Master Hands - Chevrolet Manufacturing (1936)
US Auto Industry1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2015–2019
documentary · general · evergreen · 2015–2019 on HN
A 1936 Chevrolet promotional drama, 'Master Hands', showing car manufacturing from foundry to finished vehicle in Flint, Michigan. It is a National Film Registry selection and a record of early mass production.
HN finds it fascinating as a window into 1930s factory work, often contrasting its hand labor with modern assembly ergonomics.
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3 comments from Hacker News
Whatever you think of GM today, I find this half-hour movie from Chevrolet-making in 1936 absolutely fascinating: ▶ this video This was slightly before the great strikes in Flint, Michigan, and those working conditions are obviously both hazardous and extremely inconvenient. But it shows what an amazing enterprise a large car factory was already then, and the world has come far since those days.
>Working in an auto plant is hard, backbreaking work that will leave you physically broken by retirement Maybe 80 years ago. These fellas workin the forges and lifting those blocks certainly went home more sore than someone operating a pneumatic driver all day. ▶ this video There is so many ergonomic and Health/Safety stuff now. Maybe it's hyperbole, but I wouldn't call auto assembly factory work 'backbreaking' by any stretch.
That's why workers need a union. If there's an assembly line station that's too hard, that's a union grievance. There's a way to work out a solution, with the worker being in a strong position. Happens all the time in a union plant. Expecting someone to lift tires overhead for mounting on a production line is way out of date. Here's how it's done in a Ford plant. First, they show the old way, where they had a platform at just the right height to roll the wheel into position. The worker then pushes it onto the lugs and hub. Then, they show the fully robotized operation.[1] Here's an older, manual system, but with a counterbalanced lifting aid to do the heavy part.[2] Simple setups like that are routine. If anybody is lifting anything heavy on an assembly line, you're doing it wrong. There are many simple ways to fix that. To see tires lifted entirely by hand in an auto plant, you have to go back to this famous Chevy film from 1936.[3] That was before the big GM strike. Tesla is still learning how to run an auto plant. Tesla isn't as good at this as they pretend to be. Their head count in Fremont is quite high for the number of vehicles produced. [1] link [2] link [3] ▶ this video