NCR Girls: 1902

All these young ladies seem to have virtually the same hairstyles. Presumably, their hair is done up in pins to avoid tangling with machinery. I wonder if they truly let their hair down when they went home at night?

The row on the right is small drill presses. Nothing unusual there.

The ones on the left look like pantograph engravers. The workpiece appears to be a decimal counting wheel or something similar. It's stuck on a horizontal shaft just below the top of the yoke in the center - you can see that it matches the ones stacked up on the pins to the left of the worker.

The machine has a vertical spindle that spins at high RPMs, judging from the pulley diameter ratios leading up to it.

The bottom of the machine may have some sort of pattern that the worker traces over and the machine follows. Numbers 0 through 9, perhaps.

Good point, Anonymous -- and as we see in the next photograph, the dining facilities are more than civilized. (Separate dining rooms for ladies and gentlemen. White tablecloths.)

In comparison to these well-dressed ladies, today's workforce is a bunch of ragamuffins.

Mostly comfy looking height-adjustable chairs, footrests and stools, fans overhead, aprons to keep your clothes clean, height-adjustable task lighting, and even flowers on the workstation left front. Compared to other places we've seen, this was probably a good job to have in 1902.