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Show il Sloiy about 12-Ton Taais At a recent meeting of the New York Railroad Club, Frederick Fred-erick A. Stephenson, vice-president of the American Car and Foundry Company, explained now h s company tackled the job of buildng 1-ton combat tanks for the Army, under a contract lO begin delivery in two hundred days, and how tne time limn was etfien Dy sixteen days. Mr. Stephenson said that after his company got the contract, it discovered that the necessary case-hardened, armor-plate could noi be ooiamed in the market. Consequently, the company decided de-cided to make ts own plate, although al-though warned that it would require re-quire two years to learn the process. pro-cess. I he armor-plate plant was built and completely equ pped in four months and now tne company is selling armor-plate to other manufacturers, man-ufacturers, who need it for de-xense de-xense orders. Meanwhile, the railroad car-building company proceeded with ijs tank-buddng undertaking 'and' accompiisuta what everyone was saying could not be done. Mr. Stephenson points out that a layman can get an idea of the man-hours of toil required by lacing the figures involved in iiie production of the ta.iks. There were 2,663 blue-prints and 2,8do u-iierent kinds of parts, or a grand total of 14,318 individual pieces required for each tank, exclusive ex-clusive of engines and accessor-es. accessor-es. The machining of the parts for each tank involved 705 individual indi-vidual items, upon which 2,728 operations were performed. We call attention to this story n order to convince our readers that American industry, when given a task in the national defense de-fense program can meet requirements. |