When the Machine Stopped: A Cautionary Tale from Industrial America by Max Holland

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 173 approach. On a more minor point, the author’s admirable desire to write prose that will engage contemporary readers sometimes leads to potentially misleading anachronism, as when he refers to portable radios of the late 1940s and early 1950s as typical of the “plastic lunch box convention” of radio design even though plastic lunch boxes did not yet exist (p. 146). To mention other examples, Schiffer refers to amateur radio operators of the 1910s as “early nerds” (p. 34) and dedicates a chapter to the “birth of the boom box” in 1923 (p. 63). Finally, although illustrations are credited, the text itself has no reference notes—a serious lapse in a work that relies heavily for background on works by other historians and that defines itself as a new approach to the cultural study of technology. These flaws aside, Schiffer has provided a solid contribution to the ongoing exploration of the problematic nature of invention in consumer society. Jeffrey L. Meikle Dr. Meikle is associate professor of American studies and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is writing a cultural history of plastic in American culture. When the Machine Stopped: A Cautionary Talefrom Industrial America. By Max Holland. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1989. Pp. xiii + 335; notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $24.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). The outline if not the detail of Max Holland’s “cautionary tale” will be familiar. A once-entrepreneurial manufacturer, bought up by a go-go conglomerate, buffeted by inflation and stagflation, bought out by junk bonds, blown away by quick-learning Japanese manufactur­ ers, and backed into a specious case for protectionism—it is all here: a classic study in American manufacturing’s decline. New to many will be the details, including accounts of the rise of Burgmaster, an upstart machine-tool firm distinguished by its workable numerically con­ trolled (NC) turret drills, and the coming of Houdaille, a conglomer­ ate noted first for its massive leveraged buyout and then for its protectionist pleas. Perhaps only Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts, the leveraged-buyout specialists, are household names. Holland tells a deceptively simple story that encapsulates principal trends in postwar American business. Burgmaster’s postwar rise was predicated on assertive technological innovation, entrepreneurial leadership, and attention to user needs. The firm was founded in 1945 by Fred Burg, a Czechoslovak by birth, a locksmith by training, a machinist by vocation, and a department store salesman by necessity, whose true passion was tinkering with machines. In a rented garage he, his son, and his son-in-law began the manufacture of a device to center drill bits in their chucks. Here and subsequently, Fred Burg got his boldest ideas after visiting customers 174 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and listening carefully to their problems. One such visit resulted in Burg’s invention of turret drills, which fundamentally enhanced machine shop productivity; their manufacture filled ever-larger fac­ tories with orders. And while the Massachusetts Institute of Technol­ ogy and the air force dithered with a hopelessly complex version of NC machine tools, the Burgs’ engineers quickly developed and economically manufactured a line of turret drills with NC controls. Burgmaster’s successful machine tools, Holland insists, were a com­ bination of technical possibility and commercial necessity—the result of a company managed for the long term by people who understood their work force, products, and customers. In 1965 Burgmaster was bought up by Houdaille, a peripatetic conglomerate that had begun life as a manufacturer of automobile parts. Being a favored division in a conglomerate going places helped raise capital for a new Los Angeles factory but also entrained more subtle and ominous changes. The Burgs’ emphasis on shop-floor management and employee performance gave way to Houdaille’s requirements for formal credentials and, above all, meeting monthly forecasts. The Burgs’ detailed knowledge about machine tools and easy familiarity with their workers gave way to Houdaille’s technical ignorance and insistence on “managing by the numbers.” Ironically, the firm’s 1970 licensing agreement with a Japanese machine builder, Yamazaki, eased that firm’s entree into the American market. But Yamazaki’s history, as Holland relates it, underscores...