MT Magazine July/August 2022

FEATURE STORY

IMTS ISSUE

14

The electricity was AC. George Westinghouse had won the bid for the fair, beating Thomas Edison and his DC technology. In the Hall of Machinery there were 12 1,000-horsepower generators. Westinghouse had worked with Nikola Tesla on developing the polyphase system of AC power generation and transmission. It is argued that the demonstration of AC power to the more than 25 million attendees established it rather than DC, much to Edison’s chagrin. It could be argued that the 264-foot Ferris wheel proved the mechanical ingenuity of engineers, and the use of electricity showed the transformative power of technology. Then and Now Which brings us to IMTS 2022. Just as the timing of the World’s Columbian Exposition was off (but what’s one year in 400?), this analogy might be imperfect. The purpose of the first IMTS, formally the National Machine Tool Builders’ Exposition, held in 1927, was to serve as a science fair, as the machines were not for sale. IMTS 2022 will run from Sept. 12 to 17 – six days, not six months. There will be more than 2,000 exhibitors, not some 65,000. By contemporary trade show standards, IMTS 2022 has a massive footprint: It will take place in the entire McCormick Place complex with some 1.3 million square feet of space taken up. And while there were some 25 million people at the 19th-century expo and there were but 129,000 people at IMTS 2018 – an IMTS record – it needs to be kept in mind that while the World’s Columbian Exposition was meant to draw in anyone and everyone, IMTS 2022 is focused on those people who are currently involved in manufacturing technology (or who will be in the not-too-distant future – as in students). Both events include international exhibitors and attendees. But this comparison with the World’s Columbian Exposition is not simply predicated on the city of Chicago.

The Purpose Rather, the point of the 19th century expo was predicated on the concept of showing advances in technology that would be of use to broad portions of the population. A point of IMTS 2022 is to show attendees advances in manufacturing technology that are similarly germane to broad portions of durable-goods producers: To show the democratization of manufacturing technology. Over the past several years, there have been advances in tooling, machinery, automation, and systems that were once largely in the purview of big manufacturers, such as those in automotive and aerospace. This equipment was both comparatively complicated and expensive, such that it took the resources of large companies to productively deploy it. But just as has been the case in other types of technology, there has been a decided drive on behalf of the providers to make this far more accessible to people. Tech Advances Think of computer tech. In 2003 the first 64-bit processor for personal computers was released, the Athlon 64 from AMD. While that was special, it is now expected by anyone who is buying a PC to browse the web – which really wasn’t a consumer consideration until Netscape released its browser in 1994. Google bought Android in 2005. Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. Which of those things don’t affect you right now? That technology has gone from only being for specialists to essentially everyone.

Again, while the analogy isn’t exact, and as the “everyone” in this case would be manufacturing professionals, it is clear that the same sorts of changes have been occurring in production technology.