when you see a graph that goes like this
you think something very special
happened right about here and something
indeed did what makes this chart
especially interesting is that it has to
do with our material wealth pretty much
all of it including everything you own
and one of the very few things we can
point to for setting off that huge boom
is right here in a museum in Paris I
want to show you a lathe today and that
might not look or sound like something
crazy awesome but stick with me here and
see if you agree this is one of the most
amazingly important machines ever and it
applies to you and how you live your
life there's also a story of a
mechanical duck with unusual abilities
but we'll get to that later
I'm in the Museu the Arts at MIT da
Museum of Arts and Crafts Paris is
temple to science and learning in a way
this is Paris's MIT that goes back to
1794 if you watch my first video in this
series which you totally should you know
how amazing and unique this institution
is there's thousands of amazing machines
here and I'll talk about some of them in
future videos in that first video in
this series I talked about VUCA song
he's the guy who built the first fully
automatic programmable loom essentially
a weeding robot in the 1750s but all the
glory went to another guy who made minor
improvements on it this is another one
of oku songs fantastic creations an all
metal lathe he made in 1751 now this is
not just any lathe but possibly the
first all-metal lathe with dual V ways
in a carriage and cross-slide ruin by
screws with this simple looking machine
it said that VUCA saw and defined the
principles of the modern lathe as we
know it today ok cool why should I care
I hear you say because lathes are in my
opinion the foundation of the greatest
explosion of wealth you've ever seen and
a big part of the story about why we're
all not working in a field somewhere
unless that's your thing which is
totally cool
if you're not familiar with lathes they
spend the workpiece in a cutting tool
held in a sliding carriage can shape
them often to make them very accurately
round to a specific diameter but also
very smooth you need very round smooth
parts for machinery but if you didn't
have a lathe to make rampart to be
practically impossible to do it by hand
which is why lathes can give you
precision parts very cheaply and quickly
lathes have been around for shaping wood
for hundreds or even thousands of years
but because the early lathes were also
made out of wood they're relatively
flimsy and not suitable for very
accurate work especially in metal which
needs a very strong stiff machine to
work it and the cutting tool is held by
hand so there's little consistency there
were already small all-metal lathes for
clockmaking for a couple hundred years
before this but they were for making
small delicate parts not something you
build industrial machines with which is
the key difference here bukas ons lathe
was ahead of its time by at least fifty
years and set the pattern for lathes
even as we see them today maybe not an
overall appearance but definitely in
function it's the first fully documented
all-metal laid with a slide rest and I
considered to be the first modern lathe
there may have been others which had
some or all these elements previously
but they're lost to history so we can
only speculate the carriage on this
machine moves on to prismatic ways the
inverted V shape put together with the
cross slide that held the cutting tool
that can move in and out very precisely
we have very modern looking lathe
there's even what looks like an early
tool but insert when bucha saw was the
inspector for silk factories in leo
he realized he needed improved rollers
for their mills the heavy copper rollers
were used to crush the silk and give it
the more a pattern that was popular at
the time these rollers were made of
copper and there was no way that wind
lays the day could turn them accurately
so invented this machine
this lathe surely added another decimal
place in precision at least and every
time you can add another decimal place
you can kick off huge changes let me
show you what I mean back to the graph
from the beginning this is a chart of
worldwide per capita income from your
zero until the 1800s the line is pre
flat with almost no growth you can
actually send that flat line back about
in there five thousand years to the
point where humans invented farming so
for about seven thousand years income
was about four hundred to five hundred
dollars per person per year in constant
nineteen ninety dollars worldwide even
as the population grew there was no
growth in income because the
productivity of a person was offset by
the cost to keep that person alive in
times when there was economic surplus it
was quickly consumed with more births no
matter how much the population grew we
were pretty much always running in place
income wise your average person in 1600
was no better off economically than
someone thousands of years earlier this
is what is called the Malthusian trap
and for seven thousand years it was
inescapable no matter what we did until
machine tools like this one changed
everything
if you look at where the uptick starts
you see it's a bit later than the 1750
one of this lathe that's what his early
machine tool started to have a cascading
effect with tools like these and the
other precise industrial machines they
made suddenly one person could produce
what used to take many people to do and
for the first time we could make enough
surplus that we could outpace births
each time a new machine tool adds
another decimal place of accuracy
precision gets cheaper which makes new
products and processes possible and
far-reaching booms of economic growth
kick off and VUCA saans laid represents
one of those moments soon someone
modified a laid that was used for boring
cannons to instead make the smooth
cylinder is needed for steam engines and
then between the steam engines powering
factories and steam locomotives moving
raw material to factories and then goods
to market the line starts to go nearly
vertical in the greatest increase in
wealth we've ever seen
here's why it happened imagine you of a
small town with only farms and then
someone builds a factory in town which
multiplies that workers efforts with
machines some people will leave the
farms to work in the factory others will
leave the farms to do things like build
the roads canals or railroads the
factory needs
the factory also needs carpenters
blacksmiths and machinists power from
coal and machinery from iron means
miners now have lots of work the factory
brings in money which is distributed to
the workers via wages now they could do
something new and exciting like buying
things rather than making them for
themselves which kicks off other
entirely new industries which have
nothing directly to do with the farmer
factory but cater to this new class of
people with money which creates other
new people who could spend money which
repeats this cycle of growth and that's
why you don't work on a farm unless you
do which is cool thank you
this also meant there was a lot of money
around but not enough workers which
means workers wage started to go up
remember the graph what about the few
people left on the farms you bring
automation from the factories to the
farm to multiply the farmers labor this
is why we have things like tractors and
combines it's no accident the first
tractors were giant lumbering steam
engines that were basically the
factory's steam locomotives with wheels
and that's what blows my mind so much
about this lathe it's a very tangible
artefact that lit the fuse of probably
the greatest boom and income and
prosperity we've ever seen the very silk
weaving machines this lathe was helping
to make our some of the very first
machines in a factory which stopped us
from running in place and got us out of
that Malthusian trap and this led to
real change in people's lives but all
this new wealth and machines created
didn't solve all of our problems in fact
it created new ones nor was the wealth
evenly distributed this incredible
period of rapid growth fascinates me as
for the first time people could see the
world changing around them old ways were
falling away and something new was
happening significant change within a
person's lifetime these machines just
didn't bring us new wealth they also
completely changed how we think the very
name for this channel machine thinking
speaks to this exact period when that
line in the chart just starts to turn
upward noticeably it comes from a quote
in Jonathan Hales excellent book the old
way of seeing it reads in 1828 the Fouts
legend obsessed artists and writers in
dozens of works they told the story of
the modern predicament and gain the
power of Industry the
was sacrificing in Seoul it was not the
new machines themselves they feared they
were not yet many it was machine
thinking
the name isn't about artificial
intelligence or that I enjoyed thinking
about how machines are put together well
I do enjoy that too but rather how we
make machines and how when those
machines give us new abilities those
machines in turn make us
you introduce new technology whether
it's computer in your pocket giving you
instant access to the world's knowledge
or a cheap car suddenly available to the
masses which let people travel freely
for the first time which changed
everything the way you even think is
changed by those machines just being
there and you're a different person for
it and of course how I think about
machines themselves is important the
things required to build that first lay
that were lying around for centuries in
various parts of the world but it took a
new way of thinking about machines to
put them to use in a special way which
led to that huge boom in growth like the
people mentioned in the quote we too can
see waves of change coming and our
reaction isn't always good we'll talk
more about that another time so for me
looking at this lathe it doesn't just
represent the vast wealth and social
changes that was to come but also a huge
shift in how we think consider what we
do with lathes today many are
computer-controlled making parts in a
highly automated way with all their
functions carefully programmed I
remember who made the first highly
automated programmable machine VUCA saw
it be almost no 200 years before we'd
start to stick lathes together with that
level of automation and would take
additional efforts innovations of
countless people the first programmable
machine tools even used punch tape but
now
parts of products we use every day are
made cheaply and quickly this way Lucas
ons machine show clearly at an early
point Industrial Revolution the French
we're doing very well indeed but their
version of machine thinking didn't allow
for the mass adoption of industrial
tools and processes like it soon did in
England England is rightfully so most
closely associate with Industrial
Revolution and their contributions are
innumerable and for a time their output
was second to none but even the English
version of machine thinking could not
match that of what was yet to come
the Americans we use machine tools in a
way so unique that it bears our name the
American system of manufacturing but now
it's used the world over now that the
idea was ours though again it was a
Frenchman honoré LeBlanc who first had
the idea but was unable to implement it
in France but he told the American
ambassador Thomas Jefferson about it who
brought it back to the US where things
went bananas in America where labor was
relatively scarce putting the knowledge
and precision into the machines rather
than a highly skilled workforce made a
ton of sense and took off like wildfire
and her changeable parts division of
labor assembly lines and more quickly
made America an incredibly productive
nation but these are all subjects for
another time if you'll grant me that
initial huge explosion of wealth is
largely the result of machines and
factories and those machines were built
by machine tools and the foundation of
machine tools as lathes and VUCA saans
laid this considering one of the first
truly industrial aids you can understand
why it's so cool that we have it right
here so for me this is why I consider
Lucas on Slade to be the machine that
made everything is it literally the
machine that the entirety of our in
modern industrial world comes from of
course not
there are plenty of other machine makers
and innovators too especially in England
but they came a little later and here's
a case where France had the lead early
on but because of what it did and that
it did it so early and now we have it
right here as proof if I do have to pick
one machine to represent the machine
they made everything I picked this one
and that's why it's so cool it's just
sitting here quietly in a Paris Museum
you
[Music]
we saw in the first video of Lucas on
17:50 weaving machine that completely
changed the textile industry and now his
lathe which is an important part of
early machine tool history which kicked
off that explosive growth but amazingly
that's not even what he's most famous
for that would be a mechanical duck that
could poop
let me explain before he made the lathe
or weeding machine he was renowned for
making automata essentially mechanical
clockwork robots reputed have amazing
abilities automata like this musical
elephant from the 1770s were all the
rage with royalty and the wealthy and
the wealthy paid huge sums for them and
they would go on tours charging
admission to be seen the more
complicated novel or magical they were
the greater the prestige and Bucca songs
were some of the best and it made him
very famous one was a life-sized
Shepherd flute player which used bellows
to blow air through the lips of the
automata and could correctly finger the
notes for 12 different songs another was
a kind of drum player but the final and
considered his masterpiece was the duck
the duck reportedly would look around
flap its wings made of four hundred
parts each appear to eat and drink but
that's not all after eating he would
appear to digest the food and defecate
onto a silver plate and that made the
duck very famous indeed after seeing it
the famous philosopher and writer
Voltaire was moved to write perhaps
wryly without VUCA songs duck you would
have nothing to remind you of the glory
of France it turns out to have been a
ruse though years later when closely
examined it was discovered this was a
mechanical sleight of hand and the waste
was coming from a separate compartment
and not really being digested these
photographs were reportedly found the
archives the museum and may show the
Ducks mechanism but there's debate if
this is really a puka songs duck bukas
aunt eventually tired of his machines
and sold them and sadly they've all now
been lost thankfully we still have many
other things he made his weaving machine
or lathe would have been enough to earn
him a place in history but he did so
much more he truly has earned this
at you of him here or that the street in
front of museum is named in his honor
though he died before this institution
was founded his collection of machinery
would become one of the main initial
seeds at this entire Museum thanks for
watching
I'll see you next time