The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang united the Chinese continent with currency, consistent measures, and laws, but his biggest accomplishment in the eyes of the Replicator blog is the invention of mass customization.
The emperor commissioned a vast terracotta army to protect his mausoleum. This army consisted of 7000+ figures in the form of soldiers, commanders, bureaucrats, animals, and a variety of other roles that would be found in a well appointed military unit. Producing such a large quantity of statues is a challenge under any circumstances, but the emperor wanted the soldiers to be diverse in appearance to reflect the uniqueness of soldiers in real armies.
From Wikipedia:
Archaeologists have identified at least eight unique head molds that reflect the ethnic diversity of the Qin empire that still exists in China. Before transporting the clay warriors to the kiln to bake them, the craftsman sculpted individual features by hand. Some warriors bear a serene facial expression, while others display a fiercer countenance with distinctive eyes, noses and cheekbones. Even hair and headdress received careful attention. Higher-ranked soldiers boast more elaborate caps and coiffures. Civil servants and armed infantrymen wear simple beanies, for instance, while generals sport pheasant-tail hats that tie beneath their chins in floppy bows.
The excellent podcast “Stuff you Missed in History Class” provides details of the manufacturing process. A 1000+ person assembly line crafted these figures were using a technique we refer to as “Late Stage Differentiation“:
“They had a variety of molds so you had a sense of realism in the soldiers. Some were small and some were bigger and they used different kinds (of molds) for different ranks in the army. They had 25 different styles of beard and the way their hair is tied up is knots on the back of their head, often askew, is very different and changes on each one.
So the verisimilitude is just amazing and you many be wondering why would the laborers care enough to go to all this effort. We should mention that long before Henry Ford had his assembly line making cars, the ancient Chinese had them making these figures. They used molds to form the bodies and we know they range in general from 6-6.5 feet tall…
Where the handy work really came into play was the individualized details of the face. Every artisan or individual laborer took great pride in making all the individual facial expressions. Some look fiercer some look serene…
All of the laborers names were stamped at the bottoms of the statues. This wasn’t like Van Gogh signing a name to a masterpiece he had made it was to hold the laborer accountable for any mistakes they may have made.
Essentially, they had a series of molds that provided the basic forms for the bodies and faces of the figures and then were able to customize them at the end using pre-manufactured components like beards and with some individual artistry through sculpting. Joseph Pine coined the phrase “mass customization“, but has existed as a practice since 210 BCE. one criticism of mass customization is that it is a gimmick that has no long term value. This story demonstrates that a desire for uniqueness in manufactured products stretches back millennia.
