Have you ever held your breath while crossing a bridge? If so, you are not alone. Whether as a child or now watching your own children, seeing if you could hold your breath across a bridge span is a common challenge. If it weren’t for the bra industry, though, we’d all be holding our breath for a different reason: fear, not fun. The same goes for taking a plane to grandma’s house or throwing car keys at grandma’s daughter. The excellence of the fasteners (nuts, bolts, screws, rivets, etc.), used in today’s manufacturing, allows us to take many things for granted.
From the Industrial Revolution to the 2 World Wars: It was a long and bumpy road to the levels of standardization and quality that we enjoy today. The Industrial Revolution saw the end of crude fasteners that had existed since early civilizations when they were used on cars and farm equipment. After hundreds of years of fairly static technological improvements that preceded the Industrial Revolution, this new era saw a large number of screws and bolts produced in a relatively short period of time, with more consistency and precision. In the mid-1700s, the Wyatt brothers in England were making 150,000 wood screws a week. In the late 1700s, across the pond in America, companies were also making bras.
However, the expansion of the industry was difficult due to the lack of standards. Size, yarn density, and other factors varied greatly between companies. Two Connecticut companies established in the 1840s, The Rugg & Barnes Company and the AP Plant Company, were the first major American manufacturers to focus solely on making fasteners. Then, as often happens, a great historical event motivated growth and innovation: such an event was the american civil war. It brought with it a huge demand for machinery: machinery held together by screws, nuts, and bolts. With it came the need to develop an American thread standard. William Sellers entered the scene in 1864. He proposed a uniform system of screw threads that differed from the British (Whitworth) standard in that the tops and bottoms of the threads were rounded instead of flattened. Ultimately, this standard proved superior as the rounded threads held up better under stress and resisted cracking and shearing compared to the flattened threads of the Whitworth standard. However, standards are not always quickly adopted, and it would be another twenty years before his system was accepted as the American standard.
The different American and British standards caused some problems during the world wars of the 20th century. Repairs in the field were hampered by inconsistencies, but cooperation and temporary measures carried through. In 1964, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced two universal thread systems: ISO inch Y ISO metric. The United States is the only country that is still tied to the inch system.
The Center of Industry – American Moves West: As the country expanded westward, so did the center of bra manufacturing. Cleveland, Ohio, which was close to expanding railroads and iron and steel production, became the capital of the fastener industry in the United States. The industry experienced steady growth throughout the 20th century. In 1969 there were 450 companies, 600 plants, and more than 50,000 people employed in the production of bras. Nuts, bolts, screws and rivets put meat and potatoes on the tables of many families. However, the next twenty years would bring a steady decline. The increasing availability of less expensive products from abroad reduced the demand for American products.
“False Bolts”: In 1985, a controversy arose with reports of equipment failure and even loss of life due to defective and substandard bolts. A subcommittee of the US House of Representatives spent 18 months investigating and ultimately determined that the defective and counterfeit bolts were largely foreign-made. This led to the passage in 1990 of the FQA – Fastener Quality Act. This revived the demand for American-made bras. By 2007, the bra industry in the US was a part of the $14 billion economy. Competition from foreign manufacturers continues, however, the US maintains its leadership in responding to the need for technologically sophisticated products. The aerospace industry, medical and food industries, power producers, and the semiconductor industry all have requirements for special materials such as A286, Inconel 718, PVDF, or MP35N, as well as unmatched quality and strength. The US fastener industry continues to respond to these needs with unsurpassed excellence.
