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Belt-driven Machine Shop
Hancock Shaker Village
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, USA
Nineteenth century
Photograph by Jay Rosenthal, May 2001
As Gideon points out, "The first phase of mechanization consists in transforming the pushing, pulling, pressing of the hand into continuous rotation" (47). These become the means, ultimately, for "decomposing and recombining movements that created the man-like automatons" of the modern, industrialzed world (34)
In this photograph of a typical early workshop of the industrial revolution, a complex system of belts and pulleys distribute power from a central source, which was at first either water power or a stationary steam engine and much later an electric motor. This form of power distribution provides an accurate conceptual model of the hierrarchical, or top-down, organization of many factories and industries. The exposed moving belts are also a great source of danger. [GPL].
References
Sigfried Gideon. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. New York: Norton, 1969 (First published Oxford UP, 1948).
Related Bibliographies
- Science, Technology, and the Industrial Revolution
- The Industrial Revolution and Victorian Culture
- The Industrial Revolution, Education, and Literacy
- The Industrial Revolution, Workers, and the Working Classes
- The Industrial Revolution and Social History
- Individual Industries and the Industrial Revolution
Last modified: 27 March 2001