JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Back in the days of burgeoning human-machine interfaces there were many industries employing some automation and independent machine operating assembly lines, though there were many more in 1903 that were not. This pictures struck me for the number of people working on what looks like an endless mountain of little tasks combined to make a little product, though there was nothing "little" about the labor that went into it all. In this case, it is a "lead" pencil and rubber band manufacturing establishment, and appears in a rather lengthy article in Scientific American for August 22, 1903. The machines seem to be run by hand, though there were a number of steps int eh process that were hand-done, including gluing the graphite into the pencil, polishing the wood, stamping the pencil, and applying the metal tips for the eraser (called "ferrules" which I hadn't known about before) and the erasers themselves. An offshoot of the eraser here was the production of rubber bands, and as we can see below the work of sorting and boxing them was dauntingly accomplished by hand. I wonder what the working conditions were like, and if any precautions were taken with the graphite dust that must've been misty here and there in the factory...
Here's the rubber being prepared for both pencil and rubber bands:
Comments