Mass Production under China's First Emperor

Attempts to optimize the function, value, and appearance of mass-produced goods—goals associated with modern industrial design—date to as early as China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who harnessed the power of design and mass production in the name of conquest. He is remembered for unifying by force China's warring states in 221 B.C.E. into the most powerful country the world had ever seen. He was also responsible for building the Great Wall of China to protect his new nation's borders from raiding Mongolian invaders. He is even better known, certainly in archaeological circles, for the Terracotta Army that was made to honor him and to protect him in the afterlife. This collection of ceramic funeral sculptures depicting the emperor's army is estimated to have included 8,000 life-sized statues of soldiers and 670 horses, as well as depictions of other members of his vast following, from officials and servants to musicians, singers, and acrobats. Although this army should probably be considered collections of statues rather than expressions of manufacturing design, the figures were essentially factory-produced, using systemized methods of production similar to those used to make serially manufactured functional objects. The figures were also buried with weapons, and around 40,000 bronze spears, swords, crossbows, halberds, and staffs have been recovered by archaeologists so far.

As with the manufacture of the terracotta warriors themselves, the production of their accompanying weapons reveals that Emperor Qin's workforce was organized into highly efficient production teams that used standardization measures and quality-control procedures. The technical knowledge of these Chinese weapon-makers, however, was not confined to equipping the Terracotta Army with weapons—far from it. Recent research has revealed that some of the burial material was actually used in battle and bears the scars to prove it. Emperor Qin's craft workers perfected the art of bronze-making to such an extent that they were able to produce swords that are now considered some of the finest bronze weapons ever made. Because their raw material was of such a high grade, the emperor's craft workers could manufacture swords that were significantly longer than any that had gone before, which gave Qin's soldiers the enormous benefit of 30 percent greater reach and cutting power. Thus the development of better-quality materials enabled the production of better-performing designs, which gave the first Chinese emperor's forces a decisive advantage; this is a recurring theme throughout the story of design—as more advanced materials are invented or discovered, their unique benefits are employed by designers to improve existing designs, thereby creating superior products.

Another reason that Qin was able to achieve his epic conquest of the warring states was that his workers produced weaponry to such precise specifications that their parts were completely interchangeable. If, for example, a section of a crossbow broke in battle, it could be replaced easily with an exactly replicated piece. Similarly, the arrows used by his soldiers had interchangeable shafts so that their arrowheads could be reused even if the shaft had broken. A high degree of manufacturing efficiency and standardization was bolstered by a culture of manufacturing accountability, with workers' output overseen by supervisors to ensure that no defective workmanship was ever allowed to creep into the production system—and if it did, the consequences were severe Precision manufacturing and an exacting quality-control system were used not only for weaponry but also for weights and measures during Qin's reign, and this system of standardized production formed the basis upon which Chinese design and manufacturing would flourish over the succeeding centuries.

Over the next thousand years, Chinese craft workers used methods similar to these to design and manufacture ceramics and bronze wares that were technically far superior to their European equivalents. The delicate blue-and-white porcelain crockery imported from China into Europe in increasing quantities during the 1700s must have seemed the finest example of refinement and modernity when compared to the heavy and rather primitive earthenware pottery produced in Europe. A capacity for the precise replication of designs is still a defining characteristic of Chinese production, and it can surely be traced back to the first emperor's innovative implementation of rigorous design standards, which became incorporated into the nation's manufacturing culture.