The best egg crackers I ever saw were Army cooks fixing breakfast for the troops in the mess hall. They cracked one-handed, one after another, right into the frying pan, never leaving a trace of eggshell. The other hand wielded the spatula.

Doesn't this ruin the eggs?

I would guess that most of those eggs ended up as the infamous dried egg powder that went to the UK and into military rations.

I don't really see your friendly self-respecting neigbourhood baker and confectioner or diner using those eggs. Not back then. TV dinners were yet to come, too.

But whoa, did that industry take really off wiith egg-cracking machines.

Fast forward to 2020 - handling food items, and raw eggs at that, not just with bare hands, but with rings on the fingers. And, the absolute no-no these days, a band-aid!

They must have had sturdier stomachs in 1941.

Until today, I had never heard of such an operation. Now, I have my rabbit hole for the day: learn more about egg-breaking industry. Where do the eggs come from? Do they only break the already-broken ones? What do they do with the eggs they break?

When they automate egg breaking, we’re all going to lose our jobs.

To very badly paraphrase

How many eggs could an egg breaker break
If an egg breaker could break lots?

Not as good as Oyster Shucker, but it is all I could think of.

Ain’t what it’s cracked up to be!

I see an egg that’s already broken, in the front channel, straight in line with the ring finger of the woman on the left. Woman on the right: love her hair! Woman in the background: not loving her so much.

you have to break a few--well, you know.
It looks like this is where Lucy and Ethel worked before applying at that candy factory!

Someone had to say it.