Tune In Tomorrow: 1925

I worked in a noisy factory through much of the seventies and eighties, and even then there was little attention paid to hearing protection. Many of the older guys told me "Don't be a wimp, you'll get used to the noise soon enough".

Most of these guys were deaf as posts.

I don't think it was management attitude in the old days, just lack of knowledge about long term hearing damage.

If a person with poor loitering skills paused beneath one of those wheels when it threw a belt . . .

It's ironic that he's making devices to allow others to hear more, while in the process he's insuring that he will eventually hear less!

A lot. That is all.

Many of these old presses are still in daily use. I just left a plant that still had many old Versons similar to this brake press. Although none of our equipment was line shaft driven like this was. Some of our presses were so large that the building was originally constructed around them. And our building went up in 1930.

As far as making these "idiot proof," many of our old timers were missing fingers or thumbs. You don't have to be an idiot to do something careless just once. If you stand in front of a press all day feeding blanks into a die, it gets very easy to let your mind drift off to other places and get careless. All it takes is one careless mistake to leave a digit behind in a die.

Years ago, these plants often weren't heated in the winter and even providing a fan for summer cooling was usually too much of a luxury.

Love the hat. Technology hasn't changed much from the presses then to the presses now. Now we just try to idiot proof them.

[Except now wouldn't they be hydraulic, not belt-driven? Nameplate on this one says Henderson Machine Company. - Dave]