historical background

Dear Friends,
the tread "2. trivia of the day" is dropped now. It was an attempt to
present a historical background information in a funny way but at least
I want to give the solution here.

In my opinion the knowledge of historical background explains very much
about attitudes and motives and eases understanding in many daily life
situations.

It is a sad matter of fact that many inventions and technical
improvements have their origin in wars. And the same rules for
industrial standards.
Industrial Standards play a very big role in our vocation and hobby,
without them we wouldn't be able to do what we do. Did you never wonder
why the DIN is so militarily obeyed?

Only 100 years ago there were nearly no standards, if at all company
standards.
In a catalogue of one of my tool providers he put an extract of the
first catalogue of the company. Around 1905 he claims: "We proudly
pronounce that all of our bolts and nuts come in pairs perfectly
matched!" (would you be able to work having to buy screws and nuts that
are matched pair by pair?)

In Germany to that time there existed only the REFA "Reichsauschuss für
Arbeitsstudien" (Imperial Committee board for labour studies) which was
founded around 1880 to 1895. It is still operating and is dedicated to
the elaboration of work prepare, production planing, time and movement
studies etc.
There is no german engineer who leaves university without absolving at
least one of their courses. (my personal synonym is: "always somebody
else gets the official awards" - Henry Ford and the Japanese SHITSUKE
simply applied their work in their own way)

Here the story of DIN:

When the first world war started german army was equipped with 127
(123?) different kinds of light fire weapons and used 23 (27?) different
types of ammunition. Can you imagine the logistic problems? Statistic
tells that at least 70.000 german soldiers were burnt in the first 5
month of the war because their regiments were supplied with enough
ammunition BUT THE WRONG ONES!!

As I understand, something similar happened to the British and French
Armies too.

In early 1915 in a great hurry the whole german weapon industry was
reorganized, lined up and standardized.
The number of weapons and ammunitions was drastically cut down and
production tolerances were prescripted to the factories.
It was the first nation wide industrial standard. This was the beginning
of DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norm) (it possibly had a different name in
the initial). Still during the war it was applied to most of the german
industry.

As understandable, not necessarily the best quality was delivered,
because the industry was forced to push out maximum production.
One of the first results of this standardization that got delivered to
the army was the machine gun type 08 from the year 1915.
It was rugged, inexact, frequently the barrel got stuck and a shot blew
back.
That is why 0815 became THE SYNONYM of "THE STANDARDIZED MEDIOCRITY" in
Germany.

Still today if something is made according to industrial standards it
must not necessarily mean that it is made of good quality.

And at the same time the above told story is the one of the reasons why
DIN (Valid synonym: DAS IST NORM (that is norm)) is so militarily
obeyed.
Actually Germany is so over ruled that it is very difficult to develop a
new product, because everything has to fulfil all kind of prescriptions,
standards and laws and may not interfere with patents of someone else.

There are quite a few other things we have to do with, that might be
interesting to look behind the background.

For example did you know that certain CNC controls until mid 80's where
under a US military ban that did not permit their exportation?
The Hillier-mill I will have to realign next week was once down for 6
month because the owner had to get a special permit from the
US-government in order to be able to import one replacement board of the
control.
It sounds nuts but it is true!

Things like this make me believe that the members of this group are
highly privileged. Because we are living in peace, in relatively stable
democracies and are allowed to do what we want how we want.

Only if there is a demand I might dig out some other interesting
background information that somehow have to do with our hobby
(vocation).*
And I am sure it makes some things easier to understand.

Good luck to everyone.
Sven Peter



*PS. As long I am not told again: "Stay to the subject."


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