wheeling
and dealing
The inventiveness
of engineers made the auto trade big business in the early 20th century.
As ASME celebrates its
125th anniversary this year,
Mechanical Engineering will run articles each month highlighting key influences
in the Society's development. This, the fourth in our series, traces the
growth of automobile production between 1910 and 1920, and the engineer's
role in putting millions of Americans behind the wheel.
The name of
Lloyd R. Smith never appeared in the annals of automotive history alongside
Alfred P. Sloan, B.F. Goodrich, and Henry Ford. Sloan was the brilliant
business manager who built General Motors into a powerful industrial company.
Goodrich designed long-lasting rubber tires. Henry Ford made practical
automobiles affordable to the middle class. Sloan, Goodrich, Ford—each
of them a giant in automotive lore, each of them a prominent figure in
American business and commerce, each of them directly responsible for
creating and perpetuating America's most enduring consumer product.
In 1913, Lloyd Smith was heading a rather mundane factory operation in
Milwaukee, watching his workers cut and shape automobile frames at the
rate of 10 a day. As word of Henry Ford's new automobile assembly
line spread, Smith contemplated automating his frame manufacturing process.
He gathered together his engineers and challenged them to design a completely
automated process by which auto frames were gripped, sized, punched, riveted,
painted, and placed in a freight car in one continuous operation. In 1921,
Lloyd Smith's dream became reality, as he went online with his
automatic plant that turned out 10,000 automobile frames a day. Given
the increased production capability, the A.O. Smith Corp. was able to
fill large orders from Ford, Buick, and several other automobile manufacturers,
which succeeded in speeding up auto production and product delivery time
to an eager marketplace. The site where the plant stood has been designated
an ASME National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.
While lacking the fame and name recognition of others in the U.S. automobile
business around the time of World War I, Lloyd R. Smith's contribution
to the industry was major. The A.O. Smith frame plant stands as a vivid
case study on the role of engineering and technical innovation in the
emergence and growth of the automobile industry. It was during ASME's
fourth decade of existence that the auto industry introduced steel body
construction, the ignition system, and car heaters, not to mention tools
for the assembly line. Many of these technical innovations and others
developed for automobiles increased the productivity of industry and the
prosperity of the average citizen.
 |
| This 1912 Cadillac came with an electric starter, developed by Henry Leland, the founder of Cadillac, to relieve the driver of having to crank the engine. |
ASME was actually slow to embrace the phenomenon of the automobile. The
Society sponsored an Engine Committee in 1911, but the group was concerned
more with diesel engines featuring low motive power than with transportation
systems. At the end of the decade, in 1919, an ASME member by the name
of John Younger petitioned the Society to establish an Automotive Professional
Section, and the leadership of the organization agreed to form a committee
to explore the notion. It wasn't until 1921 that ASME created the
Internal Combustion Engine Division, which has remained active to the
present day.
The spark-ignited internal combustion engine was the great enabling technology
for the automobile. The engine provided auto manufacturers with a practical
power plant featuring good output and fuel economy. It had a ratio of
weight to power that was more favorable for personal transportation than
steam engines that had driven the locomotive and the riverboat.
The gasoline engines installed in early cars were not without problems.
One problem was engine knock, which was caused by the adverse chemical
reactions of fuel in the combustion chambers. Charles F. Kettering and
his research associates at Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. (which
later came to be known as Delco) conducted extensive experiments with
fuel additives to control engine knocks, finally introducing ethyl gasoline
to the auto market following World War I.
 |
| The A.O. Smith automated frame manufacturing factory enjoyed a 37-year run, ending in 1958. The facility was a supplier to the major auto builders, and was named an ASME Historical Mechanical Engineering Landmark. |
At the start of the 20th century, the gasoline engine initially competed
for popularity with the electric motor, which was used on French and English
roads. The electric motor was cleaner and easier to shift. It was considered
more reliable and safer. A hundred years later, it appears that the rivalry
between electric and gasoline engines has been renewed.
Other significant inventions of the period included the self-starting
system. It was developed in 1912 by Henry Leland, the founder of Cadillac,
to relieve the driver of the bothersome, and sometimes risky, task of
hand-cranking the engine.
Edward G. Budd, an engineer in Philadelphia, introduced all-steel bodies
for autos. Previously, auto manufacturers used wood for exterior panels.
While readily available and easy to shape, wood was not the best building
material for cars. The heat of the engine reduced the integrity of the
glue that held the panels in place and caused the wood to warp. The rough,
unpaved roads of the early 20th century were also punishing to wood. In
1913, Budd received a large contract from John and Horace Dodge, the names
behind the famous automobile brand.
At its start, the automobile business revolved around racecar drivers,
mechanics, and men who tinkered in machine shops. Early automakers employed
workers with craft skills to build perhaps 1,000 or fewer vehicles a year
for wealthy customers and niche markets. Henry Ford's method of
mass production closed the era of craft production of cars and revolutionized
the motor industry.
Wanted: Industrial Engineers
Ford opened his first moving assembly line in 1913, in Highland Park,
Mich. It featured conveyor belts powered by electricity, along with numerous
innovations in machining and tooling. Ford's workers were able to assemble
a car axle in 27 minutes on average, compared with 2 1/2 hours
using the methods of craft production. Ford produced a complete Model
T in just three hours.
Henry Ford's mass production was predicated on the interchangeability
of parts and the complete systematization of factory processes. He hired
engineers and industrial management specialists to ensure quality and
continuous
operations in Highland Park. Ford divided his engineering resources into
specialized skills: manufacturing engineers, industrial engineers, product
engineers, and so on. Under Ford, engineers became "knowledge workers,"
individuals who manipulated ideas and information, and rarely got involved
in hands-on factory operations.
Ford's assembly line and other production operations in this era
gave rise to a new type of engineering professional—the industrial
engineer, who was charged with the responsibility of bringing all the
parts together, and assigning specific tasks to each assembler on the
production line. ASME, as early as 1903, recognized the emergence of this
specialist within the broader mechanical engineering profession, and set
out to delineate the occupational differences between the ME and the industrial
engineer.
The story of the automobile is told around images and symbols of speed
and power, beauty and elegance, freedom, and open roads. For ASME and
the mechanical engineering community, the automobile is also about technological
progress and engineering achievement beginning with the 20th century and
building for a hundred years.
|
Early Automotive Oddities In 1910, there were approximately
500,000 motor The Cadillac, named for Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded the city of Detroit in the 1700s, introduced the first V8 engine in 1914. Local law-enforcement officers
were known In 1914, Henry Ford instituted his $5-per-day wage for his factory workers. To qualify, employees were required to report to Ford's sociological department to answer questions about their personal lives, habits, and likes and dislikes. In 1916, the average price of a new car was $600. A Model T could be purchased for $360 By 1914, auto accidents had killed 18,737 Americans, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—this during a time of limited road congestion and slow cars. According to AskOxford.com, the Web site of the Oxford dictionaries, the term "jaywalking" had entered the English language in the United States by 1917, and there is "evidence of use from 1900." The Essex was born in 1919. A year later, the car established a new record, when it transported mail from San Francisco to New York in 4 days, 14 hours, and 43 minutes. The windshield, lights, starting
system, and roof were optional equipment on the 1913 Reo, which
sold for $1,095. |
John Varrasi is a senior writer in the Public Information Department of ASME in New York.
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© 2005 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers