1913: Henry Ford and the Assembly Line Realizing that he'd need to lower costs Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company) was inspired to create a more efficient way to produce his cars. Looking at other industries he and his team found four principles, which furthered their goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort. The use of interchangeable parts meant making the individual pieces of the car the same every time. Therefore the machines had to be improved, but once they were adjusted, they could be operated by a low-skilled laborer. To reduce the time workers spent moving around Ford refined the flow of work in the manner that as one task was finished another began, with minimum time spent in set-up. Furthermore he divided the labor by breaking the assembly of the legendary Model T in 84 distinct steps. Frederick Taylor, the creator of "scientific management" was consulted to do time and motion studies to determine the exact speed at which the work should proceed and the exact motions workers should use to accomplish their tasks. Putting all those findings together in 1913 Ford installed the first moving assembly line that was ever used for large-scale manufacturing. His cars could then be produced at a record-breaking rate, which meant that he could lower the price, but still make a good profit by selling more cars. For the first time work processes were largely automated by machinery.

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UNIVAC Built by Remington Rand in 1951 the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was one of the first commercially available computers to take advantage of the development of the central processing unit (CPU). Both the U.S. Census bureau and General Electric owned UNIVACs. Speed: 1,905 operations per second; input/output: magnetic tape, unityper, printer; memory size: 1,000 12-digit words in delay line; technology: serial vacuum tubes, delay lines, magnetic tape; floor space: 943 cubic feet; cost: F.O.B. factory U.S.$ 750,000 plus U.S.$ 185,000 for a high speed printer.

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