Tedium Highlight in Manufacturing history: The great debate between interchangeable parts and disposability. 

Follow on Twitter Follow on Facebook
Tag results: Manufacturing history

Never A Dull Moment

How sharp knives disappeared from the dining room table, only to return, centuries later, in steak knife form. Kings, cardinals, and factories are involved.

Manufactured Gloss

Our continuing journey to write a Tedium glossary takes us through the manufacturing process—and the weird products it sometimes led to.

Math + The Mechanics

The story of the Curta Calculator, a stylish portable mechanical calculator that doesn’t use electricity and has a surprisingly dramatic origin story.

Who Sets the Prices?

The legal decision that fostered the idea of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and why it still sticks around even though that decision was overturned.

The Hard Pivot

Considering companies that ended up in a far different place from where they started. You know, like Samsung, Shell, Hasbro, and American Express.

Disposability Interchange

Considering the tension between disposability and interchangeable parts, and how right to repair opponents are trying to have it both ways.

The Can That Always Can

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.

Byproduct Breakdown

When you hear about economic struggles involving pork or oil caused by COVID-19, it’s worth remembering that their byproducts are everywhere. Yes, everywhere.

Pens for Pennies

How cheap ballpoint pens, which are easy to lose and easy to make, changed the world due to their sheer disposability. They're really freaking cheap.

Click, Clack

The famed mechanical keyboard switch manufacturer Cherry has been around since the 1950s—but it's only been defined by keyboard switches in the past decade.

Rough Edges

Why ceramic coffee cups have a spot at the bottom that’s rough to the touch, despite the rest of the cup being glossy. It's kiln you that you don't know.

A Big Idea, Synthesized

Casio claimed it could fit the sounds of dozens of musical instruments into its keyboards. Maybe it wasn't totally true, but the Casiotone gave us a lot.

Junk Food’s Happiest Accident

For more than 50 years, cheese curls have been a staple of the modern junk food diet. You won't believe how we first discovered them.

No Acquiring This Taste

The world's worst flavor was developed in a lab by accident. You've probably never tasted Bitrex, but it's all over your home.

Let 'Er Rip

We wear clothes with clothing tags pretty much daily, but never think about it. Where did they come from? Credit two major forces: Unions and regulators.

Genuine Imitation Leather

It looks like the real thing, but pleather is fake and plastic. Whether or not that bothers you is based on your opinion of leather, probably.

You Probably Don't Understand Watches

If you dislike the Apple Watch, sorry to hear that. Now, let us show you some other watches you definitely can't afford.
Tedium is a labor of love and appreciation.

Is it weird to say we love the internet? Because at Tedium, we love the internet—as a source of never-ending research, a vessel for new ideas, and a great historical deep dive. Since 2015, we’ve been throwing two newsletters a week into inboxes the world over, and count more than 12,000 regular readers. And we’d like to keep it going a while longer, so help by sponsoring an issue or supporting us on Patreon. But please: No backlink requests.

What is Tedium? | Support us on Patreon | Share your ideas! | Privacy Policy | Advertise With Us | RSS feed | Ernie on Mastodon

Disclosure: From time to time, we may use affiliate links in our content—but only when it makes sense. Promise.

P.S.: If you email me asking about doing a guest post or posting a backlink, you forfeit ownership of your site to me.

Proudly built on Craft CMS using the Bulma framework.

Copyright © 2015-2023 Tedium LLC. All rights reserved. Please, try the fish.