Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (review)

How did entrepreneurs in antebellum American industry acquire the knowledge required to operate iron foundries and build steam engines, locomotives,machine tools, and even firearms? Did they simply hire experts from England to teach the small number of machinists in America new techniques—something difficult to do since the British government tried to prevent that knowledge from getting out? Or, did they rely on machinists who brought with them knowledge of new processes when they immigrated to America? And, when that knowledge reached America, how was it dispersed to others? Why was knowledge of new methods of production or innovations not dispersed throughout the nation, but remained confined to the eastern United States? These are questions that David R. Meyer addresses in Networked Machinists.

Meyer argues that the transference of knowledge was accomplished primarily through the emergence of multifaceted forms of communications. Largely controlled by machinists in iron foundries, textile mills, and Federal armories and private firearms manufactories, an informal system of sharing knowledge grew in the early nineteenth century. Meyer places great emphasis on antebellum machinists for their importance in the industrialization of America in the nineteenth century, and they are the primary players in this story. This knowledge transference could be in the form of actual sharing of information on innovations or techniques between companies, knowledge carried by a machinist to a new workplace, or through the interactions of companies who had some level of ties within one of the informal information networks. Often, being connected in some way, or acting as a “hub” company, guaranteed some level of success and meant, in the long-term, an increased level of investment and the benefits of economy of scale.

Meyer also addresses the issue of why America’s “first hightechnology industries” were located in the eastern United States (2). Machinists developed “communities of practice” (15) within which information could be shared on the shop floor, among competing companies, and even between centers of production to outlying areas that were in the process of developing a manufacturing base. This network even included information transfer from European machinists. It was their ability to create “communities of practice” that overcame the shortcomings of poor transportation networks—both for raw materials and manufactures—and communication networks that were inefficient. Being far from these networks prevented other areas of the country from having access to machinists and the technological knowledge to develop industry.

Machinists created a complex web of interaction and communication that successfully disseminated information on new methods and skills required to keep up with the technological progress needed to industrialize America. There were various ways to transfer knowledge from one machinist to another and from one area to the next. Meyer describes effectively how the relay of information was maintained within specific geographic regions—the northeastern section of the country where the vast majority of manufacturing occurred in the antebellum period. Meyer provides diagrams of the forms of network ties and argues that failure to be connected to a larger “hub” firm often prevented smaller firms from accessing knowledge in a subregion. In larger interregional networks, the “hub” firm also played an important role in the diffusion of information and, like the subregions, determined knowledge diffusion. This argument is useful in understanding why other regions of the new country did not develop more of an industrial base. In the American South, agriculture remained dominant and perhaps the lack of industrialization can, in part, be explained by the absence of machinist “communities of practice.”

Meyer divides the book into two sections. The first section deals with the formative years of the machinist’s network from 1790 to 1820, and 1820 to the 1860s. He focuses on iron foundries, cotton textile mills, and Federal armories and private firearms manufactories as the center of the growing network of machinists and their web of communication. The second section examines how these formative networks spread out in the 1840s to 1860s...