XRays! Ahhhhh!!!!

I wonder how well those operators aged.

 

I regret that I have but ten fingers to lose for my country...

 

The "Millionth of an Inch" girls have long, polished fingernails?!

 

And today, you can get a good crystal for under a dollar. The last ones I got were $0.30 (Abracon, ABLS-16.000MHZ-B2-T ). I suspect the Signal Corps paid more than that in 1943.

 

Every time I see how things were done in that era I am amazed. It's not just the intricate and labor-intensive steps, but the sheer scale at which all of it was done in spite of that.

 

Every time I see how things were done in that era I am amazed. It's not just the intricate and labor-intensive steps, but the sheer scale at which all of it was done in spite of that.

I really wonder if we could even pull that off again in this age. These weren't burger flippers...they were HIGHLY skilled ladies....and armies of them.

 

As the father of three daughters, all of whom are highly skilled, I have no doubts about what American women can do -- even today.

 

I don't see it as having anything to do with gender. But I do wonder about modern culture. Most of the jobs in industries like that were, by nature, extremely repetitive and even highly skilled tasks become mind-numbing when you do them over and over, hundreds of times a day, day after day.

My question is whether or not we could field the number of people capable to doing such tasks given what today's folks are used to. Back then it was simply accepted that that was the kind of job you were likely to get and so you just did it. A lot of Americans back then did "the jobs that Americans just won't do" and were more than willing to do it. My dad's family spent time in the late 1930's going from farm to farm picking apples with all of them (including my 10 to 12 year old dad) working sunrise to sunset six and seven days a week. Just as we are constantly being told that there are jobs that Americans just won't do and thus we are reliant on illegal immigrants to do them, I think a lot of people today would balk at doing this kind of work -- at least until it got to the point where it was either do this job and get good at it or starve (at which point they would also be more than willing to pick apples, too). At the end of the day, humans have not changed much in the last century and most people can get over being spoiled rotten by growing up in an affluent culture in pretty short order given sufficient motivation.

 

I have employees in my shop that do this kind of tedious precision work. They are not illegal, they get paid real well, and they do it right.

I could spend $1M on a fine Swiss Rube Goldberg machine to do the job, but I'd never earn the cap costs back.

 

I have employees in my shop that do this kind of tedious precision work. They are not illegal, they get paid real well, and they do it right.

I could spend $1M on a fine Swiss Rube Goldberg machine to do the job, but I'd never earn the cap costs back.

Notice that no one is saying that it is impossible to find people to do it. The question is would it scale? What if you needed to expand your production to 100x what it currently is (and everyone else needed to do the same) for this kind of work?

 

Notice that no one is saying that it is impossible to find people to do it. The question is would it scale? What if you needed to expand your production to 100x what it currently is (and everyone else needed to do the same) for this kind of work?

No. I'd invest in a Swiss machine.