Ever since I did a report on the cotton gin when I was a freshman in high school, I’ve been enamored with the way technology marginalizes the human worker.  After enough improvements to the cotton gin, they didn’t even need slaves anymore.

I’m a nerd.  I know.

Anyway, I recently took a history class that focused on the importance of metal in history.  I had to do a report on the evolution of metal forming and spinning since the Bronze Age.

The thing that intrigued me about metal spinning in particular was that it was simply just not made for man to do it with his bare hands.  There is simply a limit to how much a man can do to metal, no matter how much time he has on his hands, which isn’t necessarily the case with textiles and cotton.  Give somebody enough time and they will probably make better textiles and pick the cotton cleaner than any cotton gin ever could.

From what I’ve read, since the advent of the motorized lathe and subsequently the computer aided automatic lathe, there really are no actual metal spinning purists who do it the “old fashioned” way.  Even the most modest hand metal spinning lathes have substantial motors.

And when you take into account practicality, the “old fashioned” way is completely obsolete.  Motorized and automated technology produced automatic multi spindle machines, or screw machines, that can produce parts at an incredible rate.

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