Productivity Machines - German Appropriations of American Technology from Mass Production to Computer Automation (Schlombs Corinna (Assistant Professor Rochester Institute of Technology))(Paperback / softback)

How productivity culture and technology became emblematic of the American economic system in pre- and postwar Germany.The concept of productivity originated in a statistical measure of output per worker or per work-hour, calculated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A broader productivity culture emerged in 1920s America, as Henry Ford and others linked methods of mass production and consumption to high wages and low prices. These ideas were studied eagerly by a Germany in search of economic recovery after World War I, and, decades later, the Marshall Plan promoted productivity in its efforts to help post-World War II Europe rebuild. In Productivity Machines, Corinna Schlombs examines the transatlantic history of productivity technology and culture in the two decades before and after World War II. She argues for the interpretive flexibility of productivity:
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