20 and 21 Century: German Inventions and Industries

                                      

20 and 21 Century: German Inventions and Industries

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

                 The contract was signed on December 14, 1960, and went into use on September 30,1961. The organization promotes policies designed to:

 

– to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising

standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and

thus to contribute to the development of the world economy;

 

– to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member

countries in the process of economic development; and

 

– to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory

basis in accordance with international obligations

 

             The original Member countries of the OECD are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

 

              The Second Industrial Revolution was characterized by the building out of railroads, large scale iron and steel production, widespread use of machinery in manufacturing, greatly increased use of stem power, use of oil, beginning of electricity and by electrical communications. The Second Industrial Revolution saw rapid industrial development, primarily in Britain, Germany, and the United States.

 

 

The German Empire came to rival Britain as Europe's primary industrial nation during this period. Since Germany industrialized later, it was able to model its factories after those of Britain, thus making more efficient use of its capital and avoiding legacy methods in its leap to the envelope of technology. Germany invested more heavily than the British in research, especially in chemistry, motors and electricity. The German concern system (known as Konzerne), being significantly concentrated, was able to make more efficient use of capital. Germany was not weighted down with an expensive worldwide empire that needed defense. Following Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, it absorbed parts of what had been France's industrial base.

By 1900 the German chemical industry dominated the world market for synthetic dyes. The three major firms BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes, along with the five smaller firms. In 1913 these eight firms produced almost 90 percent of the world supply of dyestuffs, and sold about 80 percent of their production abroad. The three major firms had also integrated upstream into the production of essential raw materials and they began to expand into other areas of chemistry such as pharmaceuticals, photographic film, agricultural, chemicals, and electrochemicals.      Top-level decision-making was in the hands of professional salaried managers, leading Chandler to call the German dye companies "the world's first truly industrial enterprises". There were many spinoffs from research—such as the pharmaceutical industry, which emerged from chemical research.