Eli Whitney – New Haven Entrepreneur of Guns, Cotton and Mass-Production

Posted on 12/08/2015 by rickbassett

Engraving of Eli Whitney by Samuel F.B. Morse, c. 1822 New Haven Colony Historical Society

Eli Whitney was born on this day, December 8,1765, he lived to the age 59 and spent the majority of his adult life in New Haven Connecticut.

Eli Whitney is best known for two things: The Cotton Gin and Interchangeable Parts but in reality the unintended consequences of his life’s work brought riches for many and misery to many more.

The Cotton Gin (gin being short for engine) was a device that Whitney developed with his business partner and fellow Yale Alum Phineas Miller that provided a quick mechanized way to remove cotton seeds from bolls of cotton fiber, which until then was a time consuming and labor intensive process.

The Cotton Gin provided for nearly a fifty-fold increase in output productivity over what a single person (generally a slave) could do by hand.

The efficiency of the Cotton Gin, along with several other advances in textile processing, transformed the economy of the South as it turned cotton from a marginal crop into a highly profitable global commodity. American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860. The profit opportunities created by cotton exports drove the increased demand for slaves to plant and pick cotton on Southern Plantations. The number of slaves in America grew in lockstep with the cotton industry from 700,000 in 1790 to 4,000,000 in 1860 to meet the demands of Cotton Growers/Slave Owners.

Slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War.

Numerous historians credit the actual invention of the Cotton Gin to Catherine Greene or Hodgen Holmes while others seem to believe that African American slaves conceived the Gin, but it was Eli Whitney who patented it in 1794.

Despite having a patent on one of most transformative inventions ever, the Cotton Gin didn’t bring riches to Whitney or Miller as their product was knocked-off (pirated) on a large scale by most of the Cotton Growers in the South due to it’s simplistic design, their flawed business model and an extremely weak patent system in the United States at the time.

Interchangeable Parts – Guns

Eli Whitney sought and won a 2-year government contract to make 10,000 muskets (guns) for the Federal Government in 1798. Whitney was awarded the contract due to his notoriety with the Cotton Gin despite having no expertise in gun manufacturing.

Whitneyville Armory, Whitney’s Fire-Arms, from an advertisement, ca. 1862 – Library of Congress

About a year into the contract Whitney received some materials on interchangeable part manufacturing that was being done in France and he decided to incorporate this idea into his manufacturing process. In the late 1700’s skilled Gun Smiths were very scarce, in high demand and expensive so he decided that if he could do component (or sub-assembly) based production of the guns so he could utilize semi-skilled laborers to full-fill his contract in a profitable fashion. Whitney developed innovative processes in milling for producing barrels, stocks…etc and workflow for labor component of assembling his finished muskets. There was a tremendous amount of trial and error involved in getting this new manufacturing process working properly and it took just about the remainder of his adult life to perfect it.

Eli Whitney delivered the balance of his 10,000 muskets on the initial contract but it took him nearly 10 years to do so, rather than the 2 years called for in the contract of 1798. The quality of the guns, after the first few years, earned him accolades by his newest client, The Federal Government, and many subsequent orders followed thus establishing Eli Whitney and Whitney Arms as a reputable source for quality armaments.

Whitney’s Milling Machines were designed to cut precise repeatable patterns

Eli Whitney died of prostrate cancer in New Haven in 1725 but the innovative advances in manufacturing that he pioneered during his lifetime positioned New Haven to become the epicenter of gun manufacturing in the United States for much of the next 200 years. Familiar gun manufactures such as Winchester, Marlin, Mossberg, Colt and nearly 30 other less famous names all have their origins in New Haven thanks to the path that Eli Whitney blazed.

Whitney’s innovative production manufacturing processes, which included standardization and interchangeable parts, were the biggest steps in the development of the modern industrial age as they were emulated and adopted in many other successful manufactures in other industries.

Why Sustainable Clean Air Matters For Everyone

Posted on 11/24/2015 by rickbassett

Killer Smog in Manhattan – Nov 24, 1966 – Photo by Andy Blair

To look at the photo above one might think that it had to be taken in China or some third world country with extremely lax air pollution laws but this is a picture of New York City taken just 39 years ago today when a mysterious smog enveloped the City and took the lives of 144 – 170 people over a six day period.

The Thanksgiving killer smog was essentially a ‘perfect storm’ of weather and pollution that came about as a result of something known as temperature inversion, which is a blanket of stagnent cold air in the lower atmosphere capped by a layer of warm air above it that allows dangerous pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and carbon monoxide to be trapped close to the ground and cause air pollution to spike to dangerous levels.

The 1966 Thanksgiving NYC smog event was not the first deadly incident of temperature inversion known to cause havoc on a large city as in 1948 Donora, PA – 20 people died and over 7,000 were hospitalized when sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and metal dust from the local zinc smelter was trapped in a blanket of pollution. 1952 London – 12,000 deaths were attributed to a temperature inversion episode that trapped large volumes of sulfur dioxide (Londoners were burning a lot of sulfur-rich coal). And of course smog and unhealthy air quality was a regular occurrence in Los Angeles.

Up until 1966 most people weren’t that interested in getting to the root causes of air pollution, or solving the problem, that is until the ‘dirty’ air literally took their breath away.

The 1966 NYC smog event created public awareness to the dangers of unchecked outputs from cars and factories as well building density limiting air circulation and the lack of greenscape/plantings in large cities, which are all significant contributing factors to pollution levels and air stagnation.

Vehicles account for nearly 1/2 of the carbon monoxide & nitrogen oxides in the air

1967 ushered in the Air Quality Act, which was an expansion of the 1963 Clean Air Act that didn’t apply to mobile sources of air pollution (cars, trucks…etc), then the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970 was passed, where Congress greatly expanded the federal mandate by requiring comprehensive federal and state regulations for both industrial and mobile sources. The 1970 legislation provided for enforcement and established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The regulatory compliance for clean air and the costs associated with it have been a political hot potato with business and industry throughout the entire existence of the EPA and remains so to this day.

Has the EPA helped? Since 1966 the air quality in the United States has gotten much cleaner as all modern cars are fitted with emission control equipment and factories are subject to strict air pollution limits and there has been a major shift away from burning coal, all of which has helped to improve the quality of air.

The big shift to offshoring/global manufacturing over the past 20 – 30 years has also helped clean up the air (and water…see a sequel coming?) in the United States as heavy industrial polluters have chosen to relocate their plants and their pollution to more ‘regulatory friendly’ countries instead of dealing with the requirements of the EPA.

The World’s Population is growing at a rapid rate

On the other side of the ledger and our real modern risk with pollution is the explosive growth in population since 1966. The world’s population is currently 7.3 billion, it was 3.3 billion in 1966, it has more than doubled during the past 39 years. The population in the United States has also grown significantly in this period from 196 million to 326 million.

The increased worldwide population of 4 billion, including 130 million in the US, people means more cars, more products to be produced, more waste to be discarded, more methane, more landfills and on and on. The rapid population growth is putting tremendous strain on all global resources, environments and infrastructures.

In the US we continue operate under the ground rules of the 1960’s and 70’s with minor incremental and hard fought improvements while the makeup and dynamics of the world have changed significantly since then.

Population

While developed nations such as the US are enjoying cleaner air and water, it is essentially a zero sum global game as other parts of the world are suffocating from and choking on the waste from the production of low-cost goods being produced. Photos of polluted cities like the one above are often taken in places New Delphi, China and other parts of the world where manufacturing costs are low and environmental regulations are lax.

The opportunities going forward are finding creative sustainable global solutions for meeting the consumption, output and living requirements for the 7.3 billion people currenty living on our planet and getting ready for the steadily growing population moving forward.

More to come…..

Emile Berliner – The Inventor and Entrepreneur who shaped the Telecommunications and Recording Industries

Posted on 11/17/2015 by rickbassett

Image Source: Library of Congress 2002

Emile Berliner (1851 – 1929) was a genius German-American inventor who laid much of the groundwork for modern sound transmission, musical enjoyment and powered flight.

Berliner lived in the era of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison spending much of his adult life inventing new items and improving upon conceptual ideas such as the telephone, sound recording, acoustics, flight and even flooring as well as giving back to society.

His inventions in the area of telephony, which included the microphone and the transformer, made the telephone far more practical to use than what Bell had obtained a patent for. The young Berliner (circa 1876) was so inspired by the potential of the telephone that he found numerous ways to improve on Bell’s transmission quality with his inventions. His microphone was capable of increasing the volume of the telephone transmission and his transformer made communication over distance possible. Mr. Watson from the American Bell Company was so impressed with Berliner’s patented inventions that the company bought the rights to them for $50,000 and hired Berliner.

To be clear, Berliner didn’t invent the telephone but he did made it a usable marketable device with his add-on inventions. There is long-standing and hotly contested debate as to if Phillip Reis or Antonio Meucci invented the telephone even though it was Bell who obtained notoriety for doing so with his timely patent.

Berliner was also a pioneer in the Recording Industry despite joining a party already in progress. In the early 1880’s several competitive inventors, Thomas Edison and Chichester A. Bell / Charles Tainter were working hard to create sound recording devices. Edison came up with a tinfoil model while the Bell/Tainter team came up with a wax cylinder model. While both models technically worked, they proved to be impractical as their recorded sound were both difficult to capture and the quality degraded very quickly. Berlinger looked at the device from an entirely different perspective, from the standpoint of output. He wanted to be able to reproduce sound for his talking-machine device in large quantities that could be distributed (sold) to the masses without degradation. After many attempts he came up with we now recognize as a record, that highly polished plastic-like disc with grooves that gets read by a stylus on a floating arm. His early versions of the gramophone relied on a hand crank, which didn’t work well enough to provide consistent sound so he partnered up with Eldridge Johnson to manufacture a motor-driven turntable. After a series of legal twists and turns the Gramophone became known as the Victrola, produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company and then later it would be known as the Phonograph. The name Gramophone would fade from the market but it did become the basis of the name “Grammy,” the award name presented annually by the members of The Recording Academy.

Berliner’s other noteworthy inventions and patents include:

Parquet Carpet – (1883, 1899 & 1900)
Radical Internal Lightweight Aircraft Engine – 1908
Helicopter – 1919
Numerous fixed wing innovations (1920’s)
Acoustical Tiles for music venues (1926)

He was also involved in many Community and Social Causes, especially in the public health field. He is credited with saving the lives of thousands of children via his campaign for hygiene and pasteurized milk and he was a strong crusader for Women’s rights.

Berliner was also a song writer, a piano player and published author with 5 books and numerous scholarly articles to his credit.

Many of Berliner’s inventions and contributions became the basis for modern telecommunications and recorded musical entertainment products which are on the market today .

Despite his significant and enduring contributions and orginal inventions in telephony, the music industry and aeronautics Emile Berliner’s name isn’t one that most people typically credit these accomplishments to as he lived in an era of transformative change where industry giants like Bell and Edison were casting wide shadows.

Selecting a Smartphone is as difficult as leasing a car

Posted on 11/12/2015 by rickbassett

The new iPhone 6s plus

2 years ticked off the calendar and it was time to look into replacing the old iPhone 5s with a new and improved iPhone.

We’ve been with AT&T for the past 5 or 6 years and since several of of the family members on our plan wouldn’t be eligible to upgrade their phones for 6 or 7 more decades (kidding) it seemed logical to remain with AT&T

This time I was interested in the larger 6S Plus unit as my old trusty iPad 1.0 was obsolete as was my Garmin GPS so it seemed to make more sense to replace the iPhone, the iPad and the Garmin with a single device even though this phone is extremely large.

Deciding on the model of phone and amount of memory (64 GB) was the easy part.

The difficult part was figuring out the best financial option available. In the past I would just pony up the $300 or $400 and walk out with the phone but doing that now would mean a larger monthly connection bill of $25 as AT&T really wants you to use their NEXT program, which is essentially a lease program.

After having my team of Accountants evaluate every possible financial scenario it worked out to be about $250 cheaper over 24 months to go with the NEXT program but the kicker is that I have to return the phone down the road. So like a leased car, AT&T has factored in some residual value and hopefully they won’t penalize me for excessive road rash.

Now onto the insurance. If you’re like me then you really hate to buy insurance but sadly it is necessary to have some sort of protection on these little devices as it will be 2 years before I am eligible to run through this thrilling process again with what I can only assume will be the iPhone 7s extra plus.

My last experience with AT&T’s insurance at $6.99 month wasn’t a pleasant one as the coverage for the broken screen was pretty terrible and there was an additional cost (deductible) of $120 so after 24 months of the AT&T insurance with 1 broken screen you can expect a bill of $288 plus some major hoops to jump through to file a claim. A better alternative, in my opinion, is Apple Care+, for $129 plus $99 if the screen breaks. That’s a savings of $60 over 2 years but more importantly it is super easy to get service by Apple either over the phone or at one of the Apple stores. It’s worth noting that the AT&T stores, at least the one that I went to, really want you to buy their insurance and don’t have Apple Care available, which can be obtained at Apple.com or at one of the Apple stores.

All in all, this new iPhone is a great phone that has allowed me to combine 3 devices into 1 and while the cost of the new iPhones are higher than in the past (as the vendor underwriting went away) I was able to save considerably by combining 3 devices into 1.

Still, it shouldn’t be this difficult to buy a cell phone. Thankfully I didn’t have to address the whole data plan issue at this time…..just let it ride this time please.

Soviet Space Dog Sparks the Birth of the Internet

Posted on 11/05/2015 by rickbassett

Laika (Sputnik II Space Dog) – Photo Source: NASA

This past Tuesday (Nov 3rd) was Election Day. Not the big Election Day where we pick a new President, that comes next year BUT did you know that over the past 220 years we have elected a new President 7 times on a Nov 3rd?

They were: 1796 John Adams (#2 – Federalist), 1868 Ulysses Grant (#18 Republican), 1896 William McKinley (#25 Republican), 1908 William Taft (#27 Republican), 1936 Franklin Roosevelt (#32 Democrat), 1964 Lyndon Johnson (#36 Democrat) and 1992 William Clinton (#42 Democrat).

Most of us also remember #42’s Vice President was Al Gore who has been quoted and misquoted as taking credit for inventing the Internet during a March 1999 interview by Wolf Blitzer. Sad to say but Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet and Al also disputes making that claim, but I digress.

Nov 3rd has great significance in the history of the Internet as on Nov 3, 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched orbiting earth satellite Sputnik 2, which was the second spacecraft launched into Earth’s orbit, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika (knick named Muttnik in the US). First in space was….you guessed it Sputnik 1, which was a ‘dog less’ flight that launched just a month earlier.

The successful launches of the Sputniks surprised the American public and shattered the perception of the United States as the technological superpower and the Soviet Union as a backward country (The Legacy of Sputnik [Editorial]. (2007). New York Times, p. 28.)

In response to Sputnik(s), the United States established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 within the US Department of Defense (DoD) for the purposes of forming and executing research and the development of projects that expand the frontiers of science and technology.

From ARPA came ARPANET in 1969 with 4 network nodes in an Interconnected Network. Many twists & turns, new technologies, new communication protocols, new standards and new names over the next 20 years gave rise to the Global Internet (INTERconnected NETworks) in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.

In case you were wondering about Laika, it didn’t end well for her as she died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating. It was a suicide mission from the start for poor Laika as Sputnik 2 wasn’t designed for reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.

Laika is memorialized in the form of a statue and plaque at Star City, Russia. (I’ve been there).

Think of Laika the next time that you update your Facebook status on your Smartphone as without her sacrifice we may not have the Internet as we know it today. She boldly went where no dog had gone before. (couldn’t resist)

John Mack, The Entrepreneur who brought us everything

Posted on 10/27/2015 by rickbassett

gold_bulldog John Mack (born Oct 27, 1864) can probably be credited, more than anyone else, with providing virtually everything that moves between manufactures, merchants, warehouses, retail outlets and homes.

He was an inventor and a manufacturer who co-founded the Mack Brothers Company, which manufactured heavy duty trucks from 1900 in New York City. A company that would later be known as Mack Trucks Inc.

His first mover company developed buses, the first Hook & Ladder and commercial trucks. John was inspired by Orville and Wilbur Wright, Willis Carrier and Henry Ford’s inventions, into producing heavy duty trucks and engines.

John invented the Mack “Bulldog” type engine. The bulldog remains the present company’s icon and part of its logo and certainly the best hood ornament ever.

Interestingly enough, while in his teens and 20’s John worked on the railroad as a teamster. The teamsters later became a significant force in trucking. Is it possible that one man developing the disruptive commercial trucking industry is also responsible for bringing the teamsters into that industry? If so then John Mack might be a serial disrupter.

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