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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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      Rule of three: In the first year after a production order output was bound to 3x. In second year, 6x. In third year, at supply limit: materials and labor.

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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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      Chapter on Six Companies work in construction in pacific islands, and civilian workers role in battle of wake island. Kaiser role there was supplying cement in bulk carriers instead of bags, for efficiency, assuming the risk. Now into liberty ships story https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island …

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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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      Summer of 1941: 4000 workers in Richmond yards. After Pearl Harbor, by end of 1942: 80,000. 20x. WW2 manufacturing tech was highly scalable with relatively low-skill/low-training labor. Kinda like driving Uber today I guess.

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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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      Fascinating story of race between 2 Kaiser shipyards, Richmond 2 (Clay Bedford) and Portland (Edgar Kaiser) to drive production faster using prefab deck house sections and assembly line techniques. Time cut from 220 days to 10 over a couple of years. https://www.armed-guard.com/teal.html 

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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 30
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      Bedford takes back record with Robert E Peary built in < 5 days. Something of an engineered PR stunt of course, but these record setting races did drive genuine advances in construction techniques. China is in this mode today. Like those Wuhan hospitals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Robert_E._Peary …

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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 7
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      Alright let’s pick this up again. Now into the story of Knudsen successor Don Nelson, ex Sears guy who learned how 135k products in the Sears catalog were made and ran the WIB.

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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      Nelson faced down trust-busting threats from Roosevelt AG and FDR eventually suspended trust-busting for the war. Also fought Truman on hiring of dollar-a-year crowd. Basically anti-corporatism suspended. By end of 1942 US was producing more arms than all 3 axis powers combined

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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      Interesting. Massive levels of direct open cooperation among dozens of aircraft makers. Kinda like Silicon Valley with open source. Sorta open source mechanical and industrial engineering under wartime pressure.

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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 8
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      Now reading about Andrew Jackson Higgins who designed 92% of the small boats used in ww2. Landing craft, PT boats etc. Hitler called him the new Noah.

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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Aluminum production went from 327m lbs to 2.2b lbs between 1939 to 1943. Today the US makes about 1 million metric tons which curiously is about the same (2.2b lb) and imports about 6 million. 🤔

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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 9
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      Henry Kaiser builds a big steel plant in California. Looks like this was when California started transforming into an industrial powerhouse. This plant inspired Ayn Rand’s Rearden Steel in Atlas Shrugged and was also where Terminator 2 climax was filmed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Steel …

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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 10
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          Back to Detroit. After a survey of impressive production statistics, the story of Ford’s Willow Run plant for making B24s, and Knudsen’s evil twin Charles Sorensen who pushed through a dating vision to make planes like cars. 250k parts instead of 15k. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Sorensen …

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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 10
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          Excellent story. Huge problems with production design and labor. And dual purpose of both parts supply and full assembly resolved to focus on latter. Innovation of field modification allowed production to get past constant stream of design mods and hit pace of 300/mo.

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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 10
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          B24 Liberators were less popular with crews than B17s but more capable. VLR version won’t the Atlantic war by closing the gap in coverage for U-boat defense. Funny I never looked up this story despite being in Ann Arbor for years and a fan of WW2 aircraft lore.

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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 10
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          Generally impressive the extent to which this generation of engineering leaders had mastered enormously complex command economy production, just a couple of generations after boutique early mass production. Artisan production craft turned to manufacturing science in 50 years.

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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 10
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          A big part was being asshole dictators. Sorensen was apparently called the Mussolini of Ford. Leaders of this era punched each other up. Still the culture in large-scale manufacturing but less so.

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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 11
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          1943, Big Labor broken as public and even FDR lose patience with strikes disrupting war effort. This is the weakest part of the book. I’m guessing there was more than this cartoon villainy portrait to labor side of war story. Congress passes War Labor Disputes Act over FDR veto.

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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 11
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          More production go brrr. Kinda gets lost in the record breaking that much of this output was used to bomb Germany to rubble and kill on an industrial scale. The engineering story is great but the slaughtering race is depressing to contemplate.

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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 11
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          Parade of stories big and small, from GM’s plant in Iran to assemble trucks for Russia to small garage startup making machine tools and tank parts. The sheer number of things being made by unlikely companies in impressive. Frigidaire made machine guns for eg. Wtf.

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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 11
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          This is mainly a mechanical, metallurgical and chemical engineering story but tons of electrical too. GE made ridiculous numbers of types of lighting, motors, etc. Also bazookas. The generality of industrial capacity in the 1940s is amazing.

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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Key principle: WIB could restrict consumer demand, regulate wages and prices, and stop the production of non-essentials but could not order companies to make specific things. Producers chose how to insert themselves into war effort. Based on skills, benefits.

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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Not a free market but not a command economy either. More like a 50-50 mix. Shape demand and restrict supply but leave matching free. Regulate the macro and boundary conditions but not the micro.

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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Starting in 1941 Business Week apparently ran an advice column responding to reader queries about war materiel production contracts and opportunities

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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          This book published in 1942 was a guide to getting into war production. Your business goes to war.https://books.google.com/books?id=znTMAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA410&lpg=PA410&dq=your+business+goes+to+war&source=bl&ots=Ue0W-Yr6Nr&sig=ACfU3U16AaKmyMNR8porbZuxyWSmVGMYuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk6divl8fqAhVPjp4KHbKJCCEQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=your%20business%20goes%20to%20war&f=false …

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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Half a million new businesses, including Pacific Hut which saved steel by replacing steel Quonset huts with coated plywood huts. The war transformed the economy into modern form.

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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          On the labor side, 20 million migrated to the new industrial base. A step function in industrialization I guess. Up from what was already the highest level in the world. No wonder 1930s and 1950s seem worlds apart. The 50s seem familiar in a way the 30s do not.

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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Wages rose by 70%. About 7 million left farming for military or industry, driving farm automation and fertilizer use. The war was pretty good for the American economy. The US bought itself a modernization via wars wrecking Europe and Asia.

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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Blacks fought for a big social level up: executive order 8802, patchy desegregation in industry (though nothin the military), race riots in Detroit. Book skips rather lightly over this bit. Sounds like a whole other book could be written about this alone.

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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          8802 introduced minimal anti-discrimination protections fir race, color, religion, creed, but not sex. But women made the biggest gains despite headwinds. Kinda tedious how incumbents predictably resist any new entrants to anything.

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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          “By July 1944, 36% of all workers in prime defense contractors were female” Steel: 22.3% GM: 30.7% Kaiser yards start Richmond: 70%

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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          “Rosie the riveter” archetype was really 3 women: Vera Lowe of Lockheed, used in Lockheed PR after a photo appeared in Life magazine Geraldine Huff for “we can do it” ad council poster by J. Howard Miller May Doyle, Norman Rockwell’s model for Saturday Evening Post

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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Shipyard diary of a woman welder, 1944 bestseller. On google bookshttps://books.google.com/books/about/Shipyard_Diary_of_a_Woman_Welder.html?id=9vQ9AQAAIAAJ …

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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Back to Henry Kaiser. Now he’s building baby aircraft carriers and developing a very high public profile. Then ships cracking mysteriously topple his rising reputation. Brittle steel, not his fault.

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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Kaiser partners with Howard Hughes to build an airplane version of the liberty ship, the gigantic Spruce Goose. Spoiler: project went nowhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules …

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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Now into B-29 story, probably the most complex project of the war, costing more than the Manhattan project. Bridge between early and modern planes, except for jet engines it had most familiar features of today.

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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 12
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          Lots of production innovations: multi lining being the big one. Unlike one long assembly line like at the B-24 Willow Run plant. Interesting that this is still how it’s done if you visit the Boeing plant in Everett. 40k parts instead of 25k for B24. Built at 4 plants.

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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 13
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          Serious crash kills test pilot and sets back B-29. Knudsen called in to rescue the program. Wings prone to catching fire.

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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 13
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          Such a lovely plane. Gotta remember though — only plane yo actually drop nuclear bombs in war.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncUdqT8AxY0 …

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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          I will admit I got sucked into watching a bunch of bomber videos on YouTube today. Well back to the book.

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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          Knudsen working through endless B-29 production troubles. Manhattan project starting up. Apparently the B-24 and B-17 couldn’t handle the nuke. So if the B-29 hadn’t made it in time, it would have been British Lancasters that did the job.

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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jul 14
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          “This nation seems to be able to do more by accident than any other country can do on purpose” — Bechtel-Cone B29 modification employee. Shades of British empire described as created in a fit of absent-mindedness. Imma call it imperial serendipity. Or serendipitous imperialism.

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