CNC Evolution: From Manual Machining to Fanuc Dominance

Name: Fanuc and the Numerical Control Revolution
Uploaded: 2026-04-26T23:00:24+00:00
Duration: 28 min 45 s
Channel: Asianometry
Description: Summary and key takeaways on Fanuc and the Numerical Control Revolution: Summary & Key Takeaways, covering Beginnings of Machine Tools Machine tools fall into

Asianometry

Apr 26, 2026

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28 min video

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Machine tools fall into two categories: machining, which removes metal by cutting chips, and metal forming, which shapes metal through deformation. Every manufactured item either originates from a machine tool or from a component produced by one, making these tools the backbone of industrialization. In 1986 the American machine‑tool market reached a value of $2.7 billion.

The Machinist’s Skill and Early Automation Attempts

Manual machining demands advanced mathematics, metallurgy knowledge, and a tactile “feel” honed through years of apprenticeship. In 1946 General Electric and Gisholt Machine Company tried to capture machinist motions on magnetic tape, but analog signal drift and the inability to edit the recordings caused the project to fail.

The MIT‑Parsons NC Project

John T. Parsons of Parsons Corporation pioneered the coupling of computers to jig borers using punch cards. The Air Force contracted MIT in 1949 to develop an NC milling machine for complex aircraft parts. MIT researchers William Pease and James McDonough emphasized general‑purpose three‑dimensional control, while Parsons pushed for a simple, low‑cost tool. The machine was completed in 1952 with a $200,000 Air Force contract, but industry dismissed it as a “boondoggle.” The MIT system employed closed‑loop feedback, allowing real‑time error correction.

Fujitsu’s NC and the Rise of Fanuc

Dr. Seiuemon Inaba led Fujitsu into factory automation beginning in 1955. In 1958 Fujitsu partnered with Makino Milling Machine to showcase an NC tool at the Osaka International Trade Fair. Inaba’s 1959 invention of the electrohydraulic pulse motor—electrical pulses that open a valve to regulate pressurized hydraulic oil—provided precise, robust motion control suited to factory environments. Fujitsu spun off its NC division as Fanuc (Fujitsu Automatic Numerical Control) in 1971, after capturing 80.7 % of the Japanese NC market.

The Move to CNC and Global Market Dominance

Fanuc introduced its first CNC device, the 200A, in 1972, replacing hard‑wired logic with digital computers that could edit instructions without paper tape. The 2000C, released in 1975, integrated Intel’s 8‑bit microprocessors, and the 1979 System 6, powered by the Intel 8086, became the industry standard thanks to its modularity and cost efficiency. By the 1980s Fanuc held over 50 % of the worldwide CNC market, cementing its dominance.

Legacy of NC on Labor

The evolution from manual machining to NC and CNC transformed the machinist’s role. Skilled craftsmen who once relied on mathematical calculations and tactile feedback shifted to overseeing computer‑driven systems, monitoring programs, and maintaining equipment. This transition altered labor dynamics, turning the machinist into a system overseer rather than a hands‑on artisan.

Takeaways

Machine tools, classified as machining or metal forming, underpin every manufactured product and drove a $2.7 billion U.S. market by 1986.
Early automation attempts, such as the 1946 GE/Gisholt magnetic‑tape project, failed because analog signals drifted and could not be edited.
MIT’s 1952 closed‑loop NC milling machine, built for the Air Force, demonstrated precise 3‑D control but faced industry skepticism as a costly experiment.
Seiuemon Inaba’s electrohydraulic pulse motor enabled reliable NC milling, leading Fujitsu to spin off Fanuc, which captured 80 % of Japan’s NC market by 1971.
Fanuc’s 1972‑1979 CNC innovations, especially the System 6, gave the company over half of the global market and shifted machinists from manual craftsmen to system overseers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did the electrohydraulic pulse motor enable NC milling?

The electrohydraulic pulse motor converts electrical pulses into precise hydraulic valve actions, regulating pressurized oil that moves the tool along a programmed path. This method provides accurate, repeatable motion without relying on fragile mechanical linkages, making NC milling robust for factory use.

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The machinist occupies a 
special place in industry.
Using a set of mechanized tools, and 
drawing on years of experience and vibes,  
they take something from 
raw metal to finished form.
Machining was part science, part 
magic. A respected craft that brought  
pride and a good living to its many practitioners.
Then in the 1950s, a revolutionary 
new technology sought to replace the  
machinist's capabilities with a string of numbers.
One Japanese company arose to take the fullest 
advantage of this trend. In today's video,  
the rise of Numerical Control, CNC, and Fanuc.
## Beginnings
Machine tools are power-driven 
tools that work metal.
There are a variety of them. They are generally 
classified into two categories: Machining and  
metal forming tools. Machining tools remove metal 
from the workpiece in the form of tiny chips.
A common example is the lathe. 
The lathe holds and spins the  
metal workpiece at a high speed while a 
cutting tool moves around it, cutting it.
Another important one is the milling machine 
- the lathe’s conceptual inverse. Here,  
we have a fast-rotating 
cutting tool. And this time,  
it is the workpiece moving around the 
cutting tool, shaving off tiny chips.
The second major category are the metal 
forming tools. These units shape metal  
without removing any of it - most often 
via deformation: Bending, pressing,  
etc. Such machine tools include forging presses 
and hammers, hydraulic presses, and so on.
Many machine tools first emerged in the United 
Kingdom and the United States in the mid-1800s  
for the production of - what else? - weapons 
of war. But the technology and techniques  
quickly transferred to making sewing machines, 
bicycles, automobiles, turbines, and the like.
Measured by output, these machine tools are 
nothing. In 1986, the whole American machine  
tool market was valued at just $2.7 billion, 
less than the American paper bag industry.
But these tools play an outsized role in  
industrialization. Every manufactured 
item is either made by a machine tool,  
or by a thing made by a machine tool. Let us 
give them the proper respect they deserve.
## The Machinist's Skill
For many years, these machine 
tools were manually operated.
It was demanding, precision work done by 
skilled machinists in machine shops. Part art,  
part science. The machinist 
has to know advanced math like  
algebra and trigonometry. They have to grok 
metallurgy. How to read technical blueprints.
At the same time, all that technical knowledge 
must be augmented with experience, judgement,  
and just plain feel. Like an artist, they must 
envision the part before they can go machine it.  
Such skills must be learned in a real machine 
shop over many years under apprenticeship.
Machining makes the machinist a 
key participant in the process.  
Even if someone else came up with the idea, they 
must still defer to the machinist's experience.  
Such control and skill was something 
that the machinists were very proud of.
Over time, however, industry has 
demanded increasingly complex and  
intricate metal shapes. But with there 
only being so many skilled machinists,  
it became difficult to produce identically 
precise machined parts at scale.
Was there another way? Thus the idea of 
an automatic module "controlling" the  
machine tool like as if it were a human operator.
In 1946, General Electric and the 
Gisholt Machine Company adapted  
gunfire control technology developed 
in World War II to first "record" a  
master machinist's motions on a 
milling machine using sensors.
The recording is stored onto magnetic tape 
and then "played back" with the hope that  
it can be reused to make many identical parts 
at scale. It was clever but ultimately failed.
One reason being that the recording 
was analog - a continuous waveform,  
essentially. So that recording can't 
be easily edited. And over time,  
distortions in the tapes' 
quality caused accuracy to drift.
Legacy-wise, this particular machine 
is perhaps most well known today (if  
at all) for inspiring writer Kurt 
Vonnegut's debut novel, Player Piano.
## Parsons and the NC Machine
In 1948, the university MIT got a call from 
an industrialist named John T. Parsons,  
founder of the Parsons Corporation.
Parsons ran a company making helicopter 
rotor blades for the Air Force. This  
required operators to drill hundreds of holes 
using a machine tool called a jig borer.
To reduce operator error, he figured 
out how to couple a computer to that  
jig borer so that you can feed it a series 
of numeric instructions stored on punch  
cards - coordinates and tool movements. The 
jig borer then automatically does the jiggy.
Then the Air Force proposed to build a plane 
with a special wing where the skin and ribs  
are made from a single piece of metal. 
Parsons questioned the recommendation  
on how to achieve that. He felt that 
if he can wire up a milling machine to  
a computer the same way he did with the 
jig borer, then that can do it better.
The Air Force was like bet and 
offered a $200,000 contract to  
build it. So Parsons subcontracts 
MIT to help execute on this idea  
of a milling machine controlled by this 
string of numerical data on paper tape.
In 1949, Parsons, MIT and the Air 
Force signed that contract. The Air  
Force provided a standard Cincinnati 
Hydro-Tel milling machine to modify.  
MIT researchers William Pease and 
James McDonough led the project.
The development process was difficult. It 
took MIT a year to come up with a design that  
Parsons approved of. And during the build 
there was huge conflict. Parsons - being  
the industrialist he was - wanted as few 
modifications as possible to the Hydro-Tel  
milling machine. More modifications raised the 
budget and made the tool harder to operate.
But MIT was used to working in 
a military R&D context where  
budgets are a secondary concern. 
And researchers being researchers,  
they envisioned their project as more than just 
commercializing an idea - that is just boring.
Rather they saw themselves as tackling the 
general problem of crafting shapes out of items.
Ergo. They replaced the milling machine's 
conventional controls with three hydraulic servos  
- each capable of receiving separate commands 
and allowing movement in three dimensions.
This wayward intellectual exercise apparently and 
rightly drove Parsons nuts. After six months, the  
project was just 30% done but costs had ballooned 
to over twice the originally projected budget.
Financially strained, Parsons withdrew - though 
he did receive co-authorship on the patent. But  
the Air Force stepped in and with their help, the 
tool was completed six months later in March 1952.
## The Mechanical Brain
Today, we consider the 1952 MIT machine a pioneer.
Newspaper articles at the time dubbed it 
a “mechanical brain”. In an interview,  
aforementioned project leaders Pease and 
McDonough said their technology - which  
they named Numerical Control - represented a 
small step towards a new industrial revolution.
After the announcement, MIT held 
educational seminars and demos to  
promote numerical control technology to 
American tooling and aerospace companies.  
Unfortunately the reception - especially from 
the tooling companies - was not that great.
A history of the lab by Kyoung Soo 
Paik quoted Brown recalling that the  
demo made one of the manufacturers so 
mad to make them write MIT's president  
protesting the university wasting 
resources on such a "boondoggle".
Some toolmakers from General Motors 
who saw it brushed it off, saying:
> "It's a pretty poor way to 
build a million Chevrolet fenders"
Many years later, Parsons said that 
MIT's demonstrations were "ridiculous,  
because they didn't know machining."
## NC and the Air Force
In the end, the Air Force did adopt 
Numerical Control in a major way.
They went on to fund (at considerable expense) 
MIT and five companies including Cincinnati  
Milling and General Electric to 
produce NC controller modules,  
integrated into milling machines 
for their aircraft factories.
Early work was difficult. The modules and 
their machines broke down frequently on the  
factory floor due to contamination from 
electricity, dirt, oil, and chemicals.  
Operators had no idea how the thing worked and  
could not fix it. The controller and machine 
manufacturers frequently blamed each other.
The Air Force did eventually get it to work. 
The five NC controller sub-contractors then  
tried selling their modules commercially. But 
as none of them cooperated with each other,  
their systems all worked completely differently.
The Air Force had also funded a programming 
language called Automatically Programmed  
Tool or APT to go along with this NC 
installation. APT worked and held elegance,  
but it also greatly contributed 
to the system's overall costs.
Thanks to these efforts, you can say that 
the United States machine tool industry  
held a lead in the implementation of NC 
technology. And there were a subset of  
people who recognized that NC 
allowed for certain benefits.
However, the long-running connection to 
the Air Force also left people with the  
impression that NC was inherently unprofitable 
without extensive government subsidies. A true  
double-edged sword. But did NC have to be 
so complicated? Can it be done simpler?
## Fujitsu’s NC
Across the Pacific, the news from MIT caught the
attention of universities and 
research institutes in Japan.
Soon after the 1952 MIT announcement, work on 
NC began at the Tokyo Institute of Technology,  
University of Tokyo, and the 
research institute, AIST.
This in turn motivated the electronics 
giant Fujitsu to tentatively explore  
the factory automation space. They put together a  
small research team and selected Dr. 
Seiuemon Inaba (稲葉清右衛門) to lead them.
Inaba is described as "compact" but 
scholarly-looking. I myself might say he’s  
elfish. Born in the Ibaraki Prefecture 
to a long line of village leaders - he  
apparently spoke Japanese with a 
noticeably slurring dialect - he  
studied precision instruments at the 
University of Tokyo during World War II.
After graduating in 1946, he joined Fujitsu 
as a mechanical engineer. Which made him a  
bit of an odd duck because Fujitsu 
- named Fuji Telecommunications at  
the time - was more known for computers and 
telecommunications than mechanical engineering.
Inaba recalled kicking off 
in 1955 with very little:
> Development started from scratch, beginning 
with the acquisition of technical papers from MIT.
The team then got a fortuitous 
boost from one of Japan's top  
machine tool companies. In March of the 
following year 1956, Tsunezo Makino,  
CEO and founder of the company Makino 
Milling Machine, went to India. There,  
he was told that if Japan's machine tools 
did not have NC, then they were not advanced.
Distressed, Makino boldly declared that 
Japanese machine tools will have NC by  
the Osaka International Trade Fair in 1958. 
Upon returning to Japan, Makino scoured the  
industry landscape and came across Inaba's 
team. They quickly struck a partnership.
By December 1956, the group effort produced a 
prototype numerical control device. Powered by  
a Sanyo motor and a type of pre-transistor 
electrical circuit called the parametron,  
this NC controller module directed a 
turret punch press imported from the US.
All it did was punch holes into sheet metal. But 
it was good enough progress to be hailed in media.
Inaba then turns to making an NC milling machine 
by the 1958 Osaka trade fair. They pull it off,  
though the tool they demonstrated 
was not commercially viable.
After the exhibition though, Mitsubishi 
Heavy Industries' Nagoya Aircraft Factory  
is sufficiently impressed with Inaba 
and Fujitsu to commission an NC milling  
tool for their F86 fighter jet. Fujitsu, 
Mitsubishi, and Hitachi thus collaborate in  
an all-star event to deliver the first 
production NC tool in November 1958.
This NC tool was just barely competent. 
It was so sensitive to electric noise that  
even a motorbike passing by the factory might 
cause the device to error out. And each month,  
one of its 100 vacuum tubes blew out, 
which was extremely inconvenient.
## The Breakthrough Machine
In 1959, Inaba and Fujitsu rocketed 
past domestic machine tool competitors  
like Toshiba and Mitsubishi with a 
breakthrough NC-enabled milling machine.
At its heart is something called an 
electrohydraulic pulse motor. Inaba  
invented and patented the motor himself, though he  
got the core idea from one of Fujitsu's 
automatic exchange equipment products.
How does it work? The name 
is quite informative. First,  
a human interprets the blueprints and produces 
a list of coordinates for the machine to cut.
This is put onto a paper tape which is 
fed into a Fujitsu Facom-128 general  
purpose computer. The Facom-128 reads the 
tape and decides the lines and cut paths.
Then another thingy called a director 
translates that information into a  
sequence of electrical pulses and 
transcribes it onto magnetic tape.
The pulse sequence goes 
into a machine control unit.
Inside that unit, the sequence controls the flow  
of highly pressurized hydraulic 
oil through a special valve.
The hydraulic motors thus move a heavy piece of 
metal along the cutter in a certain direction.  
Slowly, the pulse sequence allows us to 
cut the metal into the desired shape.
Inaba and his team intentionally designed their 
tool to be simple but practical. For instance,  
the 1952 MIT machine ran on a closed 
feedback loop - meaning that it read  
and responded to its own real-world 
results. Which was technically nifty  
but probably contributed to its 
high cost and impracticality.
The Fujitsu machine on the other 
hand was largely open-loop like  
a fancy player piano that carved metal 
rather than jam out Scott Joplin’s “the  
Entertainer”. This stripped-down version 
of NC was key in allowing the module  
to survive factory floor conditions, 
and it went into the market in 1960.
After this first success, one might 
expect Fujitsu to further pursue the  
machine tool space. But Inaba instead decided 
to focus his company on only the NC controller  
technology - partnering with the Japanese machine 
tool companies rather than competing against them.
Their first open-loop NC controller module, 
the Fanuc 220, Fanuc stands for Fujitsu  
Automatic Numerical Control, released 
in 1960. But it struggled in the market.
Why? Well, first it cost about 10 million yen,  
which was more than the tool itself. 
Second, it also needed human operators  
to manually tweak the whole pulse sequence 
to accommodate variance between tools.
Makino suggested an "offset" function 
that allowed operators to quickly make  
lasting offsets to fix any tool variance errors.
They also suggested removing a 
curvilinear processing feature  
and replacing it with a straight 
line feature to make it cheaper.
This feature deletion as well as 
transistorization let Fujitsu price  
the Fanuc 260 controller module at 
2 million yen - just a fifth that of  
the Fanuc 220. Sales surged from 
60 units in 1965 to 388 in 1968.
## The Machining Center
Back in the United States, one of the 
key drivers of NC adoption was the  
rise of the machining center throughout the 1960s.
An early machining center was Kearney & Trecker's 
Milwaukee-Matic Model II. This $145,000 device was  
equipped with a cutter, rotating horizontal 
table, and an automatic tool changer.
This tool changer was a rotating drum 
holding about 30 tools. When needed,  
an arm can go and equip itself with a new 
tool from the drum in about 9 seconds.  
Such fast, precise movements can only 
be performed using numerical control.
The NC-powered machining center consolidated 
multiple machining functions into one:  
Drilling, milling, boring, tapping, reaming,  
and some lathing though not too well. 
An entire production center in one.
The American machine tool industry 
for decades led the world. And for  
all those decades, it thrived on machine 
tool makers building different tools,  
knowing that they did different things and that 
machine shops are going to buy all of them.
But NC-enabled machining centers 
leveled and reshaped the playing  
field - ending niches that once existed in 
milling, boring, drilling, what have you.  
So those guys rushed to build their own 
machining centers, driving NC module  
adoption and forcing themselves to compete 
mano-a-mano in an increasingly crowded space.
## The American Machine Tool's Decline
But making a good Machining Center requires new
competencies in complicated areas 
like control theory and electronics.
The Japanese toolmakers just bought from 
Fanuc but many of the American companies  
tried to roll their own solution 
with varying amounts of success.
In the mid-1960s, a slowdown in 
the aerospace industry combined  
with tightening credit causes the 
cyclical machine tool industry to  
crash hard. Sales declined 50-60% 
between the 1967 peak to 1971.
This opened the door for financial 
conglomerates, private equity essentially,  
to go in and start buying up and merging 
together these small machine tool businesses.
This was detailed in the wonderful book "When the 
Machine Stopped", written in 1989 by Max Holland.
Backed by Wall Street money, these conglomerates 
paid more than another machine tool firm. Yet  
they lacked knowledge or even interest 
about the machine tool industry itself.
Companies like Burgmaster often sold 
thinking that they can tap pools of  
cash to fund more products. But it 
turned out that the conglomerates  
simply wanted to milk the old cash cow so 
that they can go buy the next big thing.
This starved the US machine tool 
companies of cash that could  
have been reinvested into the business, 
particularly to adopt Numerical Control.
By 1970, global machine tool export share 
held by American firms declined to just  
about 15%. The export leader those years was 
Germany with about 30% market share - aided  
in part by Siemens aggressively adopting 
NC as well as a favorable exchange rate.
## Fujitsu to Fanuc
Fujitsu’s NC division did 
not turn a profit until 1965.
They could not have survived the hard early 
years alone. Not only because of the financial  
support from the Fujitsu giant but also access 
to the products of Japan's top computer-maker.
But by 1971, Fujitsu now controlled 80.7% of 
Japan's NC market - its peak market share.  
And since NC units earned high margins, 
the resulting profits were very good.
Fujitsu could have kept those profits for 
itself, funneling cash into increasingly  
expensive computer R&D or other things like 
what the American conglomerates did. Instead,  
Fujitsu decided to spin off the 
NC division into its own company.
The parent kept 52% of the shares. Fuji 
Electric and Germany's Siemens each got  
6% - the latter company got shares 
due to a cross-licensing agreement.  
The rest of the shares floated on the open market.
Inaba of course led the newly independent company 
and would do so for decades. As a businessman,  
he was a savvy but demanding (daresay, 
tyrannical) leader known for a love of  
R&D and alcohol. Though in his later years he 
apparently gave up drinking for health reasons.
He was also a bit quirky. For example, he insisted 
on being referred to as "Doctor of Engineering".  
And he demanded that all of his workers including 
himself wear yellow and that all his products be  
colored yellow. Because yellow is the "emperor's 
color" or something. Man just likes yellow.
## Leaving Behind Hydraulics
You can imagine the NC controller unit 
as having a "brain" - its computational  
component - and "muscles" - 
its servo motors. Together,  
they guide the machine tool. In the 1970s, 
both of these underwent substantial changes.
In 1973, Japan was hit by the first of the 
1970s Oil Crises. With rising inflation and  
pricier energy costs, Japanese machine 
tool customers sought higher precision,  
greater efficiencies and lower labor costs.
NC became a way to reduce 
setup time, scrap/rework,  
and operator labor hours. For 
instance, it allowed Toyota  
and Honda to manufacture 20-30% fewer 
parts than their American counterparts.
But as this happened, it started to become 
clear to Fanuc that its original open-loop  
electrohydraulic pulse motors were not 
meeting customer needs. For one thing,  
it used a lot of oil and power - two 
things that got very expensive after  
1973. And hydraulic systems were proving 
to be too awkward for precision work.
By comparison, direct current electrical 
motors were rapidly improving thanks to the  
introduction of a game-changing solid-state 
electrical valve called the thyristor.
Yet Fanuc owned this pulse motor 
space. They basically invented it  
and the patents protecting it were a key 
competitive advantage. Inaba even once  
told a friend that to have it taken away from 
him would be like taking away his own life.
To manage the transition, he took a dual track 
- ordering development on an electrohydraulic  
pulse motor that did not use oil as well as 
partnerships for direct current servomotor  
technology. When the former proved to be extremely 
noisy, he went to the latter with no sentiment.
In mid-1974, Fanuc struck a licensing deal 
with a small American firm in Wisconsin called  
Gettys Manufacturing for their closed-loop 
electrical DC motors. The first electric  
motor-based NC tools hit the market in 
September 1974 and were a revelation.
## The Move to CNC
But it was the controller module's brains 
where Fanuc made the greatest impact.
NC systems used hard-wired logic systems that 
were not all that flexibly changed. But the  
emergence of the minicomputer in the early 1970s 
made possible NC systems that were "soft-wired".
Now, a programmer can first create and 
edit the machine instructions inside a  
digital computer. Then feed them directly 
into the machinery without the use of paper  
tape or any of that. They called this 
Computer Numerical Control, or CNC.
In 1972, Fanuc introduced the Fanuc 
200A - their first CNC device.
Three years later in 1975, Fanuc integrated one of 
Intel's early 8-bit microprocessors to produce the  
Fanuc 2000C. This model suffered some reliability 
problems early on, but it showed the way.
This finally led to the company's 
game-changing 1979 product: the System 6.  
Powered by the 16-bit Intel 8086 microprocessor 
plus a cavalcade of custom LSI chips,  
the System 6 reduced discrete components by 
30%, which made it cheaper to produce and sell.
Fanuc enhanced the line further by making 
it modular, making it easy to integrate the  
System 6 into a wide variety of machine 
tools from lathes to machining centers  
and beyond to get CNC capability. In doing 
so, turning it into the industry standard.
Low-cost Fanuc CNC modules armed a rabble of 
Japanese machine tool makers - enabling them  
to flood the world market. Thanks to them, 
Fanuc entered the 1980s as Japan's - and  
perhaps the world’s - leading maker of CNC 
controllers with over 50% market share.
## Conclusion
As early as the 1960s, people argued 
that NC would de-skill the workers  
in the machine shops - turning 
them into low paid peons while  
management further centralizes its 
grip over the means of production.
Research on this notion over the following decades 
- and the transition did indeed take decades -  
paints a nuanced picture. There are entire theses 
on it so I am not going to try to get into it all.
Generally speaking, the individual machinist's 
job did not de-skill as originally feared,  
but it did indeed change. Operators no 
longer exert intricate and complicated  
physical effort to craft something out of metal.
But after the NC Revolution, operators now 
oversee expensive, highly complicated systems  
that break down in complicated ways. Fixing 
and keeping these systems online becomes a new,  
valuable skill - one more intellectual 
and conceptual than its priors. And  
considering the surge in productivity 
it leads to, it pays probably better.
That being said, we do lose 
that sense of self and pride  
from literally making something with our 
hands. I think that does mean something.

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