If you go on you tube and search the file:

“accidentally preserved, the house of wonders”

you should come up with a promotional film put out by the National Watch Company of Elgin in 1931

as a piece of industrial promotion its a cool time capsule

as a piece of watch making history is amazing

but if your on the health and safety committee at your place of employ it will give you the creeps.

@Archer will likely find the flying oil, spinning belts and general filth appalling, (as do I)

@gatorcpa and @Canuck will have already seen this... but will break out the popcorn and watch it again

@and its likely @Mad Dog ’s idea of porn

 

I dig the air mail watch shots near the beginning of the flick...

 

Yes, I've seen this before. Very labour intensive, and yes the health and safety was certainly lacking. I used to go to a lot of US plants owned by the company I worked for, and from the 1980's right up until the 2000's, the lack of guarding and proper interlocks was always surprising to me.

Down there the guys would talk about turning away OSHA inspectors when they showed up...yeah, you can't do that here. If the MOL wants to come in, they come in...

 

We bought a new machine from an American manufacturer about five years ago. It stapled terminals into circuit boards allowing a connecter to be plugged directly into the PCB. A nasty machine with the ability to take your fingers off in several different ways it would occasionally mis apply a terminal, shooting it across the shop with about the same velocity as a 22.

When I asked the technician from the factory if the guarding would arrive with the spare parts kit he looked at me like I was nuts and asked why I would need that?

When I explained it was the law up here and that you’d be stupid to run such a machine without guarding anyway he seemed amazed.

 

Been there soooo many times mate... "What do you mean fail safe? You mean if it fails it has to fail in such a way that no one gets hurt? Crazy!"

Not only that but trying to explain to the US executives that you needed extra money for such things as guarding and interlocks, and that's why your budget for the same piece of machinery that is used in a US plant needs to be higher. And on top of that, we can't start using it until the Pre-Start Health and Safety Review was done, so no we can start making parts as soon as it's connected to services...

I loved the work I did back then, but not some aspects of it, like dealing with dumb questions from people who should know better.

 

Thanks for the suggestion