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发表于2024-11-07
An American Biography pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2024
FOREWORD<br >by Robert Kanigel<br >VII<br >little to the left, the man<br >at the service station sig-<br > nals you with a wiggle of his fingers. Your car needs a<br > new muffler, or new brakes, and he s piloting you onto<br > the lift s beefy steel tracks. Soon, with a hydraulic whoosh<br > or an electric motor s Whirr, the car s in the air and the<br > mechanic, heedless of two tons of steel perched inches<br > above his head, is at work beneath it.<br > The lift lifts. The car stays up.<br > And nobody--not you, not the mechanic, not any-<br > body--thinks much about it, this most ordinary of<br > miracles.<br > Until his retirement in 1973,Warren Webster had for<br > nearly half a century helped direct the fortunes of a mid-<br > sized Midwestern company that made--still makes--jacks<br > and lifts. Like those that lift your car in the service bay;<br > or crates and cartons off the factory floor; or railroad cars<br > in the maintenance yard.<br > No rocket engines spewing flame for Mr. Webster and<br > his company. No hip-hugging jeans or high-end audio<br > speakers. Nothing glamorous or trendy:just ordinary jacks<br > and lifts that are mostly hidden behind factory gates, out<br > of sight and mind.Yet, without them, and all the other<br > faceless foot soldiers of modern industrial fife---the valves,<br > induction motors, lathes, and winches--everything stops.<br > Without them, human strength butts up against its limits<br > and it s back to the caves for us.<br > Warren Webster s company, Joyce-Cridland, known<br > today as Joyce/Dayton, was and is a mid-sized compa-<br > ny-gigantic compared to the corner grocery, minute<br > beside the oil companies and automobile manufacturers<br > on whose whims it long depended. Big enough to fig-<br > ure prominently in its industry, small enough that an eco-<br > nomic slump barely recorded by the history books could<br > feel like a long, shuddering earthquake. Small enough<br > that, over the years, Webster himself did everything from<br > designing tools, to selling, to overseeing the company s<br > finances.<br >
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An American Biography pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2024