What has happened to American Engineering and Manufacture? (Part 1)

What has happened to American engineering and manufacture? (Part 1)

Why have we become the Japan and Germany we laughed at in the 50s and 60s?

My first memories of Japan at all, was my parents laughing response to the “Made in Japan” ball point pens that had become so very common during the mid to late 50’s and early 60’s. I, a 10 year old at that time, laughed too, because my parents did. Why did we laugh, or why did they laugh? I just laughed because my mom laughed; I had no clue ~ but I did, and they did and so did most of the rest of America. Laughing, because they (the ball point pens) were JUNK. We laughed at them because we had “Craftsmen” making our products in the USA, or so our powerful companies told us. No big deal. So they were a joke to us.

Who else were we laughing at in our countries’s golden age? Weren’t we just laughing, and having free, unrestricted, Penicillin-has-it-covered sex all the time? What did we have to be sad about? Well, in 1963, there was President Kennedy’s assassination, and those pesky racial issues that were brewing . . . but other than that . . . . Other than that things were pretty good in the early 60s. If you had a trade (that is a learned Skill) and were good at it you had a job, and most likely a good enough job that your wife could stay home and rase your 2.5 kids ~ ah the good life.

So once again we have to look to the people that had the gall in the 50s and 60s to export something to us! So there was also Germany that had decided to start sending us the “Bug,” VW beetle to be precise, but from the mid 50s well into the later 60s we laughed at that thing. Small, lacking amenities like  functional heaters, windshield defrosters, functional windshield wipers, and other things most people thought were necessary in a car. So we laughed at them. The really funny thing was that, while some of Detroit’s cars were well made at this time, somewhat durable in fact, they had (what I started to call even then) the “American Problem”. Bigger is better, and the related, new issue of “if we make it too well we won’t re-sell them quick enough to grow at a fantastically unrestricted rate . . . .”

In the case of the Junk Japanese pens, the reason they were junk was because the Japanese of the time though all we cared about was how much it cost. So quality costs money, more money up front means a more expensive product at the market. So they did what they though we wanted. After some years of this, they changed their entire philosophy of manufacturing. We will see the results in a later post.

The VW bug was a different story, to an extent. It was Very well designed mechanically, but not so much in the sexy and attractive areas. No one was running out yelling “Oh, I have to have one of these!” They were certainly not Corvettes or Mustangs, but they did two things Very Well: 1)they ran and Ran, and RAN, in short they just ran. Then 2) if for some reason they did break, they were very easy to fix, yourself. Well engineered, designed to last.

So what happened to us?

(Read part Two and Three to find out)