mechanize

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(mĕk'ə-nīz') pronunciation
tr.v., -nized, -niz·ing, -niz·es.
  1. To equip with machinery: mechanize a factory.
  2. To equip (a military unit) with motor vehicles, such as tanks and trucks.
  3. To make automatic or unspontaneous; render routine or monotonous.
  4. To produce by or as if by machines.
mechanization mech'a·ni·za'tion (-nĭ-zā'shən) n.
mechanizer mech'a·niz'er n.


Use of machines, either wholly or in part, to replace human or animal labour. Unlike automation, which may not depend at all on a human operator, mechanization requires human participation to provide information or instruction. Mechanization began with human-operated machines to replace the handwork of craftspeople; today computers are frequently used to control mechanized processes.

For more information on mechanization, visit Britannica.com.

Accomplishment of tasks with machines, mechanical equipment, or aids. Mechanization does not provide for self-correcting feedback, whereas automation does.

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Mechanization was the next logical step in the substitution of chemical for muscle power once small and light enough power sources became available. Although men had dreamt of creating armoured fighting vehicles since at least the days of Leonardo da Vinci, the impact of steam power was largely limited to logistics and the naval environment, where power to weight and space considerations were not so crucial. Only the advent of the internal combustion engine allowed the dream to become reality on land and in the air, with its full expression in armoured warfare.

The first area of warfare utterly transformed by mechanization was at sea, where the pace of technological advance greatly outstripped doctrine and even the understanding of a visionary like Fisher, who thought he had to sacrifice armour to combine speed and hitting power, when within a very few years all three were successfully combined in the Warspite class of fast battleships. Mechanization opened up the third dimension in warfare by permitting the development of purposeful air power, which was well advanced before the first mechanically unreliable tanks rolled into battle on the Somme in 1916.

Between the wars mechanization stood at the forefront of the military debate. The apostles of armoured warfare, Fuller and Liddell Hart, pressed for mechanization, although they disagreed over the speed at and process by which it might be accomplished, as well as over the function of infantry in the mechanized force. Liddell Hart recognized the need for them, and sketched out the armoured infantry of the future in what he termed ‘tank marines’, while Fuller (although himself an infantryman) relegated them to duties like guarding bases or lines of communication. J. P. Harris has suggested that the British army's real problem was organizational and tactical: ‘getting the right balance between units of different arms … and getting them to work together in the right way’.

The process was complicated, in Britain, France, and the USA, by financial stringency, industrial constraints, and lack of a clear strategic question to which mechanized forces were the answer, as well as the resistance (neither surprising nor ignoble) of military culture to the most profound change since the introduction of firearms. In Britain the emphasis on imperial policing scarcely encouraged mechanization, while in France preoccupation with positional defence and the dominance of fire had a similar effect. The debate was rarely as clear-cut a collision between boneheaded conservatives and incisive radicals as is sometimes portrayed. Even in Germany, where Guderian borrowed heavily from British and French theory and practice, there was widespread recognition that emphasis on blitzkrieg would be likely to result in partial mechanization, with a two-tier army, part old and part new: this is precisely what happened. The British army that fought in France in 1940 was fully motorized—though not mechanized in the sense described by Fuller and Liddell Hart—something the German army never achieved during the entire war.

Mechanization has unquestionably had profound effects. It has largely removed the pack and draught animal from armies, and has greatly reduced the daily grind for the average infantryman. During the 20th century he has evolved from a warrior defined by the most basic means of propulsion, to (under most but by no means all tactical circumstances) a passenger in a vehicle who disembarks to fight and, in the case of armoured infantry in MICVs, may even fight mounted. That it seems to have introduced no fundamental change in the military art is suggested by the fact that the inspiration for US AirLand battle doctrine came from the Howard-Paret translation of Clausewitz, and the fact that the largely mechanized armies at the end of WW II still moved more slowly than the Mongols. But that it has changed the face of war in less than a century is beyond question.

Bibliography

  • Harris, J. P., and Toase, F. N. (eds.), Armoured Warfare (London, 1990)

— Richard Holmes

v. equip (a military force) with modern weapons and vehicles: (mechanized) the units comprised tanks and mechanized infantry.

mechanization n. mechanizer n.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore. This woodblock is from De re metallica by George Bauer (pen name Georgius Agricola, ca. 1555) an early mining textbook that contains numerous drawings and descriptions of mining equipment.

Mechanization or mechanisation (BE) is the process of doing work with machinery. In an early engineering text a machine is defined as follows:

“Every machine is constructed for the purpose of performing certain mechanical operations, each of which supposes the existence of two other things besides the machine in question, namely, a moving power, and an object subject to the operation, which may be termed the work to be done. Machines, in fact, are interposed between the power and the work, for the purpose of adapting the one to the other.”[1]

In some fields, mechanization includes the use of hand tools. In modern usage, such as in engineering or economics, mechanization implies machinery more complex than hand tools and would not include simple devices such as an un-geared horse or donkey mill. Devices that cause speed changes or changes to or from reciprocating to rotary motion, using means such as gears, pulleys or sheaves and belts, shafts, cams and cranks, usually are considered machines. After electrification, when most small machinery was no longer hand powered, mechanization was synonymous with motorized machines.[2]

Contents

History

The Salisbury cathedral clock ca. 1386. A clock is a mechanical instrument rather than a true machine. Although this clock had iron gears, many machines of the early Industrial Revolution used wooden parts until around 1800.

Water wheels date to the Roman period and were used to grind grain and lift irrigation water. By the 13th century water wheels powered sawmills[3] and trip hammers, to full cloth and pound flax and later cotton rags into pulp for making paper. Trip hammers are shown crushing ore in De re Metallica (1555).

Clocks were some of the most complex early mechanical devices. Clock makers were important developers of machine tools including gear and screw cutting machines, and were also involved in the mathematical development of gear designs. Clocks were some of the earliest mass produced items, beginning around 1830.[4][5]

Water powered bellows for blast furnaces, used in China in ancient times, were in use in Europe by the 15th century. De re Metallica contains drawings related to bellows for blast furnaces including a fabrication drawing.

Improved gear designs decreased wear and increased efficiency. Mathematical gear designs were developed in the mid 17th century. French mathematician and engineer Desargues designed and constructed the first mill with epicycloidal teeth ca. 1650. In the 18th century involute gears, another mathematical derived design, came into use. Involute gears are better for meshing gears of different sizes than epicycloidal.[5] Gear cutting machines came into use in the 18th century.[4]

The Newcomen steam engine was first used, to pump water from a mine, in 1712.

John Smeaton introduced metal gears and axles to water wheels in the mid to last half of the 18th century. Smeaton also conducted a scientific investigation into the design of water wheels which lead to significant efficiency increases.

The Industrial Revolution started mainly with textile machinery, such as the spinning jenny (1764) and water frame (1768).

Demand for metal parts used in textile machinery led to the invention of many machine tools in the late 1700s until the mid 1800s. After the early decades of the 19th century, iron increasingly replaced wood in gearing and shafts in textile machinery.[4][5] In the 1840s self acting machine tools were developed. Self acting tools displaced hand dexterity and allowed one unskilled operator to tend several machines.[6]

Machinery was developed to make nails ca. 1810.[7]

The Fourdrinier paper machine paper machine for continuous production of paper was patented in 1801, displacing the centuries old hand method of making individual sheets of paper.

One of the first mechanical devices used in agriculture was the seed drill invented by Jethro Tull around 1700. The seed drill allowed more uniform spacing of seed and planting depth than hand methods, increasing yields and saving valuable seed. Mechanized agriculture greatly increased in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with horse drawn reapers and horse powered threshing machines.[8] By the late nineteenth century steam power was applied to threshing and steam tractors appeared. Internal combustion began being used for tractors in the early twentieth century. Threshing and harvesting was originally done with attachments for tractors, but in the 1930s independently powered combine harvesters were in use.

In the mid to late 19th century, hydraulic and pneumatic devices were able to power various mechanical actions, such as positioning tools or work pieces.[9] Pile drivers and steam hammers are examples for heavy work. In food processing, pneumatic or hydraulic devices could start and stop filling of cans or bottles on a conveyor. Power steering for automobiles uses hydraulic mechanisms, as does practically all earth moving equipment and other construction equipment and many attachments to tractors. Pneumatic (usually compressed air) power is widely used to operate industrial valves.

A servomechanism is a special type of positioning device that uses feedback control to perform some operation. Servomechanisms may be hydraulic, pneumatic or electric (usually a motor).

By the late 19th century machines developed the ability to perform more complex operations that had previously been done by skilled craftsmen.[10] An example is the glass bottle making machine developed ca. 1890. It replaced highly paid glass blowers and child labor helpers and led to the mass production of glass bottles.

After 1900 factories were electrified and electric motors and controls were used to perform more complicated mechanical operations. This resulted in mechanized processes to manufacture almost all goods.

Categories

Two involute gears, the left driving the right: Blue arrows show the contact forces between them. The force line (or Line of Action) runs along a tangent common to both base circles. (In this situation, there is no force, and no contact needed, along the opposite common tangent not shown.) The involutes here are traced out in converse fashion: points (of contact) move along the stationary force-vector "string" as if it was being unwound from the left rotating base circle, and wound onto the right rotating base circle.

In manufacturing, mechanization replaced hand methods of making goods.[10]

Prime movers are devices that convert thermal, potential or kinetic energy into mechanical work. Prime movers include internal combustion engines, combustion turbines (jet engines), water wheels and turbines, windmills and wind turbines and steam engines and turbines.

Powered transportation equipment such as locomotives, automobiles and trucks and airplanes, is a classification of machinery which includes sub classes by engine type, such as internal combustion, combustion turbine and steam.

Inside factories, warehouses, lumber yards and other manufacturing and distribution operations, material handling equipment replaced manual carrying or hand trucks and carts.[10]

Mechanized agriculture

In mining and excavation, power shovels replaced picks and shovels.[10] Rock and ore crushing had been done for centuries by water powered trip hammers, but trip hammers have been replaced by modern ore crushers and ball mills.

Bulk material handling systems and equipment are used for a variety of materials including coal, ores, grains, sand, gravel and wood products.[10]

Construction equipment includes cranes, concrete mixers, concrete pumps, cherry pickers and an assortment of power tools.

Powered machinery

Powered machinery today usually means either by electric motor or internal combustion engine. Before the first decade of the 20th century powered usually meant by steam engine, water or wind.

Many of the early machines and machine tools were hand powered, but most changed over to water or steam power by the early 19th century.

Before electrification, mill and factory power was usually transmitted using a line shaft. Electrification allowed individual machines to each be powered by a separate motor in what is called unit drive. Unit drive allowed factories to be better arranged and allowed different machines to run at different speeds. Unit drive also allowed much higher speeds, which was especially important for machine tools.

A step beyond mechanization is automation. Early production machinery, such as the glass bottle blowing machine (ca. 1890s), required a lot of operator involvement. By the 1920s fully automatic machines, which required much less operator attention, were being used.[10]

See: Mass production

Military usage

The term is also used in the military to refer to the use of tracked armoured vehicles, particularly armoured personnel carriers, to move troops that would otherwise have marched or ridden trucks into combat. Mechanization dramatically improved the mobility and fighting capability of infantry. In the armed forces of industrialized countries, all infantry is typically mechanized, with the possible exception of airborne forces.[citation needed]

Mechanization may also refer in the broader military sense to "motorization" or the replacement of horses with motor vehicles for all functions, including logistics, artillery tractors, etc.[citation needed]

Mechanical vs human labour

When we compare the efficiency of a labourer, we see that he has an efficiency of about 1%-5.5% (depending on whether he uses arms, or a combination of arms and legs). Internal combustion engines mostly have an efficiency of about 20%,[11] although large diesel engines, such as those used to power ships, may have efficiencies of nearly 50%. Industrial electric motors have efficiencies up to the low 90% range, before correcting for the conversion efficiency of fuel to electricity of about 35%.[12]

When we compare the costs of using an internal combustion engine to a worker to perform work, we notice that an engine can perform more work at a comparative cost. 1 liter of fossil fuel burnt with a IC engine equals about 50 hands of workers operating for 24 hours or 275 arms and legs for 24 hours.[13][14]

In addition, the combined work capability of a human is also much lower than that of a machine. An average human can provide work good for around 250Wh/day, while a machine (depending on the type and size) can provide for far greater amounts of work. For example it takes four days of hard labour to deliver only one kWh - which a small engine could deliver in less than one hour while burning less than one litre of petroleum fuel. This implies that a gang of 20 to 40 men will require a financial compensation for their work at least equal to the required expended food calories (which is at least 4 to 20 times higher). In most situations, the worker will also want compensation for the lost time, which is easily 96 times greater per day. Even if we assume the real wage cost for the human labour to be at US $1.00/day, an energy cost is generated of about $4.00/kWh. Despite this being a low wage for hard labour, even in some of the countries with the lowest wages, it represents an energy cost that is significantly more expensive than even exotic power sources such as solar photovoltaic panels (and thus even more expensive when compared to wind energy harvesters or luminescent solar concentrators).[15]

Levels of Mechanization

For simplification, Mechanization can be studied under different steps.[16] Many students refer to this as a basic to advanced form of Mechanical society.

  1. Hand/ Muscle power
  2. Hand tools
  3. Powered hand tools, e.g. electric controlled
  4. Powered tools, single functioned, fixed cycle
  5. Powered tools, multi-functioned, program controlled
  6. Powered tools, remote controlled
  7. Powered tools, activated by work piece, e.g. coin phone
  8. Measurement
  9. Selected signaling control, e.g. hydro power control
  10. Performance recording
  11. Machine action altered through measurement
  12. Segregation/rejection according to measurement
  13. Selection of appropriate action cycle
  14. Correcting performance after operation
  15. Correcting performance during operation

See also

References

  1. ^ Willis, Robert (1861). Principles of Mechanism: Designed For The Use Of Students In The Universities And For Engineering Students Generally. London: John W. Parker. http://books.google.com/books?id=1CCEKSqQaqcC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false 
  2. ^ Jerome (1934) gives the industry classification of machine tools as being "other than hand power". Beginning with the 1900 U.S. census, power use was part of the definition of a factory, distinguishing it from a workshop.
  3. ^ McNeil, Ian (1990). An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-14792-1. 
  4. ^ a b c Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753, http://books.google.com/books?id=X-EJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage . Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-024075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois, (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
  5. ^ a b c Musson; Robinson (1969). Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. University of Toronto Press. p. 69. 
  6. ^ Musson; Robinson (1969). Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. University of Toronto Press. p. 506. 
  7. ^ Thomson, Ross (2009). Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Invention in the United Sates 1790-1865. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 13:978-0-8018-9141-0. 
  8. ^ Rumely 1910.
  9. ^ Hunter, Louis C.; Bryant, Lynwood (1991). A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1730-1930, Vol. 3: The Transmission of Power. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-08198-9. 
  10. ^ a b c d e f Jerome, Harry (1934). Mechanization in Industry, National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c5238.pdf 
  11. ^ IC Engine 20% efficient
  12. ^ Electrical engines with combined power converter / motor at 86% efficiency
  13. ^ 1 liter of fuel yielding 100 arms for 24 hours, when efficiency is 40% which is never
  14. ^ Home documentary by Yann Arthus Bertrand too stating that 1 liter of fuel yields 100 arms for 24 hours; probably from same calculation
  15. ^ Combined work capability of human vs machines
  16. ^ Mechanization and its level

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Jerome, Harry (1934). Mechanization in Industry, National Bureau of Economic Research 
  • Hunter, Louis C.; Bryant, Lynwood (1991). A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1730-1930, Vol. 3: The Transmission of Power. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-08198-9. 

Translations:

Mechanize

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Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - give mekanisk præg, mekanisere

Nederlands (Dutch)
mechaniseren, routine maken, van (gewapende) motorvoertuigen voorzien, produceren m.b.v. machines

Français (French)
v. tr. - mécaniser

Deutsch (German)
v. - mechanisieren

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - μηχανοποιώ, εκμηχανίζω, καθιστώ κάτι μηχανοκίνητο

Italiano (Italian)
meccanizzare

Português (Portuguese)
v. - mecanizar

Русский (Russian)
механизировать

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - mecanizar

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - mekanisera, motorisera

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
使机械化, 使呆板

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 使機械化, 使呆板

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 자동화하다, 기계로 제조하다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 機械化する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يؤلل, يزود بآلات‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮מיכן, צייד במכונות‬


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