Manufacturing video of TVs

[rbola35618]

Was surfing the net and found this video. It is amazing that stuff they were able to design, build and test in an era without computers, circuit simulation and only used slide ruler for computations

[FenderBender]

Very cool. I was not alive back then. My parents were still infants also! But sometimes that era seemed like a fun one to live in, especially with the technology revolution.

[poptones]

That was pretty awesome.

[ablacon64]

Very interesting video. I wonder if we could build a factory nowadays with just 150K dollars!

[IanB]

Quite sad that the narrator was saying "craftsman" while a craftswoman was in view, and "man" at another time when a woman was plainly at work.

The emphasis on "men" in many parts of the narration was very jarring and out of place in today's world.

It is perhaps a good thing that the world and workplace depicted is now far behind us.

[poptones]

Really think so?

Electronic assembly line work was then, and is still considered today, women's work. Back then the line of thought was womeon are more attentive to detail and are comfortable working with their hands on tiny intricate details; wires are like threads, which women are comfortable with as well. I have two aunts who worked in electronic factories back then, this is how it was. When I first became a jr engineer back in 1983, I still recall one day I was working on a prototype board and my boss came along and asked me what I was doing when he had asked me to give him a report about some other part of the project. When I told him I was assembling a prototype for test he scolded me and said for me to get back to that other project he had given me and to give that board to the production manager so he could have one of  the line workers put it together, that is "woman's work." Go into a board production line in Texas today and you'll still likely find a line of women working at counters while a man, or maybe a man and a woman, manage them.

[rbola35618]

I was fortunate to have worked for RCA service company from 1980 to 1993 as a TV repairman. It was the best job in the world. Where else do you get paid for doing your hobby (fixing TVs ) and get to watch TV all day. Truly, it was my dream job.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Quite sad that the narrator was saying "craftsman" while a craftswoman was in view, and "man" at another time when a woman was plainly at work.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

The emphasis on "men" in many parts of the narration was very jarring and out of place in today's world.

It is perhaps a good thing that the world and workplace depicted is now far behind us.

So that's why (in the West) we don't make TV's anymore! Because of those damn women and their lousy work-MAN-ship!










 
j/k

[RCMR]

Wow, today's health and safety gestapo would have a field-day at a factory like that.

Handling cryogenic liquids without so much as gloves.

Handling glass with no gloves or eyeware

Operating a lacquer spraygun with no facemask or filtering...

It's just like China is today!

[Obi_Kwiet]

Quite sad that the narrator was saying "craftsman" while a craftswoman was in view, and "man" at another time when a woman was plainly at work.

Why? Woman has the word "man" in it. Words like "craftsman", "chairman" used to be common nouns. It was asinine to retroactively impose a particular gender on terms that were previously common, because it totally ruins the flow of the language. Instead of simply being rational and progressive by recognizing that a woman could be a craftsman, now we have to run around using douchey, awkward, unnecessarily specific terms like "chairwoman".

[notsob]

Tautology at it's finest

"REASONS WHY"

[radioman.lt]

..and in those times they were finnaly capable of 'sending man to the moon' , a great tv show it become 

[Rerouter]

the main thing that caught my eye was in the materials testing, exposing the plastics to high intensity UV to see how it held up... if only that step was still done with most of the stuff we get from china... so many plastic enclosures i have had to deal with the embedded writing or colour fading and the plastic cracking,

[IanB]

Why? Woman has the word "man" in it. Words like "craftsman", "chairman" used to be common nouns. It was asinine to retroactively impose a particular gender on terms that were previously common, because it totally ruins the flow of the language. Instead of simply being rational and progressive by recognizing that a woman could be a craftsman, now we have to run around using douchey, awkward, unnecessarily specific terms like "chairwoman".

Because that explanation doesn't really hold water. Consider some of the closing remarks on the video:

There's one other big reason for the success of RCA Victor Television that we can't forget or over emphasise--and that is the cooperation and efforts of men like you who are sitting here today. Men who are looked upon as key members of the RCA Victor family, men who are as close to RCA Victor as anyone who contributes to this great team. No matter how well a set is made, no matter how carefully quality is built in and protected all the way, it still remains for you men who are on the firing line to add the final touch of success, namely bringing fine products to a successful sales climax.

The use of the word "men" there was considered and deliberate. It wasn't just being gender neutral for convenience. It really meant that everyone of consequence in the production process was male. If any women were involved, their job was trivial and unimportant.

[poptones]

I don't really read it that way at all. The emphasis on men in the closing was pretty obviously deliberate, but that is because the sales force was always men. There were plenty of shots of women doing their part in the video even including, I do believe, one or two minorities in there. This was a sales force training video, of course they are going to speak directly to their audience.

[johnwa]

the main thing that caught my eye was in the materials testing, exposing the plastics to high intensity UV to see how it held up... if only that step was still done with most of the stuff we get from china... so many plastic enclosures i have had to deal with the embedded writing or colour fading and the plastic cracking,

I don't know if this was the case in the USA at the time, but I have heard that, in the early days of television in Australia, quality and reliability was a huge problem. I expect that all these QC steps were very necessary in order to have a chance of ending up with something that worked at all!

It is also evident how labour-intensive the production process was back then. It would be interesting to know how many people were employed then, and how many would be required today for the same output.

[poptones]

The irony is, the more labor intensive the product, the more asia can compete. Go on ebay and look at all those glass charms; the genuine Italian version will cost you 30 bucks or more for a single bead; you can buy a bag of 100 of them from China for less than a hundred bucks. Same labor intensive manufacturing process.

Furniture is another great example. The southeast US has always been a big source of furniture in America. People like to talk up the quality of their local workforce, especially in America. But America ships off forests as raw logs, then imports that same wood back from China in the form of furniture. Because the shipping costs are so high on furniture, ironically, the high end manufacture of furniture for the US has shifted to Asia. Now all the plants in the southeast create the cheapest stuff.

[G7PSK]

Wow, today's health and safety gestapo would have a field-day at a factory like that.

Handling cryogenic liquids without so much as gloves.

Handling glass with no gloves or eyeware

Operating a lacquer spraygun with no facemask or filtering...

It's just like China is today!

That spray booth had filtering in the form of a water curtain with a strong back draught that sucked the over spay through the water curtain so a mask was not strictly necessary but would certainly be required these days.

[rbola35618]

They did all that testing because parts were not as reliable; especially the vacume tubes. As a TV repairmen in the mid 70s, the first thing that went out were the tubes. Radio Shack used to sell tubes and had a tube checker. So it was imperative that they test as much as posible to root out the infant defects.

Robert

[poptones]

There's more to it than that. Statistical analysis and semiconductors combined in the 80s to reduce such testing. Back in the mid 80s we were still testing every unit in an oven before shipping it. Deming's work in Japan finally was being recognized here in the US and, since then, businesses have sort of "devolved" his theories into formula for increasing profit. Things just don't get tested as much any more and, overall, they're still pretty amazingly reliable.

This is why, when I buy a high ticket item like a new monitor I run it 24/7 the first month or two. For monitors, I have a series of high contrast pngs that I will cycle, with the brightness and contrast maximized, for hours while I'm away. That way, if the thing is gonna die, hopefully it will die before the 90 days or whatever runs out.

[GeoffS]

And every man was wearing a white shirt and a tie (except for the one  technician wearing a bowtie). I'm glad we've progressed beyond that!