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Banking magnate J.P. Morgan co-founded U.S. Steel in 1901 by merging the steel empire built by Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel with the Federal Steel Company and National Steel Company. The result was a corporate juggernaut––worth tens of billions of dollars in today’s money––that shaped the nation and transformed the nature of manufacturing. It produced nearly two-thirds of all steel at its peak, and its finished product was used to build everything from skyscrapers to cars to trains. -
The first Model T rolls off the assembly line. It cost $850 and was only offered in black. -
titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg in the atlantic ocean -
Henry Ford produced 15 million identical Model Ts between 1908-1927. The way they were made, however, is arguably the most important innovation in the history of manufacturing. By 1913, Ford had broken down the production of the Model T into 84 distinct steps, and each worker was trained on just one of these steps along a moving line which brought the work to the workers. -
Though the United States was founded under democratic principles, only a minority of its population – in the beginning only white landowning males over the age of 21 – could actually vote. But after the 19th Amendment of the Constitution was passed, women finally gain a voice and the right to cast their ballots, though the voting rights fight was far from over for many African American women, especially in the South. -
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to pilot a plane across the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Wales, making her an American national heroine and feminist icon who would go on to set numerous aviation records. She would later set another record as the first person – man or woman – to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland. Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan would vanish over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during Earhart's attempt to circumnavigate the globe. -
Toyota begins developing "Just-in-Time (JIT)" manufacturing and the "automation." These concepts become widely adopted in the 1990s as Lean Manufacturing. -
In 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which mandated standards like the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, and child labor restrictions. It remains the bedrock of American labor law today. -
germany invades poland, starting the world war -
When the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, America mobilized for war—and the charge was led by the country’s massive manufacturing industry. From Maytag to Rolls-Royce, American companies stopped producing consumer goods and retrofitted their factories and assembly lines to produce tanks, planes, fighter engines, and other military necessities. It was big business: the American military-industrial complex was born. -
In the year that began the start of America's involvement in World War II, jet engines were developed. In 1942, a group of GE engineers, known as "The Hush-Hush Boys," working non-stop for ten months built America's first jet engine. -
The surrender of Japan marks the end of World War II amid one of the most tumultuous years of the 20th century. Earlier in the year, leaders of three nations – Benito Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adolf Hitler – die and Nazi Germany surrenders. Though the surrender of Japan was inevitable, the prospect of a horrific Allied assault on the Japanese mainland convinces the United States to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
The North Korean People's Army crosses the 38th parallel into South Korea, eliciting almost an immediate response from U.S. President Truman, and starting the Korean War – a proxy battle between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Three years later, a ceasefire would halt the war. The uneasy relations between North Korea and South Korea last to this day. -
The emergence of computer-aided design (CAD) in the 1950s and 1960s allowed machine tools to make precise and consistent cuts not through the skill of talented tradespeople, but by direction received from computer software programs. The emergence of CAD, which is still widely in use today, signaled the start of manufacturing in the digital age. -
Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. The arrest of Parks for insisting to remain seated leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the ascent of a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., as a local activist leader to advance the civil rights cause. A successful federal lawsuit by the NAACP against the city leads to the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system on Dec. 21 of the following year. -
In 1958, the introduction of integrated circuits allowed a higher level of processing laying the groundwork for more industrial automation. -
As President John F. Kennedy prepares for his re-election bid, he embarks on a multi-state tour starting in September 1963. He is murdered by a sharpshooter’s bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald at about 12:30 p.m. as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Oswald himself is murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. -
President Kennedy’s goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 is realized six years after his assassination. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blast off from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 a.m. aboard the Saturn V rocket. After three days of travel, Armstrong and Aldrin land the Eagle module on the lunar surface as Collins remains in lunar orbit to pilot the module. -
or American workers, 1970 represented the greatest leap forward in labor protections since the FLSA in 1938. The Occupational Safety and Health Act requires employers to create and maintain workplaces that are safe from known hazards like extreme temperatures, untethered work at heights, toxic chemicals, excessive noise, and unsanitary conditions. Those and other conditions had plagued, and often killed, generations of manufacturing workers. -
ABB Robotics and KUKA Robotics introduce industrial robots to the European market and they are quickly adopted in the US. -
The year 1979 represented the pinnacle of U.S. manufacturing, with 19.4 million Americans working in the sector. By early 2010, fewer than 11.5 million manufacturing jobs existed, despite steep population gains over the previous three decades. Thanks to automation, robotics, and the arrival of computer technology, however, output has actually increased. -
IBM began marketing the first practical personal computer in 1981. The moment signaled the greatest transformation in front-office management in the history of manufacturing. From employee records and sales slips to invoices and order manifests, the personal computer instantly relegated the paper ledger to the dustbin of history. -
at the beginning of 1983, the the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) – a small network for academics and researchers – transitions to the standard TCP/IP protocol of the World Wide Web. The protocol would become the internet's cornerstone and technical foundation as it allows expanded available address space and decentralizes the network, thus also expanding accessibility. -
3D-printing, which can now produce everything from firearm receivers to boat hulls, dramatically increases speed and reduces waste by instead adding materials layer by layer, with the help of CAD software, to create three-dimensional products. The concept can be traced to the 1970s, but 3D printing came of age in 1992, when 3D Systems developed the stereolithographic apparatus (SLA). -
At the dawn of the new millennium, the Enterprise Integration Act laid the groundwork for the era of smart manufacturing that drives the sector today. It authorized the sprawling National Institute of Standards and Technology to collaborate with major manufacturing industries in developing and implementing standards for enterprise integration in the 21st century.
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