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Man and Machine

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Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 09 Jan 2021, 19:48

I picked up this online on a whim that it might be interesting, I thought it may have been a book at first but it is actually five 21" x 17" really cool and interesting industrial stills. I thought some of you might like to take a look.

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"Steam Pump" USA 1920.

He missed his calling as a calendar model :lol:

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"Locomotive Tyre" 1955

I never realised that trains had replaceable tyres, but I suppose it makes sense as replacing a whole wheel must have been a ghastly expense.

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"Steam Crane and Gun" Woolwich Ars3nal 1880

If you read up on it Woolwich Ars3nal was a very interesting place, absolutely massive machines and power hammers.

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"General Electric Gear Casting" USA 1934

"Hey there, I need an eight-inch square key for a thirty-six-inch shaft."

"Did you mean - ..."

"I meant what I said."

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"Factory" Dusseldorf, Germany 1900

I'm honestly not even sure what this machine actually is, but it's gigantic at any rate!
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AndyT » 09 Jan 2021, 19:52

Absolutely marvellous, thanks for sharing those. I'm pretty sure the second image is available as a poster in Ikea. Can't think why it's more popular than the others...
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby novocaine » 09 Jan 2021, 20:01

The last machine is a lathe, milling machine.

Here it is without the people.

Thanks for sharing.
Edit, link didnt work.

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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 09 Jan 2021, 20:23

novocaine wrote:The last machine is a lathe, milling machine.

Here it is without the people.


Ah! A gigantic vertical borer! I wonder what would've been done on that or better yet how it would've been run, if the handwheels on the cutting arm are supposed to be operated by a person does that mean they have to be stood there walking with the work as it rotates, or is it all controlled from the side somehow?

Imagine what the machine that made that machine looked like :lol:
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby novocaine » 09 Jan 2021, 20:31

I think theres a working platform to the left and the right with remote controls. The hand wheels are for setup perhaps?

Its lathes all the way down. (Sounds better than turtles) :)
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AJB Temple » 09 Jan 2021, 22:01

Brilliant pictures. Thank you for posting.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby TrimTheKing » 10 Jan 2021, 01:32

Fantastic!! They don’t make enough like they used to, that’s for sure!
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 17 Jan 2021, 13:31

I managed to find the book, and dear god is it heavy! At 12" x 12" square and 2" thick it's a monster compared to all my other books. What a great thing to own though, hundreds of wonderful photographs of old industry in there, it's divided into categories such as Manufacturing, Aviation, Power, Railways, Communication, and so on.

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Re: Man and Machine

Postby novocaine » 17 Jan 2021, 13:42

Second pic lools like rof Risley. I know its not but i have memory of seeing that image somewhere.

Seocnd to last looks like control room for Battersea from behind the main desk.

All of them are fascinating.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 17 Jan 2021, 13:45

novocaine wrote:Second pic lools like rof Risley. I know its not but i have memory of seeing that image somewhere.

Seocnd to last looks like control room for Battersea from behind the main desk.

All of them are fascinating.


The second picture is of a munitions plant in France in 1914, I assume during the very start of the first world war.

You're right about second to last :D
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Mike G » 17 Jan 2021, 14:34

The third last (the uni-cycle) looks like an early try out for a Darwin award. Ridiculous! The rest.....fascinating.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby droogs » 17 Jan 2021, 14:51

there are people trying to bring that to market right now in electric form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqrG2bk7eBc.

I love the Hoover dam pic, would look awesome as a marquetry and metal inlay
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AndyT » 17 Jan 2021, 15:38

I was really intrigued by the fourth photo, the Owens Automatic Bottle Machine.

Thanks to the power of the web, I now know that this was the world's first automatic bottle moulding machine and is credited with eliminating child labour in glassworks, which was the industry's first response to the challenge of making a lot of bottles, cheaply. There's a brief clip of it in action here and plenty more material online.

[youtube]WX64FElTFZc[/youtube]

Despite the astounding mechanical complexity of Owens' machines they soon were superseded by the "gob fed" machines.

Back in the 70s I worked two summers in a glassworks where automatic moulding machines were squeezed into a very cramped old factory site. Imagine yourself if you can, tending to a line of seven such beasts, each making two dozen bottles at a time, fed with molten glass from an overhead tank of molten glass the size of three double garages, armed with a pair of tongs to poke into any sudden blockages.

I still remember it vividly, though I am glad to add that I was working at the comparatively placid "cold end" stacking finished products onto pallets and only occasionally ventured up the hot end to remind myself of what Hell probably looks and feels like.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Woodbloke » 17 Jan 2021, 17:35

6th pic shows some steam locos from the RHDLR. I used to to teach at Southlands School in Romsey and many of the kids used to come in from outlying districts on the little trains, sometimes wrecking many of the carriages, which caused a lot of angst with the railway - Rob
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 17 Jan 2021, 17:52

AndyT wrote:I was really intrigued by the fourth photo, the Owens Automatic Bottle Machine.


As was I (like with many things in the book :lol:), I couldn't really figure it out from the picture but that video of it working is priceless, I wonder when the last time one of them was run? What a thoroughly complicated looking piece of equipment.

Woodbloke wrote:6th pic shows some steam locos from the RHDLR. I used to to teach at Southlands School in Romsey and many of the kids used to come in from outlying districts on the little trains, sometimes wrecking many of the carriages, which caused a lot of angst with the railway - Rob


The reason I took an interest in that one is that I've actually ridden on them a long time ago when I was in Hythe as a kid.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby novocaine » 17 Jan 2021, 20:02

When all this is over i suggest you all head to Manchester for a wonderful walk round the MOSI.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 13 Mar 2021, 12:34

In a similar vein to the above book, I picked up a pair of Volumes of "Wonders of World Engineering" by Clarence Winchester from circa 1930-40. These are a compilation of all the articles from the magazine series of the same name with each book having over 750 pages and being tall, wide, and seriously heavy! Some great writing and photographs in these!

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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AndyT » 13 Mar 2021, 13:20

Great stuff again. What 1930s boy didn't dream of making a romantic safe deposit? (Fnaar, fnaar... :lol: )

That sort of pride in engineering had a long run in popular illustrated books and I guess continues happily in all those gee-wizz YouTube channels so many of us subscribe too. And why not, engineers have so often been clever, useful people worth a bit of appreciation.

Turning to my own bookshelves, I wonder if your real identity isn't some sort of Stag at Bay, or even a TV antiques expert, but might actually be Lance?

If so, I have a couple of your old birthday presents from Auntie Phyl, Uncle Jack and your cousins, Diana and Alan. Do you recognise them at all? ;)

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and how this question got to you

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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AJB Temple » 13 Mar 2021, 13:43

Brilliant books. We do seem dumbed down today in comparison. But it's hard to compare. No 1 offspring is studying aerospace engineering and currently doing an industry placement. He's presently working on cad cam design for experimental project on layer printed spiral turbine blades for high power, high efficiency jets. Some engineering methods and build techniques that could not have been imagined in the 30's and 40's.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 13 Mar 2021, 20:24

AJB Temple wrote:Brilliant books. We do seem dumbed down today in comparison. But it's hard to compare. No 1 offspring is studying aerospace engineering and currently doing an industry placement. He's presently working on cad cam design for experimental project on layer printed spiral turbine blades for high power, high efficiency jets. Some engineering methods and build techniques that could not have been imagined in the 30's and 40's.


I reckon it's just evolution in a way, they did things back then with proper hard graft and brainpower, these days the brainpower is still there mostly but the hard graft has all but been cut out of the equation.

Imagine designing something like the Forth Bridge nowadays, no need for the draughting board and dividers and many meticulous hours drawing it out and the details onto paper where if you make an unrectifiable mistake, you have to throw the whole work out that you may have spent hours on. These days you could make a complete 3D model with exacting details using a totally different set of skills, make a mistake and you just edit whatever it is until it is correct.

AndyT wrote:I wonder if your real identity isn't some sort of Stag at Bay, or even a TV antiques expert, but might actually be Lance?


It's one of life's many mysteries, much like how did they build Stonehenge or who actually shot JFK.

No one will never know, most probably.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Cabinetman » 27 Mar 2021, 07:54

I know but I’m keeping schtum.
The guy with the cap Sticking his oilcan into the end of a very complicated piece of equipment is sort of incongruous, I’m wondering what that machine actually did?
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 27 Mar 2021, 09:35

Cabinetman wrote: The guy with the cap Sticking his oilcan into the end of a very complicated piece of equipment is sort of incongruous, I’m wondering what that machine actually did?


Ah, that's a rather interesting one! It's an electrical generator for a lighthouse, Lizard Lighthouse in Cornwall to be specific. At the time it was one of the most powerful lighthouses in the world boasting a beam of 3,000,000 candle power.
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby Trevanion » 11 Aug 2021, 21:02

I recently acquired this two-volume set of books written by James Weir French in 1911 called "Machine Tools" which I thought some might like to see. This is a really rare set of volumes, such lovely books with the fold-out diagrams and the cover (which I believe was done by Talwin Morris like the rest of Gresham’s books of that era) is stunning with Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire and Metalworking flagged by staffs made from gears and cranks. They must've been a seriously expensive pair of books to buy in 1911, and they still do command a premium due to their rarity with some sets selling for hundreds of pounds in auction houses, but a very savvy buyer might only pay £5 each for them if they're lucky ;)

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Re: Man and Machine

Postby AndyT » 12 Aug 2021, 08:53

So, just catching up slowly here...those illustrations are presumably printed on quite thick paper so that you can actually cut them out of the book, glue them together and make little paper models of state of the art machinery!
What a concept! Why didn't they take the publishing world by storm, with every right-thinking would-be machinist filling their bedroom with scenes of the world they wanted to work in...?

I really hope you are going to print some copies and assemble them. (Not the originals, of course!)

Your sources are safe now you've got them, but I'd also be interested to know if these were via eBay, Abe etc or found in a physical shop. A definite snip at the price.

And btw, just how many machinery makers were there in Greater Manchester? And how many are there now?
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Re: Man and Machine

Postby droogs » 12 Aug 2021, 09:17

What a fantastic book :mrgreen:
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