This week, a lecture about the economic history of the Industrial Revolution in the United

States and Great Britain.

The really big innovation of the 19th century was not the steam engine, nor the railroad, nor

any specific product, but rather the system of machine production and the way in which the

leading economies of the world generalize from that, they use the processes to make other

things.

More with George Mason University professor, John Nye, in a moment.

Okay, let's get started.

In this second half of the material, we're going to be discussing mass production

and the American system of manufacturers.

Now, as you well know, there are differences in the way economists and historians discuss issues.

In particular, I would sort of say historians place a great emphasis on archival information,

descriptive statistics, and testimony that was contemporary to the time.

In contrast, social scientists, especially economists,

look very much for big overarching themes or a framework that will connect it together.

And sometimes that means ignoring the details of the specifics of the historical events that are involved.

And what we're going to try to do is to try to bring both in today by looking at a debate,

or rather a literature on mass production and the assembly line,

that as articulated by economists, but then using that framework to think about the issues

by using as examples a couple of the major historical transformations in several industries.

In particular, we're going to talk about both the firearms industry as well as the typewriter.

Now, one of the things we should probably first talk about is something called the American

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