Inherent

inherentlabs.ai

Imagine plucking a couple of experienced machinists from the 1890s and dropping them into a state-of-the-art factory in 1925. They would find the layout and pace of production disorienting. In place of giant machines connected by overhead line shafts to a central steam engine, they would encounter smaller machines, each powered by its own electric motor. When one device jams, our machinists would be surprised to see that the others carry on unaffected. Accustomed to keeping a wary eye on the hazardous line shafts, they look to the ceiling and now find skylights instead. The technical innovation powering these changes was the electric dynamo. While dynamos existed in 1890, their potential remained underutilized for decades. Enthusiastic entrepreneurs, recognising that electrification was the future, used them to replace steam engines as centralized power sources, gaining marginal efficiency improvements. But to reap the full benefit of the new technology, they eventually had to redesign the factory. Steam-driven factories had been organized vertically in multi-storey buildings to keep belt runs as short as possible. Once machines no longer needed to be tethered to a central, fixed infrastructure, they could be rearranged or replaced without shutting the whole factory down. Now it made sense to spread out laterally in a single storey, and with the ceilings freed from the load of deadly line shafts, the factory floor could be opened up and lit from above by windows in the roof. Factory owners came to realise that the dynamo’s great advantage lay in liberating production processes from the strictures of a centralized power source. Building design could follow the phases of production rather than the mechanics of power transmission.