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"No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

construction-physics.com

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Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#3

Post by davidthewatson »

I'm happy to see the link here as I was curious about the subject given that my career started in US Steel's data center in Pittsburgh.

I'm saddened by the fact that this retelling seems mostly negative and ignores a large part of US Steel's evolution into USX. The retelling is subtractive whether you view Marathon Oil's involvement as a positive complementary asset play at the time or a negative given the history of its divestiture.

I can say that there was innovation in the data center where I worked in the evolution from manual human mainframe era data center operations to token ring networks of PC API's along with abstraction and automation via glue code.

The minimization of manual human labor as people retired is likely lost to the history books unless one of my old technical collaborators decides to write a book in retirement.

The CMU kids I worked with at US Steel's data center in Pittsburgh were just as smart as the ones I worked with in the software industry from Boston to Seattle.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#5

Post by a1o »

Wasn't US Steel who commissioned the books from a SciFi illustrator to ensure that lots of reference drawing illustrations would have steel in the future and got these books for free available to anyone who called, and they ended up getting famous in the film industry so people ended up always designing futuristic movies with things made of steel like ships and vehicles?

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#6

Post by pjscott »

erehweb wrote: post #2

Reminiscent of the business school joke - What does US Steel make? The answer is not "steel", but "money", that being the point of any company.

Although it's true, that's a hazardous way of thinking. If they had put more of their focus on making steel, keeping up with the technological advances rather than being dragged along grudgingly, perhaps they'd be making more money these days.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#9

Post by legitster »

My grandfather worked in a metal shop for 30 years after he served in Korea. I remember him telling me they switched to Chinese made steel in the 70s because of the quality problems they were having with American made steel. Being out West, they were somewhat more free from the political/social/union pressure to use American commodities.
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