Someone mentioned the inventor & entrepreneur Joesph Gerber as being the developer of numerically-controlled machines for fabric cutting, as well as a lot of other things. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen Gerber plotting machines in the past, but had never thought about the man behind the company name. He sounded interesting enough that I bought a copy of his biography, written by his son David Gerber: The Inventor’s Dilemma. And it’s an interesting story indeed.
Joseph Gerber escaped Nazi Austria in 1940, coming to the United States where he completed high school in just two years while learning English and holding down full-time and part-time jobs. While a junior at RPI, he developed his first commercially-successful invention: the Gerber Variable Scale, which assists in multiplying graphical data by constants. He later invented and marketed the Gerber Derivimeter, used to find the derivative at points on a curve and the Gerber Equameter, used to determine the equation of a curve based on a mathematical series such as Fourier series and polynomial expansions. His company went on the pioneer the development of digital plotters and digitizers to convert graphical data into digital form. Overall, he and the company he founded were granted more than 600 patents. Probably Gerber’s most significant work was in the development of numerically-controlled fabric cutters and numerically-controlled sewing machines–the trade magazine Bobbin Journal referred to him as Apparel’s Thomas Edison.
Researching Gerber and his accomplishments also led me to a remarkable trove of radio-program audio recordings from 1935 to 1953, the DuPont-sponsored series Cavalcade of America. This link contains 745 episodes of the program–the Gerber episode is #613, titled Young Man in a Hurry. It was broadcast in 1950, following Gerber’s invention of the Variable Scale but quite early in his career. More about the series and the Gerber episode here.
The Cavalcade of America series continued on television from 1952-1957, and quite a few episodes can be found on YouTube.
The idea that substantial parts of the apparel and shoe industries might return to the US has been derogated in some quarters, but one or two creative and entrepreneurial individuals of the Joe Gerber class might well make it possible.
Here’s a new approach to making shoes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4k23UClZvE
…marketed as a premium product w benefits of fit,performance, and environmental benefits..but also appears to clearly reduce labor requirements.
(I’m an ON Holdings shareholder)
For textile goods, there’s limited incentive to develop automated technology when there are many millions of people in various places willing to do it for cheap.
I imagine that sewing together a knit tee shirt probably takes about as much dexterity sewing together tissue in surgery. Robotic surgery has been taking place for many years and the sewing part was one of the biggest challenges. Those robots are very expensive and, objectively, slow on an inches per minute basis. Of course, it’s not really the sewing that is the problem, that’s been mechanized forever it seems. It’s bringing together two or more edges of flimsy, stretchy fabric to form a neat seam.
Having. for some reason, spent a few hours watching various artists restoring old style shoes and boots, It’s clear that any sane person that started trying to automate that process wouldn’t be sane when he gave up. Now, even high quality, expensive shoes and boots comprise many fewer pieces. Cheaper footwear is drastically simplified with molded components and adhesives taking the place of most stacking, stitching and nailing. 3D printed shoes are a thing, although I haven’t seen any that I’d care to try. Here, again, the race is between cheap labor and expensive machines.
The LightSpray process for the new ON shoe is sort of 3D printing, though not of the usual layer-by-layer kind.
Youtube wasn’t cooperating when I made my comment, I could view the first 30 seconds and that made plain that they were using some sort of additive manufacturing for some parts. Clearly, they have developed an innovative way to address the problem of breathabilty from polymeric materials. Sort of how nonwoven wiping rags are made.
It will be interesting to see if they can translate from the very niche running shoe market to more mundane feet. Serious runners will happily buy a new pair of shoes every week without normal regard for cost to shave a few seconds. It’s a little like Tesla starting in the “super car” market and working down to daily drivers. Time will tell; how’s that for an original observation?
I was also struck by their obligatory kowtow to the gods of “climate change”. They have traded using a fractional, non-edible part of a cow for robots and petrochemicals which somehow reduces their carbon footprint to produce a high cost, short life, completely non-essential vanity good.