Belt-driven Machine Shop, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Belt-driven Machine Shop

Hancock Shaker Village

Pittsfield, Massachusetts, USA

Nineteenth century

Photograph by Jay Rosenthal, May 2001

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]

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

Victorian
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Industrial
Revolution

Created 2001; last modified 21 July 2015