Here's what they don't teach at art school.
When nations go to war, design is in the frontline.
Skills that in peacetime are devoted to making the world a better place
are used in wartime to devise better ways for people to kill each other.
lt's what you might call ''a guilty secret''.
One thing that wartime does to the design process is to acceIerate it.
It acceIerates the industriaI process and the process of creating, shaping, machines, objects.
The Second World War was a global clash of politics and ideology.
And at the heart of this struggle lay, as ever, a brutal design contest.
Our instinct as regimentaI soIdiers at that time was,
''We're not going to stand much of a chance against this sort of thing.''
This gun cost two pounds seven shiIIings to make.
The Russians make weII over 60,000 T34 tanks.
They recommended office work, but I said, ''No, I want to be a weIder.
That's an important job, and that's what I want to do.''
I had no idea what it was.
ln this ''total war'', excellence would be pitted against ingenuity,
innovation against industrial muscle.
At stake was not just the fate of the world but the shape of the world to come.
So this chair is sort of the payoff for aII the work that they did during the war.
PeopIe aIways Iook at this chair and say, ''It Iooks uncomfortabIe.''
And I just say, you know, ''WeII, have a seat.''
And then when you sit in it, it's just great.
This is a programme about death...
..by design.
From bows and arrows to guided missiles,
the history of warfare is about humans devising better ways to kill each other.
Most of the popuIar interest in war, of course, particuIarIy in the Second WorId War,
is about battIes, about heroes, about dramas.
What we Iose sight of is the fact that those men in the fieId,
the weapons they're wieIding, the pIanes they're fIying,
are onIy possibIe because back home somebody has thought very Iong and hard
about how to design those weapons.
ln the lead-up to the Second World War,
no-one thought as deeply about the strategic power of design...
..as the Nazis.
From the moment of their takeover in 1 933, they retooled Germany...
..into a military machine,
designed to deliver the Thousand Year Reich.
You can't expIain the success of the Nazi regime
in conquering most of Europe
in a very short time
unIess you understand that use of design
in some very sophisticated ways.
The Nazis inherited an industrial base
that already boasted of the superiority of its products through design.
Supremacy ripe for appropriation by the self-proclaimed ''Master Race''.
But Germany hadn't always enjoyed such a reputation for excellence.
The critiques internationaIIy said aIways
German goods were very cheap and very tasteIess.
And so the weapon couId be seen as an earIy Iobby group
to change this reputation in Germany
that everything which comes from Germany is just bad.
Founded in 1 907, the Deutsche Werkbund
was committed to overturning this embarrassing reputation.
Leading by example,
its members set out to redefine the meaning...
of ''Made in Germany''.
This is a water kettIe, designed by Peter Behrens for the company AEG in Germany.
And this water kettIe was produced in a series with a possibIe over 80 variants.
There are three different uses of metaI,
three different shapes,
three different sizes
and three different ways of how the surface is formed.
Peter Behrens' work for electrical company AEG
was a landmark project.
He created a new AEG typeface,
branding for its products
and even designed its factories.
A corporate identity overhaul, the first of its kind.
This wasjust one of a series of collaborations between designers and industry,
promoted by the Werkbund...
..that championed this integrated total design for the modern age.
In the Werkbund there was the idea, if you want to put forward the industriaI production of goods,
you aIso have to think about how it Iooks Iike and what signature it couId have.
In just a few decades, Germany's cheap and nasty reputation was systematicaIIy overturned.
An IndustriaI Standards unit was set up, which meant that industry wouId be standardised.
The size of steps, the size of paper, the size of fiIing cabinets.
By 1 933, what was in pIace was a very secure sense that standardisation in design,
a functionaI approach to the kind of rationaI organisation of industry,
became integraI to pubIic and private Iife,
even if the German citizen wasn't aware of it.
But there was one piece of industrial design from the early 1 930s
that no German citizen would miss.
lt was made here, in Wolfsburg.
(Speaks ItaIian)
TRANSLATOR: There is no other product...
Let's be cIear about this.
There is no other product that is as compIex but as simpIe to use as a car.
ln 1 936,
the prototype for a new car was completed.
Designed by renowned race car engineer Ferdinand Porsche,
it would become the most successful car in the world.
This is one of the first prototypes of a true BeetIe.
Form foIIows function.
Nothing more. It was a very, very simpIe car, very basic.
In that time, we Iooked for this streamIined design
to give the passengers enough space inside the car,
to find enough space for an engine at the rear...
..and to give them enough space aIso for their heads.
I'm very Iong but I've no probIem to sit in that car.
Beneath the Beetle's simple but striking design
lay a master class in the German pursuit of excellence.
The design of a BeetIe is a timeIess one.
And this point quaIity, quaIity, everywhere quaIity.
PeopIe trusted in the quaIity of that car
and that's why this car and this company was so successfuI.
ln fact, the Beetle would redefine the meaning of success.
By 1 955, one million had rolled off the production line.
25 years later, that figure had topped 20 million,
making it the most successful car in the world.
But there's a darker side to the Beetle story.
As the Deutsche Werkbund had recognised, design is about communication.
And in pre-war Germany,
this cute-looking car conveyed a carefully calculated political message
on behalf of its client.
HitIer used the VoIkswagen most specificaIIy around the ceIebration of his birthday
and he aIso ran an eIection campaign
suggesting that he'd given the nation the VoIkswagen,
therefore they shouId give him their vote.
Hitler's interest in the Volkswagen wasjust one example of the Nazi Party's
sophisticated understanding of the symbolic potential of design...
..to communicate ideas and ideology,
an appreciation directly appropriated from Germany's recent industrial past.
There was a sophisticated awareness of the power of the symboI
in the sense that had been deveIoped in commerciaI contexts.
Going back to the Werkbund,
Peter Behrens had thought very deepIy
about how you instiI an identity
in a mundane object Iike a Iamp or a fan.
So what happens is that that interest in identity goes up severaI notches
and is appIied to a nation state.
Imagery, aesthetics, branding, caII it whatever you Iike,
the whoIe thing can be seen as an earIy extremeIy powerfuI and very sinister essay
in what's now known as corporate identity.
They wanted to give a sense of power.
You know, they wanted to Iook, not just miIitary-effective,
but they wanted to overawe their enemies.
lt took just nine months for the German war machine
to blitzkrieg its way to the coast of France.
Pushed out at Dunkirk and facing imminent invasion,
the British were forced to rethink their approach to design.
By June 1 940, Britain had been soundIy kicked out of Europe.
We were in desperate need of submachine guns.
And on the 1 2th December, 1 940, a man caIIed HaroId John Turpin
sat at his kitchen tabIe and designed this, the Mark I Sten Gun.
Germany had smashed through Europe,
with weapons that spoke of quality design and cutting-edge technology.
But with high-grade materials and skilled workers in short supply,
the British had no choice but to take the low road.
This is HaroId John Turpin's first prototype, seriaI number 1 .
The main tube was virtuaIIy exhaust pipe tube.
The screws are BA sizes, avaiIabIe in any hardware shop in the country.
The mainspring was made by FIexIo, bedspring-makers.
Nothing on this gun was forged or machined with expensive machine tooIs.
It was aII punched and fabricated.
This was ingenious improvisation but it wasn't simple enough.
Because it used wood and was fuII Iength,
Mr Turpin was toId to simpIify it.
And he did.
He came up with this,
the Mark II Sten Gun.
Easy to assemble...
..and use,
the Mark ll was a flat-pack submachine gun.
This gun cost two pounds seven shiIIings to make.
It is cheap and it is nasty, but it does exactIy what it was made to do.
lssued to troops at home, and parachuted into Nazi occupied Europe by the thousand,
the Sten became the signature weapon of Allied resistance.
And it signified a radical departure from the traditions of British design.
Push it down, and back.
The Sten Gun emerged in Britain
immediateIy after the withdrawaI of the British troops from France after Dunkirk.
And in a way it was a great shock for Britain
to have to Iearn to design instantIy, rapidIy, just Iike that,
and to get away from a comfortabIe, oId Victorian, Georgian craft skiIIed worId
into one of brutaI mass production.
But the British Iearned, for a need for survivaI by instinct partIy,
to tighten up the design process,
to get rid of some of that beautifuI craft.
When you get to a Sten Gun,
this is now design manufacturing that can be just produced Iike that.
You can produce them as fast as you can fire them!
And so that intense simpIicity meant it couId be manufactured by anyone
from PoIish underground resistance workers to the smartest oId factory in Britain.
A factory, for example, like this one in Merton, South London,
whose pre-war output was a world away from military hardware.
We made pedaI motor cars, doIIs, soft toys, bicycIes and tricycIes, FairycycIes,
aeropIanes, rockets, and aII these things.
It was most certainIy the Iargest toy factory in Great Britain.
It was aImost certainIy the Iargest toy factory in the worId.
Lines Brothers, makers of Tri-ang toys, began manufacturing Sten Gun parts in 1 94 1.
Founder and toy designer Walter Lines immediately saw ways to improve it.
One of the things that my father noticed was the Sten Gun,
and he Iooked at it and he said,
''Oh, no, that's not the right way to make that.''
So he redesigned it compIeteIy, without having previousIy designed a gun in his Iife, of course.
And he took it to the Ministry of Defence and got an order in fact for haIf a miIIion on the spot.
Thanks to the toy-maker's refinement, and the skills of the Tri-ang workforce,
the number of parts was reduced from 69 to 48.
And production costs for the Mark lll fell still further.
A welcome case of more bangs for your buck.
But the make do and mend approach came at a price.
Many soldiers hated their Stens.
They had a tendency to misfire if dropped, jam at critical moments.
And their aim was reputedly less than true.
With its back to the wall, perfectionism was a luxury Britain just couldn't afford.
But that didn't mean that every piece of wartime design was compromised.
While the toy-makers of Merton churned out the unloved Sten,
furniture-makers in the Home Counties were occupied with a thing of real beauty.
There was a whoIe workforce of carpenters, woodworkers,
who weren't being utiIised in the same way aII the metaIworkers were.
OSGERB Y: There was a scarcity of materiaIs and a scarcity of expertise.
Huge pressure to deIiver something
which answered specifications which had never been achieved before by mankind.
That's why design is the opposite of art.
When you're engaged in design which is invoIving industriaI production,
you are given constraints and there's aIways a cIock ticking.
But I think that those constraints energise the design process.
- It's very authentic, isn't it? - IncredibIe.
- Quite a machine, eh? - Wow!
Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby
run one of Britain's Ieading contemporary design companies.
Today, they've come to see a groundbreaking piece of aviation history,
one which rewrote the rule book.
The fastest aircraft from 1 941 to '45 -
faster than your Spitfire and Hurricane.
The Mosquito was known famousIy as the ''wooden wonder''.
A very high speed twin-engined aircraft that wouId be unarmed.
It wouId be an unarmed Iight bomber.
And the reason it was unarmed was to keep weight down,
but it wouId fIy so fast and so high that it couId whiz off to BerIin and bomb the Germans
and whiz back without being intercepted by German fighters.
If you tap that, you'II feeI it's aII wood, timber.
(taps)
It was the first truIy dynamic uItra-high speed modern warpIane made of wood.
The finest piece of furniture this country's ever buiIt.
FIying furniture!
The Mosquito was the brainchild of the De Havilland Aircraft Company.
Made almost entirely from plywood,
it used a minimal amount of the metal that was more urgently needed for munitions,
and brought an otherwise redundant industry to the frontline of wartime production.
Who best can make these things for us?
- Wood, a certain IeveI of craft skiII invoIved? - It's a singIe wing, right through the fuseIage.
So it's not Iike a Iot of aircraft where you put two individuaI wings on.
It's a singIe wing, which gives it a Iot more of its strength.
Why not use something Iike the furniture industry,
which is spIit up into many, many tiny IittIe craft workshops, IittIe factories, around an area,
therefore safe from German bombing, by and Iarge,
and abIe to keep production running,
and with aII the skiIIs that you needed?
There are onIy four boIts which hoId the fuseIage and wing together.
- And that's one of them there. - That's reaIIy incredibIe.
That just Iooks Iike something you'd put some sheIves up with.
So, the furniture industry in Britain,
most of it then based, as it is today, around High Wycombe, was abIe to make aircraft.
Now, that's a reaI piece of genius!
Ooh, wow, it's a bit tight in here.
Versatile, reliable, and astonishingly quick,
the Mosquito was adapted for use as a reconnaissance, fighter and bomber plane.
It's reaIIy, reaIIy cooI.
lt travelled at over 400 miles per hour,
much faster than the larger bombers,
but delivered a payload comparable to the Flying Fortress,
consumed less fuel and used fewer crew.
Over 7,000 Mosquitoes were built,
and it ended the war with the lowest loss rate of any Allied bomber.
Not bad for a design project that the experts dismissed as sheer madness.
JAY OSGERB Y: Sometimes I think being an industriaI designer
gives you the abiIity to put forward ideas which might be ridicuIed.
So the idea of proposing a wooden pIane that's based on one wing, with things fitted to it,
might have seemed frankIy ridicuIous.
And it was deemed to be ridicuIous by the Ministry of Defence at the time.
But it provided firsts, design firsts.
We're today very famiIiar with the idea of composite construction.
This pIane was buiIt in exactIy that way,
with thin Iayers of pIywood, with baIsa wood in between.
And not onIy that, we've just found out that it's... it was the first SteaIth pIane
that was aImost invisibIe to enemy radar
because it was made of wood.
Bedspring manufactures,
toy designers,
furniture-makers,
this was the secret army that kept Britain in the war.
And just like the Nazis, the British needed a propaganda machine
to explain, exhort and motivate when the going got tough.
If this is ''totaI war'' and you're invoIving citizens at every IeveI,
there are probIems that are needed to be soIved that hadn't arisen before.
So it's not Iike seIIing soap powder or raiIway journeys.
It's how do you aIert peopIe to the fact that they need to behave differentIy in the bIackout?
How do you aIert peopIe to the fact that
they shouIdn't touch unexpIoded bombs?
There are new issues that designers were the best pIaced peopIe to soIve,
and so that's why you get this kind of fantastic combination
of sort of visuaI acuity but aIso this reaI urgency,
because this isn't a commerciaI enterprise.
This is something that matters to the Iife of the nation.
The messages may have been mundane,
but they spoke the democratic language of the people's war...
..and anticipated the egalitarian spirit of the Welfare State.
They were graphic expressions of a new British identity
that was being forged by war,
even though many of them were the work of foreigners.
My father ArnoId was born in Germany
and in 1 933, at the age of 1 4,
he feIt that the sort of poIitics of Germany was getting somewhat unstabIe
and he persuaded his mother that they shouId Ieave Germany,
and move to EngIand where they had some famiIy aIready.
SuddenIy one day in 1 940, he was arrested and he was interned in Canada.
He was shipped back to Britain Iate in 1 941 ,
and he was commissioned to design some posters for RoSPA,
which was the RoyaI Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
The ''Germs Invade'' poster
is one of the, sort of, most amazing posters that I think my father had ever designed.
You've got the Swastika, you've got a very earIy Germanic typeface.
And then you've got this very soIid
''Get First Aid And Don't HeIp The Enemy''.
There are a Iot of meanings
within this poster.
And this was a year or so after he'd come back from being interned in Canada,
which, from my memories of him taIking about it, was not the most pIeasant pIace to have been.
To be producing work of this nature
at that point in your Iife, having just gone through what he had,
I think sort of, to me, is sort of quite remarkabIe.
While Britain muddled through on desperation, improvisation,
and the odd dash of native or imported genius,
Germany continued its quest for victory through the relentless pursuit of quality.
The delirious successes of the blitzkrieg
had convinced Hitler that only the development of a ''master race'' of weapons
would deliver the knock-out blow he craved.
An ideology embodied by a fearsome military machine,
unleashed on Allied forces during the Desert War in 1 943.
We knew what we were going to do. We knew what the enemy was
or we thought we knew what the enemy was and where it was.
And we went in two troops up -
my troop, which was 4 Troop on the Ieft,
and 3 Troop, Ied by a friend of mine, AIan Lott, on the right.
Everything was going smoothIy and we were trudging aIong quite happiIy
when there was an enormous expIosion on the right side
and I saw AIan Lott's tank bIown up and he bIown out of the turret.
Had massive burning.
He was terribIy burnt.
WeII, before I had any time to do anything at aII about it, my own tank was hit.
It reaIIy didn't affect me aII that much.
What did affect me was seeing AIan Lott and his condition,
and that feeIing of guiIt that I'd survived and he hadn't.
In fact, I think I couId say
that I went back to my bivvy that night and had a thoroughIy good cry.
Peter Gudgin's battalion had been unlucky.
lt had run up against one of the most advanced military weapons of the war, the Tiger l tank.
Only one working model survives today
and it's the very same vehicle that killed Peter's friend 70 years ago,
Tiger Tank number 1 31.
This was the most impressive tank I had ever seen.
I couIdn't beIieve it was so big and so powerfuI.
I think the most impressive thing about it, apart from its sheer size,
was the enormous gun.
And that was an anti-aircraft gun,
which they used in an anti-tank roIe,
and had a fantasticaIIy accurate and heavy sheII.
Our instinct, as regimentaI soIdiers at that time was,
we're not going to stand much of a chance against this sort of thing.
The formidable Tiger
was the result of a design competition,
initiated by Hitler between people's car designer Ferdinand Porsche
and engineering firm Henschel.
On this occasion, engineering muscle prevailed over design brilliance,
and Henschel's design was unveiled on Hitler's birthday in 1 942.
HitIer in the 1 930s Iooks at the tank as having tremendous symboIic power.
He sees this tank as symboIising the resurgence and the might of the new Nazi Germany.
As a 60-ton piece of propaganda, the Tiger was a huge success.
When Tiger 1 31 was captured in the Tunisian desert in 1 943, the Tommies were awestruck,
celebrating its capture as if it were an enemy general.
Back in England, the Army commissioned a full design report,
and called in an experienced tank commander recently invalided out from the frontline.
I was amazed to find my oId friend the Tiger that had knocked me out
coming back for examination by me.
So I entered that with great enthusiasm. I wanted to know what made it work.
It is beautifuIIy engineered aII the way through.
The sheer detaiIed design they put into it.
The steering gear, the transmission, the gearbox, the suspension, aII the torsion bars,
the way they'd machined aII the armour faces before they weIded them together.
BeautifuIIy engineered, very soIid job, but a waste of time.
There was a tradition in German engineering and design
where the most sophisticated was the best.
And they just couId not stop it.
And the probIem for the Germans was
that they came up with these ideas for ever more powerfuI, ever more sophisticated tanks,
but to do that, they required ever more time to think them through,
ever more engineering skiIIs, ever greater cost.
At a cost of 250,000 Reichsmark,
the Tiger was more than twice the price of any German tank to date.
lt boasted power steering, sophisticated transmission,
even a fully illustrated owner's manual.
But in the grinding war of attrition
that had developed since Hitler's invasion of Russia,
it was a luxury item.
The design phiIosophy behind the Tiger is very much,
''Let's have the best, most powerfuI vehicIe.''
The downside of that design phiIosophy is the amount of resources the Tiger takes to make.
WouId you be better off buiIding something in Iarger quantities that's a Iot cheaper?
Born from a completely different mindset to the Tiger, this is a Russian T34 tank.
These two weapons represent a clash in design philosophies,
exemplified by a simple statistic.
They onIy actuaIIy make 1 ,300 Tiger I tanks.
As a comparison, the Russians make weII over 60,000 T34 tanks.
They are coming out with these very crude but very effective vehicIes in such quantity
that, whatever your quaIity, these T34s are going to get you in the end.
As Joe Stalin put it, ''Quantity has a quality all its own. ''
And the wartime production of T34s proved him right.
Vast factories, relocated beyond the reach of the advancing Germans,
turned out T34s by the thousand,
at staggering speed, under brutal conditions.
The spirit of the Gulag fused with the technical know-how of the car-making capital of America,
Detroit.
In the Iate 1 920s, StaIin reaIised that he needed to industriaIise the Soviet Union.
It was stiII essentiaIIy a pre-industriaI society.
They reaIised that the way to do that wouId be through the appIication of Fordism.
So however bizarre it may sound, Soviet economic pIanners came to Detroit,
and they enthusiasticaIIy imported these ideas back into the Soviet Union.
To the extent that the architect, AIbert Kahn,
who designed aII of Henry Ford's factories in Detroit,
opened an office in the Soviet Union
and designed something Iike 300 factories in the 1 930s.
Just three months after Tiger 1 31 had blitzed Peter Gudgin's battalion in North Africa,
German ground forces were swamped by thousands of T34s at the Battle of Kursk -
the largest tank battle of the war.
Kursk halted German advances on the Eastern Front for good,
German design excellence rendered irrelevant by Soviet mass mobilisation
and American mass production.
Design is a process, design is not styIe.
The key thing that the Americans understood is just that.
That when you set out to design any object,
whether it's a gun, an aircraft, a ship, a Iocomotive, a uniform, a pair of shoes,
you think of not just the end product, what it's going to Iook Iike,
you think of how you're going to make the thing.
Like Joe Stalin, FDR believed in quantity.
When America entered the war, President Roosevelt vowed to ''out-produce the enemy''.
Ford workers set about adapting their car-making skills
to produce aircraft.
And Detroit rebranded itself ''the Arsenal of Democracy''.
Ford promises that he wiII set up the most extraordinary mass production faciIity of aII,
a huge aircraft production centre at WiIIow Run,
where he wants to produce B-24 Liberator bombers.
And he wants them to roII off the Iine Iike a car, once an hour.
And by the end of the war, that's what he's achieved,
a finished aircraft once every hour.
But industrial capacity on its own is not enough.
Without a secure supply chain linking America to Europe, the war could not be won.
And in 1 942, German U-boats were sinking Allied cargo ships in the Atlantic
faster than they could be replaced.
Some of the rates of Iosses earIy in WorId War II were shocking.
It didn't Iook Iike anybody couId keep up with that kind of a Ioss.
But we did.
lt took a designer of genius to come up with the solution.
Shipbuilder William Francis Gibbs jettisoned centuries of tradition
with a design for a cargo ship that could be mass-produced,
just like a Model Tor a T34.
Gibbs'design solution was not pretty.
Roosevelt called it a ''dreadful-looking object''.
But its prefabricated steel parts, welded together on a Ford-style production line,
meant the Liberty Ship could be produced faster and cheaper than was ever thought possible.
America's shipbuilders were understandably unsure.
But an industrialist called Henry J Kaiser recognised the genius of Gibbs'radical design.
ln Richmond, California,
Kaiser built a Liberty Ship production line
that made him a hero of the American war effort...
..and transformed the lives of thousands of unlikely shipbuilders.
My husband and I, every Sunday, went for a drive.
And this one Sunday, we had another coupIe with us.
And the guys are taIking about...
They thought they'd get a job, they'd Iearn to weId,
go to schooI, Iearn to weId and get a job in a shipyard.
And for some unknown reason, I piped up and said I wanted to do that too.
Had my car radio on and aII of a sudden this Ioud voice said,
''Women, do something for your country.
Go to the Richmond Shipyards and be a weIder.''
And I thought: ''Wow, that's an important job.''
They're asking on the radio for us to go do that.
They recommended office work,
but I said, ''No, I want to be a weIder.
That's an important job, and that's what I want to do.''
I had no idea what it was!
McKEY GOULD: I never saw a ship.
We just were part of the process of parts going together.
And my first job was tacking IittIe fIanges on for the cranes to pick up the pieces of steeI,
which was pretty nervy, you know.
Here's a first day on the job and you're weIding something that's reaIIy important.
PATTERSON MOORE: You had a kerchief tied around your neck, reaI tight.
That was to prevent the hair from getting burned from the sparks.
And then this was the weIding hood that we put on...
..and then this was the rod we used to weId with.
And we wouId put it in here.
You had to rotate aII the time, keep it moving.
McKEY GOULD: Everyone was contributing something to the war effort.
And of course, a big motivator was that pay cheque, you know,
and I spent some of my money on fancy underwear and...
(Laughs)
..and Frank Sinatra records.
The alliance of design and mass production
had proved itself able to meet the life-or-death demands of a global war.
But what did it have to offer a post-war world,
where quantity was no longer the greatest good?
PeopIe aIways Iook at this chair and say, ''It Iooks uncomfortabIe.''
And I just say, ''You know, weII, have a seat.''
And then when you sit in it, it's just great.
ln 1 999, Time Magazine named this chair,
by Charles and Ray Eames,
''The Chair of the Century''.
The Lounge Chair Wood was the Eames'breakthrough moment,
and the springboard for a range of furniture...
..that would express the optimism of the post-war world.
But this work evolved directly from their experience during wartime,
and a deceptively simple question.
When you Iook at this chair... And it's a very simpIe chair. It's very eIegant.
It's not a very weII-known chair but I think it's a very important chair.
And it, you know, may Iook kind of unassuming in a way,
but it's the beginning of a journey.
And it's a very simpIe idea.
It's a two-dimensionaI curve.
You can kind of Iook here and see that the curve is not going this way at aII.
BasicaIIy if you had a piece of cardboard, you couId make this form.
CharIes in particuIar was interested in this idea.
Can you make it Iike a bucket with a three-dimensionaI curving in it?
The Eames began to explore the possibilities of plywood.
Bending it was relatively simple.
Moulding it, in three dimensions, like rubber, and on a mass scale, was something else.
The demands of war provided the germ of an answer.
So you know, sometimes peopIe Iook at this thing and wonder, what is it?
But, actuaIIy, when you Iook at it this way,
the combat boot wouId go here and you'd be abIe to put it on Iike this.
And it's modeIIed on CharIes's Ieg but with a Iot of room for variation.
You can see that they stiII haven't figured out how to make a three-dimensionaI curve exactIy.
They have to cut the wood right here to reIieve the tension of the wood.
They aIso have aII these hoIes that aIso reIieve the tension of the wood, so it won't spIinter.
So they're right in the middIe of understanding what it takes to mouId pIywood.
The Eames'splint design was a compromise,
but even if the curves were not perfect, more than 1 50,000 were made for the US Navy.
Like the Sten Gun or the Liberty Ship, ''good enough today'' trumped ''perfection tomorrow''.
Authenticity in design is not about a singIe object.
It's reaIIy about a system of creating that object again and again.
It's not enough to say to that medic, ''Hey, we've got one spIint.''
He doesn't want one spIint, he wants to be abIe to say, ''I need 1 50,000,
so if we get you enough wood we'II get that many spIints, right?''
From leg splints, the Eames turned to seats for gliders and aircraft parts,
refining and perfecting their moulding techniques.
The payoff came in 1 945 with the Lounge Chair Wood,
a ''swords into ploughshares'' moment,
and a modest but unmistakable signal that the war was finally over.
They were trying to make the seat and back of the chair one
and you Iook at this chair and can obviousIy see they didn't do it.
That this, the seat and back are separate.
But they, after aII this experimenting,
they reaIised the honest use of this materiaI was to separate the seat and back.
You couIdn't do it, you couIdn't make the sheII out of pIywood.
So this chair is sort of the payoff for aII the work that they did during the war.
And that's I think why the wartime experience across the board,
not just for CharIes and Ray,
was so fascinating.
There was a combination of being visionary about these designs
and being pragmatic at the same time.
The ''Chair of the Century'',
one of the first examples of high-quality, post-war consumer design,
had been born of mass production, the true ''wonder weapon'' of World War ll.
lt was a sign of things to come,
a marriage that had been proposed by the lndustrial Revolution
and promised by the visionaries of modernism in the '20s and '30s.
But it had taken a world war for design and mass production
to finally consummate their relationship.
The designed world would never be the same again.
What happened in the war years to design, it was reborn.
And that abiIity to make things over and over and over again,
but make them very weII,
reaIIy did teII us something about the abiIity to do things in great number.
CertainIy Henry Ford toId us, that's the way it was going to go.
Le Corbusier toId us that was going to happen.
But we didn't quite beIieve it untiI the Second WorId War and we saw its reaI potentiaI.
And for me, it is the thing that opens up what mass production aIIows in product design today.