How Things Used to be Made

[John P]

Cool Video of a Car Assembly Line in 1936

http://www.dump.com/2011/07/15/fascinating-1936-footage-of-car-assembly-line-video/

[Fritter]

This video was incredibly cool, very "Metropolis" like.  Looks very "non OSHA" and unsafe, like where the dudes put the rivets in the frame a split second before the machine compressed them....I did notice some safety devices, like when they ran the big stamping press they had to put both hands on some buttons.

Looks very clean and very much like the period VW/Wolfsburg photos that one can find, also.

I like how they all dressed the part and had good grooming back then, nowadays it's a bunch of rednecks in Billy Ray Cyrus tshirts, acid wash jeans and a mullet.  And also, nowadays, the job is much more dumbed down where the worker just has to push a button or two or some other easy repetitive task.

[John P]

This video was incredibly cool, very "Metropolis" like.  Looks very "non OSHA" and unsafe, like where the dudes put the rivets in the frame a split second before the machine compressed them.

Yeah, it reminds of the cool Made By Hand videos of Porsche 356 production, where you see the painters shooting the car with the equivalent of dust masks. With LEAD BASED paint. No wonder they died prematurely of upper respiratory problems.

Of course this is using the Retrospectoscope; being Germany, I'm sure that it all met the regulations of the time.

But scary.