It's the 1950s and California has a problem.

Actually, they have three problems.

First, there aren't enough laborers willing to work cheap enough to harvest all the tomatoes.

Second, the machine they built to harvest the tomatoes crushes them instead.

And third, spherical tomatoes, ripe, red, round tomatoes are painting the neck.

They roll around on the conveyor belt.

They're difficult to slice to make perfect slices for the fast food nation that was being built.

So Jack Hanna at UC Davis got to work.

He created VF-145, otherwise known as the square tomato.

Not a perfect cube, but a lot more square than a typical tomato.

Easy to harvest, easy to slice, easy to sort.

Who cares that it didn't taste that good?

Hey, it's Matt and this is a special archived episode of a Kimbo.

Industrialism is sort of a miracle.

It's been around longer than any of us have been alive.

And it has transformed our world more than anything else in recorded history.

The idea is simple.

A system, a manufacturing system can be put to work to make things better, faster, and cheaper.

So Henry Ford said you can have a really good car for $750.

Or if you want to, you can buy a handmade car that in many ways isn't as good for $2000.

The Frederick Taylor, the pioneer of scientific management,

brought his stopwatch into any factory that would have him.

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