Whose Standard?

摘要

The only historical illustration that has stood out is Eli Whitney's famous demonstration of the interchangeability of musket parts made in his factory during the Revolutionary War. The American army experienced a great shortage of muskets during the war. They were assembled from some basic manufactured components (barrels drilled by machines, etc.) but were individually fitted in a very slow process. After the war, the government saw the wisdom of stocking arms for use by an organized military: the first arms race. They offered a prize and a very lucrative contract to any company that could manufacture muskets with interchangeable parts. This meant rifles could be rapidly assembled in volume, and when needed, easily repaired in the field. The advantages of a single caliber, uniform, issued rifle was not lost on the government. The winner of the competition was Eli Whitney, of later cotton gin fame. In a demonstration, he took different parts of muskets from several different barrels and assembled muskets from the mix of various mass-produced components. This was the beginning of his reputation and contributed much to his later fame and ability to market his other ideas. What has always been puzzling is how he could make multiple parts without an accurate set of gauges and measuring tools. In the 1960s, scholars researching this question discovered he had duped the government and had individually hand-fitted all the parts so they could each be interchanged with each other in a special show lot.