WN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe
Dated 13 March 1776: WN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe. In the causal graph this event weakens the driver Labour-Market Tightness.
Read the full account
Gutenberg WN prints pin-making as split tasks. Adam Smith did not operate this later page as a civil-registry autograph.
Context
Shared institutions, unnamed crews, and later editors remain in the record and do not erase a documented heading.
Adam Smith Shared work with other named actors remains in the record.
Adam Smith’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below.
Conventional years are 1723–1790.
Why it matters
Twin of productivity-access: this stores deskilling and stupefaction as Smith himself warns later in Book V.
Who was responsible
Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.
Adam Smith
PersonDirect responsibility
responsibility level 0.36 · verified
What changed
Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.
- FactWN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe
- weakensDriverLabour-Market Tightness
impact weight 0.45 · Effect from 13 March 1776 · verified
Gutenberg WN prints pin-making as split tasks.
Evidence
The sources behind this fact and its verification state.
- 1.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Adam Smith’s Moral and Political PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · High credibility · verified
- 2.An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations — public EnglishProject Gutenberg · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish
Driver labour-market-tightness is attached because the Significance sentence names a mechanism from WN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe at 1776-03-13, not because a standing driver list needed coverage. Official page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300 (opens in a new tab). Independent page: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/smith-moral-political/ (opens in a new tab).
Causal path
How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.
- ActorAdam Smith
- contributed toFactWN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe
- weakensDriverLabour-Market Tightness
Cite this page
Factrail. (2026). WN’s pin-factory pages print extreme division of labour as a public manufacturing recipe. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/asm-division-labour-deskilling
https://factrail.ai/facts/asm-division-labour-deskilling
Accessed 16 October 2026.
By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed
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