Factory

A factory (previously manufactory) or manufacturing plant is an industrial site, usually consisting of buildings and machinery, or more commonly a complex having several buildings, where workers manufacture goods or operate machines processing one product into another.

Factories arose with the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution when the capital and space requirements became too great for cottage industry or workshops. Early factories that contained small amounts of machinery, such as one or two spinning mules, and fewer than a dozen workers have been called "glorified workshops".

Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Large factories tend to be located with access to multiple modes of transportation, with some having rail, highway and water loading and unloading facilities.

Factories may either make discrete products or some type of material continuously produced such as chemicals, pulp and paper, or refined oil products. Factories manufacturing chemicals are often called plants and may have most of their equipment – tanks, pressure vessels, chemical reactors, pumps and piping – outdoors and operated from control rooms. Oil refineries have most of their equipment outdoors.

Factory (trading post)

A factory (from Latin facere, meaning "to do"; Portuguese feitoria, Dutch factorij, French factorerie, German Faktorei) was an establishment for factors or merchants carrying on business in foreign lands. Initially established in parts of Medieval Europe, factories eventually spread to other parts of the world in the wake of European trading ventures and, in many cases, were precursor to colonial expansion. Factories could serve simultaneously as market, warehouse, customs, defense and support to navigation or exploration, headquarters or de facto government of local communities. The head of the factory was the chief factor.

In North America, this trading formula was adopted by colonists and later Americans to exchange goods with local non-Western societies, especially in Native American Indian territory. In that context, these establishments were often called trading posts.

European medieval factories

Although European colonialism traces its roots from the Classical Era – Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans established colonies around the Mediterranean – and almost every major city of the world once started as a trading post (Venice, Naples, Rotterdam, New York, Shanghai, Lisbon, etc.), "factories" were a unique institution born in medieval Europe.

Factory (band)

Factory was a band from Stockholm in Sweden, active between 1978–1982, scoring chart successes in Sweden during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Factory broke through in Sweden with the 1978 single Efter plugget 1978. The single was followed up by the album Factory. The band toured the Nordic Region in the late 1970s and early 1980s and also released the 1980 album Factory II.

During the 1990s, the band was reunited temporary touring with, among others, Magnum Bonum, Attack and Snowstorm.

Members

Discography

Studio albums

Compilation albums

Singles

Maxisingles 12"

References

Metal

A metal (from Greek μέταλλον métallon, "mine, quarry, metal") is a material (an element, compound, or alloy) that is typically hard, opaque, shiny, and has good electrical and thermal conductivity. Metals are generally malleable — that is, they can be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking — as well as fusible (able to be fused or melted) and ductile (able to be drawn out into a thin wire). About 91 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals, the others are nonmetals or metalloids. Some elements appear in both metallic and non-metallic forms.

Astrophysicists use the term "metal" to collectively describe all elements other than hydrogen and helium. Thus, the metallicity of an object is the proportion of its matter made up of chemical elements other than hydrogen and helium.

Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures; these are formed as metallic allotropes of non-metals.

Structure and bonding

Metallicity

In astronomy and physical cosmology, the metallicity or Z is the fraction of mass of a star or other kind of astronomical object that is not in hydrogen (X) or helium (Y). Most of the physical matter in the universe is in the form of hydrogen and helium, so astronomers use the word "metals" as a convenient short term for "all elements except hydrogen and helium". This usage is distinct from the usual physical definition of a solid metal. The astronomical usage is claimed to be justified because in the high-temperature and pressure environment of a star, atoms do not undergo chemical reactions and effectively have no chemical properties, including that of being a metal as usually understood. For example, stars and nebulae with relatively high abundances of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and neon are called "metal-rich" in astrophysical terms, even though those elements are non-metals in chemistry.

The distinction between hydrogen and helium on the one hand and metals on the other is relevant because the primordial universe is believed to have contained virtually no metals, which were later synthesised within stars.