Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation

by David F. Noble

Focusing on the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry--the heart of the modern industrial economy--this is a provocative study of how automation has assumed a critical role in America. David Noble argues that industrial automation--more than merely a technological advance--is a social process that reflects very real divisions and pressures within our society. The book explains how technology is often spurred and shaped by the military, corporations, universities, and other mighty institutions. Using detailed case studies, Noble also demonstrates how engineering design is influenced by political, economic, and sociological considerations, and how the deployment of equipment is frequently entangled with certain managerial concerns.

Genres: History, Economics, Technology, Sociology, Nonfiction, Politics, Business

427 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 1984

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Franklin Noble was a critical historian of technology, science and education.

Reviews

[Rohit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant brilliant brilliant book. An intense, in-depth look at the politics of automation technologies in the US from the 1940s through the 1970s, and the central role of class politics. The central argument--that technological development is often more concerned about shoring up class power than it is about technical or economic improvements--is argued persuasively, with a large amount of compelling evidence, statistics, and case studies.

The book covers everything from the political establishment's ideology about science and technology, to role of the US military in subsidizing specific choices in technological design, to the explicit and repeated intentions of corporate managers to use technology to deskill and displace militant workers from the shop floor, to the battles between various automation firms and businesses, to the technical and social dimensions of different choices in automated machine tool design (namely, between numeric control and record playback), to a blow-by-blow case study of how workers and management at one Ford automobile plant fought over automation technologies in the 1970s.

The book is well-written and accessible and constantly fascinating, and there is stuff in here for people of all backgrounds, whether that is engineering, sociology, or economics, or basket weaving.

[Mark Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. Synopsis: This book is an inquiry into the evolution of automatically controlled machine tools in postwar America (1940s-1970s). Machine tools are the basis of modern industry so their history can be used as an exemplar of how modern technology is developed and shaped. The central story here concerns the ascendance of numerical control (N/C) over record playback (R/P). N/C emerges because of the desire of management, military, and engineers to have control over labor. This desire for control was the central factor in determining which technology would be used. Thus, technological determinism is overcome. The Darwinian view of technological development is also rejected (invention passes through the filters of objective science, economic rationality, and self-regulating market, to produce the fittest technology).
B. Command and Control (management’s main objective over labor)
1. The setting: The war abroad
a) The key phrase in this period is “Russia abroad, labor at home”
b) There was a permanent war economy and military industrial complex 1945-1970). Industry was wed to the military
c) The war provided a new era of optimism in research
2. The setting: The war at home
a) Intense labor strikes
b) Unions focused attention on production. They feared that automation would eliminate all of the skilled workers
c) Management insisted on its right to automate production
d) The shortage of skilled workers (which was caused by automation) had become the main justification for more automation
3. Power and the power of ideas
a) Scientists and engineers fostered the belief that their “objective” technological progress was good for society
b) This is not true because they are members of society and are influenced by their own self-interest
c) Technical advance is rooted in past achievement (no leaps)
(1) When various paths converge and synthesize, revolutions occur
(2) The post-war decades saw a revolution of electrical servomechanisms and computers
(3) Servomechanism: a loop in which input is affected by output. Ex. Thermostat and a home heating system.
d) This revolution gave rise to the belief that management was capable of total control
4. Toward the automatic factory
a) The new computer based ideology of total control proved contagious
b) The automatic factory first began to take shape in the continuous process industries (oil refineries). This led to numerous layoffs and a ceasing of recruitment
C. Social choice in machine design
1. By the numbers
a) The ultimate challenge of machine tool automation was how to render it self-acting (no labor)
b) This would give management more power and undermine the mechanics
c) The approach to programmable machine tool operation that succeeded was numerical control NC (info was stored on magnetic tape or punched card)
d) The motions of the machine were described mathematically
e) John Parsons was the father of NC and an early pioneer. He set up his own factory in Traverse City. Received contracts from the Air Force. MIT provided the NC info, IBM the computers
2. The road not taken
a) By the late 50s and early 60s, NC was heralded as the most significant development in manufacturing since the assembly line
b) However, technological development is not an objective science with only one best way
(1) A technology (machine tool automation) that develops from one form (NC) is less a reflection of technical or economic superiority than it is a reflection of the power of the people who chose it
(2) NC was chosen by the military and supported by enthusiasts with power
c) The road not taken was RP: Record-Playback
d) The difference between RP and NC is like the difference between the Jacquard Loom (NC) and the player piano (RP)
(1) In a player piano the tape was punched or recorded on a melograph. An actual pianist would play the piece and the device would record it
(2) The loom was essentially programmed to weave the correct pattern.
(3) NC eliminated the machinist skills, RP depended upon it
e) Why did RP fail to catch on?
(1) Technical community wanted to eliminate as many possibilities of human error as possible
(2) Management community wanted the greater control of NC which did not rely on the human skills of RP
(3) Military community was infatuated with command and control weapons which was more conducive to NC

D. A new industrial revolution: Change without change
1. Development
a) Technological as well as social revolutions have one thing in common--they must be made to happen by people
b) These people must change others view of reality so that the revolutionary ideas will fit in
c) Between 1952-55 there was little NC in industry. MITs work did not spread
d) Development was initially slow as equipment was expensive
2. Diffusion
a) The social and technological consequences of technological change is a function of the rate of diffusion and not the date of first use
b) The goal of the 2nd industrial revolution (the automated factory) was a long time in coming
c) In 1973, less than 1% of machine tools were NC
d) Thus, diffusion was slow
3. Deployment
a) The main deployers of NC was the military, using it to build the bodies of aircraft
b) Management proposed NC as a way to their goal of total control and to deskill labor
c) The paradox was that with the deployment of this expensive machinery depended upon the cooperation, acceptance, and skill of the workers who operated it
d) While GE was a master force behind automation (the companies image was linked to progress) they were faced with the difficulties of this paradox

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

Read this for a Marxist reading group and it was a really interesting history of industrial automation and CNC (computer numerical control) technology. Would be of interest to anyone interested in the history of engineering.

I read it in July around the time I visited the Ontario Science Centre with some folks from Grassy Narrows who were visiting Toronto for the River Run event. Near the entrance of the Science Centre there is a large Jacquard loom surrounded by interpretation boards that discuss how this textile machine used an early precursor to punch cards which became the basis of early computing systems. The loom has also been framed as a precursor to numerical control machining, which is one of the most pervasive technologies that underlie contemporary manufacturing today.

It was a convenient time to encounter the Jacquard loom because I had just been reading about them in Noble’s book. Noble writes about how the loom, like the Arkwright mill, rendered many workers no longer necessary and the machinery was likewise burned to the ground by angry workers:

“Joseph-Marie Jacquard built his automatic loom in 1804 at the behest of Lyons manufacturers who were intent upon eliminating the many workers required to operate the complex draw loom, which was used in the weaving of fine, figured fabrics. Building upon the earlier work of a series of French inventors-whose devices had facilitated the work of the operatives by ren­ dering it more accurate and less fatiguing-Jacquard completed the visionary but stillborn efforts of Jacques de Vaucanson to do away with the operatives altogether. (Just as Vaucanson's earlier effort had been halted by organized worker hostility, so Jacquard's first looms were burned by the silk workers of Lyons.)”

I wrote a paper earlier this year on how unemployment was being created by industrial machinery in the UK, and this phenomenon was a driving force for justifying imperialism for people like Cecil Rhodes (e.g. in his famously quoted line in Lenin’s book Imperialism, where Rhodes, after encountering the mass poverty in Britain became convinced imperialism was the only way to solve the issue, both for settling ‘surplus labour’ into the colonies and also generating new markets in the colonies to provide more jobs in factories). Owenite socialists were initially against the solution of emigration for the ‘surplus labour’ problem, but eventually became a channel, even if a small one, that helped facilitate the advance of settler colonialism overseas.

Another interesting thing that I noticed while walking around the Ontario Science Centre was how almost every single display hall and exhibition was named after either a billionaire family or a really destructive corporation. There was a petroleum firm that had rendered the lifespan of Aamjiwnaang First Nation members lower than Liberia’s, consumer goods MNCs that deployed child labour to clearcut Southeast Asian rainforests and poisoned the people and land of Kodaikanal with mercury, a tech company that built databases for the Nazis, and financial institutions bankrolling colonial violence, Wet’suwet’en dispossession, fracked gas extraction, and this current climate crisis. The list could go on a lot longer.

In this book, Noble does a very thorough job of detailing how intimately elite universities in the U.S. and their engineering school curricula were developed in concert with the military-industrial complex. I just wanted to include this little excerpt on General Dynamics, because I recently met a conservative evangelical at an interfaith event complaining about Canada becoming too socialist. And when I found out this guy worked for General Dynamics, I almost blacked out from the shock of how people like this are like parodies of supervillains. Anyway, Noble on the role of defense contractors in developing CAD technology which is widely used in engineering today and how academia has been so cozily working with defense contractors throughout the past century:

“The Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) is promoting industry-wide implementation of this model factory between 1985 and 1990 and ICAM is acknowledged to be the most prominent developer of CAD/­ CAM, as well as robotics, in the United States. The ICAM program has, in addition, spun off TECHMOD (Technology Modernization), a $67 million effort centered at the General Dynamics Fort Worth facilities, charged with refining specific pieces of the computer-integrated manufacturing system. Moreover, the ICAM project has stimulated parallel efforts by the other services, which all come under the generic name MANTECH (Manufactur­ing Technology). Thus, there are the Navy's Shipbuilding Technology Pro­gram, the Army Tank Command's Flexible Manufacturing Systems project, and the joint Tri-Service Electronics Computer-Aided Manufacturing Pro­gram. The military, and especially the Air Force, has been actively spreading the MANTECH gospel. In 1981, for example, the AFSC launched a $3 million Manufacturing Science program, with the aim of "stimulating greater in­volvement in manufacturing in academia.””

One other thing I really loved reading about was a worker tactic called “pacing” which I know I have definitely done, and I know many of my friends have also done similar things at work lol. Pacing as Noble calls it is basically just a worker-determined production rate, where a worker might hold back already completed jobs, or work at less efficient rates because they know if they complete things too quickly, that becomes the normative expectation for everyone, and they will be required to produce more and more with less and less time. Much of this book is an exploration of how various types of industrial manufacturing technologies were strategically leveraged by both management and workers in their own class interests.

A fascinating work in the history of technology, and this newer edition has a great introduction that goes into how Noble was fired from both MIT and the Smithsonian, which is basically why he ended up teaching at York University where he continued to be an adversarial gadfly figure. Too many exiled radicals end up here lol.

[Adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lots of facts and figures interspersed with un-cited “a GE Applications Engineer said…” type statements so as to trick the reader into taking what is stated by the author as fact.

Drivel written at fall of the hippie era that attempts to pin all of society’s issues on “Scientists and Engineers” both words appearing numerous times in the pejorative sense

[Liang · Rating 4 out of 5]

更像是罢工军工史，政府自助推动研究，企业借助机器剥削工人，工人罢工抵抗社会

[Jeeva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written by David F Noble about the 'Automation Era' of the middle 20th century. David F Noble presents a series of interlinked case studies of how the Scientist- Entrepreneurial class collaborated with the US Military to give birth to what is now known as the proverbial 'Military Industrial' Complex. Though one of the avowed aims of the Military Industrial complex that influenced the US federal government was 'containing' Communism and 'anti-American' activities' internationally, Noble goes on to argue that there were other, even more significant goals to achieve.

The chief aim was to counter the working class unity which was getting a filip in all the industrial countries especially in the US during the booming Soviet era. The case studies chiefly centre on the famed MIT which kept pressurising the federal government to pump in millions of dollars towards funding 'Research'. And the research was focussed on developing technology that soon will enable mankind to enter the era of the 'Automatic Factory'. The automatic factory was projected as the ultimate stage in the evolution of science and technology, which if attained could totally eliminate the 'error-prone' human component out of the process of production. The MIT and related corporations were successful in manoeuvring the govt to pump a significant percentage of the annual federal budget into the research towards the final 'automatic factory'.

In other words, these institutions were bent on extracting a major share of taxpayer money in order to develop technology that will in turn render the taxpayer totally 'jobless'. Noble highlights the extreme absurdity of the entire process which after a point assumes evil and irreversible implications. The expensive research work carried on in these institutions which initially were centred on reducing 'manual errors' and producing perfect output so as to suit other important industrial needs, rapidly drifted into areas of cost cutting and economising production. And cost cutting, so obvious in the way it means, implied elimination of human wage labour even if the new sophisticated machinery developed by these institutions were extremely expensive and unaffordable to many small and medium scale industries.

The book also reflects the working class reaction to these new developments, the challenges it faced under ineffective trade union leadership and how significant these seemingly minor events had a huge bearing on the course of later, more remarkable developments.

Noble not only records the events but also daringly puts forward the impressions they left on him and does not shy away from making future predictions. The book goes on to make a huge statement that might be summed up as follows - 'No aspect of a capitalist society is independent or meaninglessly preordained. And the aspect might even be as seemingly innocent as Technology. Technology as long as it is in the hands of capital, shall serve only the purposes of its master and any assumptions about its service to mankind in the journey towards overall human prosperity, is nothing more than a dangerous illusion'.

I would recommend the book only to those who are wholly interested in the subject and not certainly for others. There will be a vast amount of dreary statistics and numbers which might be off-putting. But I am sure it is an extremely enlightening work when you really want to know your place in the long chain of human historical phenomenon.