Standardization in 1929
I’m browsing through my new (to me) Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, published in 1929. I picked this up for a very reasonable price from our local book sale, the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library, where I volunteer. I really don’t know where I’m going to find the shelf space for these 24 volumes, but the illustrations are great. Plus seeing the snapshot of things as they were 80 years ago is pretty cool.
At random last night I picked up volume 21 (SORD to TEXT) and came upon the article titled “Standardization” and caught a glimpse of the world of standards from way back when.
Standardization is here defined as “…setting up standards by which extent, quantity, quality, value, performance, and service may be gauged. Instances are the miles, the hour, the pound, the bushel, and the dollar.” Britannica then quotes from Mechanical Engineering, August 1926, to enumerate the advantages to manufacturers, distributors, and consumers as follows:
“(1) Standardization stabilizes production and employment…
(2) It reduces selling cost…
(3) It enables buyer and seller to speak the same language…
(4) …it promotes fairness in competition…
(5) It lowers unit costs to the public by making mass production possible…
(6) … it makes deliveries quicker and prices lower.
(7) It decreases litigation…”
and etc. all the way down to item 16.
The emphasis of this list, and the rest of the Britannica article, is on reducing variety. A subheading at the end of the article is on Simplification, listing the advantages of “…the commercial elimination of unnecessary variety in sizes, dimensions, grades or qualities of common commodities.” A U.S. Department of Commerce study showed that 80% of business is done in 20% of the varieties in the product line (is this the first use of the 80/20 rule?), and cited the increased business profitability of focusing on the more popular lines and eliminating the rest.
Another interesting tidbit from the article was that the then-future President Herbert Hoover was a standards guy. “Early in 1921, Herbert Hoover, then president of the American Engineering Council (the executive body of the Federated American Engineering Societies), organized a committee of 17 well-known industrial and management engineers to make a survey of waste in the industry.” Hoover was originally a mining engineer, first for the USGS then as a consultant. After the first World War he headed humanitarian efforts in Europe, then later in 1921 was made Secretary of Commerce where he used his post to continue his theme of simplification.