ABSTRACT
Although America relied heavily upon British technology, she also developed an industrial technology possessing certain special features which distinguished it from the technology which had been developed earlier in Great Britain. Moreover, within the manufacturing sector, more and more of its resources were devoted to supplying critical machinery inputs which were responsible for the growth in productivity in other sectors of the economy. In the absence of the high degree of standardization and precision manufacture of component parts, upon which interchangeability is based, the repair and maintenance of complex products such as automobiles, bicycles, television sets, typewriters, etc., would assume truly nightmarish proportions. The fundamental revolution in productive techniques implied by a system under which fitting was abolished and a workman could assemble a musket using “nothing but the turnscrew” has been insufficiently appreciated. The machine tool industry originated, then, out of a series of responses to the machinery requirements of a succession of particular industries.
