Sunday, March 08, 2020
OSHA was a good thing for a while
I'm reading about early typewriters, aiming to make a digital model of the crude original.
The original Sholes and Glidden design was radically different from the eventual Remington production model. For one thing, the original rotated the roller to form each line, and moved the roller sideways for the next line. (Like the Optophone.) This must have seemed more natural** to inventors, but it clearly didn't work well. It required the paper to roll backward and forward all the time, causing pileups and crumples. The modern setup was suggested to Remington by customers, and quickly implemented.
While looking up patents and such, I bumped into this picture of the Sears order department in 1913:
Jesus! Imagine the SOUND and SMELL and FIRE DANGER of this atrocious setup. Those girls must have gone deaf quickly. The hard walls and ceilings would maintain a steady unceasing resonance. A guesstimate using 70 db for each typewriter and 500 typists yields about 130 db ambient. That's the pain threshold, and guarantees permanent loss from sustained exposure.
It's easy to see why federal regulation of capitalism was needed. Regulations started around 1910 and increased through 1980, then stopped.
Toward the end the regulators got crazy and needed to be slapped down.
The slapping down went too far. Now we're quickly returning to the same dangerous situations in Amazon warehouses and Tesla factories, which are exempt from regulation because Bezos and Elon are Friends of Epstein.
= = = = =
** Why did it seem more natural? Probably something like this.... Sholes and Glidden were experienced printers, who thought of typewriting as a modified form of hot-lead printing. They were focused mainly on the quality of the impression. Their original setup placed the type axially on the page, so longer and larger letters had an equal chance of hitting full and flat. The newer arrangement limits the size of type, and even small fonts tend to hit harder in the middle.
[The VariTyper solves the variable size problem by holding the type still while a flat platen behind the paper slaps the paper up against the type, thus reverting to the hot-lead printing setup. The VariTyper has a cylindrical roller to move the paper, but the action happens above the roller.]
Jesus! Imagine the SOUND and SMELL and FIRE DANGER of this atrocious setup. Those girls must have gone deaf quickly. The hard walls and ceilings would maintain a steady unceasing resonance. A guesstimate using 70 db for each typewriter and 500 typists yields about 130 db ambient. That's the pain threshold, and guarantees permanent loss from sustained exposure.
It's easy to see why federal regulation of capitalism was needed. Regulations started around 1910 and increased through 1980, then stopped.
Toward the end the regulators got crazy and needed to be slapped down.
The slapping down went too far. Now we're quickly returning to the same dangerous situations in Amazon warehouses and Tesla factories, which are exempt from regulation because Bezos and Elon are Friends of Epstein.
= = = = =
** Why did it seem more natural? Probably something like this.... Sholes and Glidden were experienced printers, who thought of typewriting as a modified form of hot-lead printing. They were focused mainly on the quality of the impression. Their original setup placed the type axially on the page, so longer and larger letters had an equal chance of hitting full and flat. The newer arrangement limits the size of type, and even small fonts tend to hit harder in the middle.
[The VariTyper solves the variable size problem by holding the type still while a flat platen behind the paper slaps the paper up against the type, thus reverting to the hot-lead printing setup. The VariTyper has a cylindrical roller to move the paper, but the action happens above the roller.]
Labels: Answered better than asked
¶ 3:16 PM
