I am pleased to cross-post this piece with Factory Settings, the new Substack from IFP.

Chapter 1 of my book “The Origins of Efficiency”

The early history of the United States runs along with the first years of the railroad.

From roughly the end of the US Civil War until the late 1950s, the United Kingdom was one of the biggest shipbuilders in the world.

Last week I wrote about the unexplained rise in pedestrians killed by motor vehicles in the US.

My book, the Origins of Efficiency, is out today!

It’s unfortunately not uncommon for pedestrians to be killed by cars in the US.

One of the most important inventions of the 19th century was mauve dye, the first synthetic aniline dye.

The last several years in the US have seen a dramatic increase in electricity prices.

The Manhattan Project, the US program to build an atomic bomb during WWII, is one of the most famous and widely known major government projects: a survey in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb as the top news story of the 20th century. Virtually everyone knows that the project built the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And most of us probably know that the bomb was built by some of the world’s best physicists, working under Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos in New Mexico. But the Manhattan Project was far more than just a science project: building the bombs required an enormous industrial effort of unprecedented scale and complexity. Enormous factory complexes were built using hundreds of millions of dollars worth of never-before-constructed equipment. Scores of new machines, analytical techniques, and methods of working with completely novel substances had to be invented. Materials which had never been produced at all, or only produced in tiny amounts, suddenly had to be manufactured in vast quantities.

But there are also some issues with how the Berkeley Lab report is estimating it.

Ford’s status as a large-volume car producer began with the predecessor to the Model T: the Model N, a four-cylinder, two-seater car initially priced at $500. At the time, the average car in the US cost more than $2,000, and it seemed nearly unimaginable that a car with the capabilities of the Model N could cost so littl

Water infrastructure often gets less attention and focus than other types of infrastructure.

I’m happy to announce that my book, The Origins of Efficiency, is now (officially) available for preorder, and will be released on September 23rd. You can preorder on Amazon, Stripe, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.com.

Industrial improvement systems — strategies for making a business more profitable, more efficient, or better operated — rise and fall in popularity over time.

As of 2023, the US has around 142.3 million housing units: roughly one home for every 2.4 people in the country.

Since 2017, China has been the largest shipbuilder in the world.

An early version of the US Senate budget bill which passed last week included a provision to sell off between 2 and 3 million acres of federal land in western states, ostensibly to be used for homebuilding.

Earlier this month I came across the following graphic, originally posted on Reddit in 2022, showing the state of housing affordability in the US.

To operate reliably, the US electrical grid needs to balance supply and demand: to make sure, at any given moment, that the amount of electricity demanded by homes, businesses, and factories is equal to the amount being supplied by nuclear reactors, gas turbines, and other types of power plants.

When Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for the telephone on February 14th, 1876, he beat competing telephone developer Elisha Gray to the patent office by just a few hours.

In the US solar energy has steadily risen in how much of our electricity it supplies.

And conquered the shipbuilding industry in the process

This is a policy proposal written by Austin Vernon and myself for improving US naval shipbuilding.

Among the most impressive manufacturing achievements of the US during WWII was the number of ships it produced.