Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric is the first full-length history of the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing arm of the Bell System. As a manufacturer in the communications revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Western Electric made new products such as telegraphs, telephones, an early computing machine, radios, radar, and transistors. The book demonstrates, through Western's 1882 acquisition by Bell Telephone, that vertical integration was a lengthy process rather than a single event. It also shows the coming of age of industrial psychology and...

Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric is the first full-length history of the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing arm of the Bell System. As a manufacturer in the communications revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Western Electric made new products such as telegraphs, telephones, an early computing machine, radios, radar, and transistors. The book demonstrates, through Western's 1882 acquisition by Bell Telephone, that vertical integration was a lengthy process rather than a single event. It also shows the coming of age of industrial psychology and...

In the 1940s, the name Henry J. Kaiser was magic. Based on the success of his shipyards, Kaiser was hailed by the national media as the force behind a 'can-do' production miracle and credited by the American public with doing more to help President Roosevelt win World War II than any other civilian. Kaiser also built an empire in construction, cement, magnesium, steel, and aluminum--all based on government contracts, government loans, and changes in government regulations. In this book, Stephen Adams offers Kaiser's story as the first detailed case study of 'government entrepreneurship.'...