom ever larger as
those who remember the horror of WWI & WWII pass on, and the lessons learned
forgotten.

[1] [http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Globalization-
Fi...](http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Globalization-First-era-of-
modern-globalization-to-1914.html#b)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act>

------
sterling312
This reminds me of the recent book review on the Economist.

<http://www.economist.com/node/21545983>

To quote one passage: "Mr Collini is moved by Newman’s insistence that a
liberal education is not about what students learn or what skills they acquire
but “the perspective they have on the place of their knowledge in a wider map
of human understanding”."

------
orenjacob
I visited the ALS at LBL many years ago. Then I got to see that big (really
big) laser at LLNL a few years ago. I'd like to see this machine too, I bet
it's bigger than both of those...

------
geogra4
I guess we could call this "Big Iron", eh?

------
ilaksh
This type of romanticization of military production is obscene.

One of my worst fears is that we might see the current military campaigns
surrounding Iran and the area around it develop into another "great" war.

There is nothing stopping us from using this manufacturing equipment to build
tools of creation rather than destruction.

I remember reading something in my history textbooks many years ago that
suggested that although war meant massive loss of life and destruction, it
wasn't all bad, because it was "very good for the economy". That line of
thinking only holds water if you believe that humans are disposable or buy
into a sort of 19th century Social Darwinism.

There is so much money to be made in war. Please, everyone look at a map.
<http://binged.it/A6U96Z> These activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya,
Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. are not isolated instances.

This is an aggressive war of domination, resource acquisition and territorial
control. It is completely insane and inexcusable.

~~~
maratd
> This type of romanticization of military production is obscene.

If you study history even on a superficial basis, you'll find that violence
only breaks out in asymmetric situations. In other words, only when one side
is thoroughly convinced it can kick the other's ass.

The best way to prevent war is through trade. The second best is to make sure
both sides engage in "obscene" military production and are evenly matched.
Weapons are merely tools. If deployed intelligently, they can be used to
mitigate any violent impulses and keep the peace.

~~~
batista
_The best way to prevent war is through trade._

Actually trade means opposed interests, which is the fastest way to get into a
war. There's a wishful thinking picture by some economists that trade is
always beneficial to all parties involved, and countries that trade cannot go
to war, bla, bla. The funny thing is, those theories were at their peak around
1900 too, "surely global trade as it is now will end wars etc" and we know
what followed then.

Actually, weren't Afghanistan and Iraq countries that traded oil with most of
the countries that bombed them? Then, one thinks, why pay X for oil, and be
subject to the seller's demands and/or willingness to prefer my over other
buyers, when I can just get there and just take it?

~~~
miked
> Actually trade means opposed interests, which is the fastest way to get into
> a war.

Actually, trade means a joined interest in making an exchange, since if both
sides didn't see the exchange as in their own best interest they wouldn't be
making the trade. Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on
one-off trades. Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that
getting into a war with the other party would be a bad idea.

All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who
defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's
ignorance of economics."

~~~
batista
_Actually, trade means a joined interest in making an exchange, since if both
sides didn't see the exchange as in their own best interest they wouldn't be
making the trade._

Actually, no. Countries are _forced_ to trade all the time, despite their best
interests. From the Opium Wars ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars> )
to NAFTA (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agree...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement)
). Ask a citizen of any "banana republic" about it.

 _Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on one-off trades.
Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that getting into a
war with the other party would be a bad idea._

In this naive worldview there are only two parties that trade. It also
presumes, "getting into a war" means you don't get to trade anymore. Like, how
Japan and Germany do not trade with the US after WWII, right? The only thing
it means is that you get to dictate the terms for subsequent trading.

But the worst about this view is that it also presumes this traded material
comes out of thin air: ie. it forgets that trade can lead to war for control
of natural resources, trade routes, and, of course, markets.

Here's a funny story:

= = =

 _The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in Britain in
1909 and republished in 1910 and subsequently in various enlarged and revised
editions under the title The Great Illusion. (The "Great Illusion" of the
title was the belief that there would soon be another major and destructive
European war.)

According to John Keegan "Europe in the summer of 1914 enjoyed a peaceful
productivity so dependent on international exchange and co-operation that a
belief in the impossibility of a general war seemed the most conventional of
wisdoms. In 1910 an analysis of prevailing economic interdependence, The Great
Illusion, had become a best-seller; its author Norman Angell had demonstrated,
to the satisfaction of almost all informed opinion, that the disruption of
international credit inevitably to be caused by war would either deter its
outbreak or bring it speedily to an end."

= = =

We know how that one ended.

_All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who
defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's
ignorance of economics."*

Yeah, except most marxists have also studied thoroughly traditional and
liberal economists of their time, from Ricardo and Smith to Hayek and
Friedman. Including Marx himself, who was a walking encyclopedia of political
economy. Criticizing something does not mean you are ignorant about it. While
not a Marxist, I'm with the camp that calls the entrenched political economy a
"dismal science", 90% ideology and 10% applied mathematics.

~~~
arethuza
That observation of how peaceful and interdependent the world looked at the
dawn of the 20th century is also how Niall Ferguson's book _The War of the
World_ starts.

It really is quite sobering to appreciate how people back then really believed
that mutual dependence and globalization would make large-scale warfare
impossible.

~~~
batista
Exactly. And let's not forget the "End of History" by Fukuyama, circa the fall
of the Berlin wall. That also didn't turn out that good.

