Editing Assembly line (section)

===Late 19th-century steam and electric conveyors===

Steam-powered [[conveyor lift]]s began being used for loading and unloading ships some time in the last quarter of the 19th century.<ref name="Wells1890">{{harvnb|Wells|1890|p=}}{{page needed|date=December 2014}}</ref> Hounshell (1984) shows a {{circa|1885}} sketch of an electric-powered conveyor moving cans through a filling line in a canning factory.

The [[meatpacking]] industry of [[Chicago]] is believed to be one of the first industrial assembly lines (or disassembly lines) to be utilized in the United States starting in 1867.{{sfn|Nibert, 2011|p=200}} Workers would stand at fixed stations and a pulley system would bring the meat to each worker and they would complete one task. [[Henry Ford]] and others have written about the influence of this [[slaughterhouse]] practice on the later developments at Ford Motor Company.{{sfn|Patterson, 2002|pp=71–79}}