English system of manufacturing
Encyclopedia
The English system of manufacturing was an early system of industrial production that required skilled machinists who were required to produce parts from a design or model. But however skilled the machinist, parts were never absolutely identical, and each part had to be manufactured separately to fit its counterpart. This was almost always done by one person who produced the completed item from start to finish.

The growth of the use of Interchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting...

 and mass production
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

 led to the system disappearing from mainstream industry.
Mass production using interchangeable parts was first achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel
Marc Isambard Brunel
Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, FRS FRSE was a French-born engineer who settled in England. He preferred the name Isambard, but is generally known to history as Marc to avoid confusion with his more famous son Isambard Kingdom Brunel...

 in cooperation with Henry Maudslay
Henry Maudslay
Henry Maudslay was a British machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology.-Early life:...

, and Simon Goodrich, under the management of (with contributions by) Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham
Samuel Bentham
Sir Samuel Bentham was a noted English mechanical engineer and naval architect credited with numerous innovations, particularly related to naval architecture, including weapons...

 the Inspector General of Naval Works at Portsmouth Block Mills
Portsmouth Block Mills
The Portsmouth Block Mills form part of the Portsmouth Dockyard at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and were built during the Napoleonic Wars to supply the British Royal Navy with pulley blocks. They started the age of mass-production using all-metal machine tools and are regarded as one of the...

 at Portsmouth Dockyard for the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic War. By 1808 annual production had reached 130,000 sailing blocks
Block (sailing)
In sailing, a block is a single or multiple pulley. One or a number of sheaves are enclosed in an assembly between cheeks or chocks. In use a block is fixed to the end of a line, to a spar or to a surface...

.

This method of working did not catch on in general manufacturing in Britain for many decades, and when it did it was imported from America, and became known as the American system of manufacturing
American system of manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. It involved semi-skilled labor using machine tools and jigs to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance, which could be assembled with a minimum of time...

, even though it originated in England.
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