most of these videos were made to train people (mainly women in ww2) who had never worked in the manufacturing sector before. they had to get the point across clearly and as fast as possible. the result is a good video. I make how-to videos and I've taken many notes from these.
@@Skullair313 No doubt, but all the car companies were doing this. The fact they are all proud enough to show off the engineering behind their vehicles makes contemporary versions pale in comparison. The narrators are just fun to listen to.
Measuring is what I do for a living, and the tools you see in this video are still in use today as well as computer controlled CMM measuring machines, which I program. When you watch this video, please consider how just a few years earlier people were getting around using horses!! The technology developed fast........
It took a few centuries to get that far , They were making steam engines in the early 1700's That means they had some precision capabilities in at the least the late 1600's Most then were comparative readings , with calipers etc
It was the introduction of Statistical Process Control, a departure from the old GO/NO GO gauging system, which really controlled resultant measurements. Prior to SPC, a hole on top limit could lead to a 'loose' fit when matched with a shaft on bottom limit. Used SPC methods covering various critical components in production engineering.
The ending was one of the most charming and adorable things iv'e seen in a while! It's like a little parade of instruments! Precision st. gauge ave. I love it! hehehe!
@@winkfield09 I started trade school in 1970 . retired now from tool work . I never worked to 2/100,000 . Tolerances that close and closer are usually on inspection equipment and they have different equipment than I used . A whole separate section of the trade. Also for that close of tolerances , temperature of the part when inspected will be part of the specifications,
This is a chronicle of the "American System" of manufacturing that was pioneered by Eli Whitney and his system of interchangeable parts whose sizes were qualified by master gages. That system was perfected by the gun industry of Connecticut through the 1800's and transferred to the auto industry when GM hired Henry Leland to be chief engineer at Cadillac. If you walk through an inspection department at any manufacturing or engineering facility today, you can still see Rockwell hardness testers, precision dial indicators, and go/no-go gages. This is the bedrock on which America's industrial strength was built. By this system, auto manufacturers were able to build cars at low enough cost that anybody could afford to buy them.
Andy Harman The master standard is still the gage block, shown in the film. One step removed from the uniform system of weights and measures maintained by the federal government, also shown in the film.
They were mass producing things before Eli was born , He did not prefect mass production , Exampled ... rail road wheels and English ship hardware etc He never filled his 1st order for 10,000 guns because of quality control problems, H e had a more advanced concept , but it needed work .
I definitely would have felt very certain of choosing a career path in mechanics or machining if I had been shown films of this type and caliber while in grade school. Instead we had directionless and meaningless curriculum.
There are so many things to say about this beautiful 1937 series of videos that I don't know where even to start. The tools to create the videos themselves weren't very advanced, yet you see cute marching tools at the end. Someone had to think of that. And if one transcribed the narration, it would forrm beautiful, proper writing. Then there's the perfect elocution of the narrator. And then, of course, the excellent educational subject of the recordings. Who would not be proud to have lived and contributed to that era. One can imagine families gathering around their TV sets or radios to see / hear one of these episodes. They are high quality productions, each beginning with a little story to inspire why the subject matters at all. They never insult your intelligence. And finally, the feats of technology themselves (i.e. the subjects of the recordings): Brilliant! All of these foundational things and pride in them have been lost. (._.) Thank you for these videos uploader. ❤️😊🙂
They say cars have improved since the 30s and Im sure in many respects that is true. I know one thing that has degraded since then and its the ability to produce a well edited, simple to understand, and extremely informative film such as this one. Nowadays Kids think the earth is flat and have no idea how anything works.
Uh... no You’ve obviously never seen Mustard. And it’s not the best effort by a multi-billion dollar company either.. it runs on sponsorship and donations. What’s interesting is... we know more about the time you lived through than you do.. and can spot your bullshit from a mile away. That’s why companies like GM don’t make this anymore. We know that back then they made these to pretend they cared abort the customer. Only a decade earlier, they’d introduced planned obsolescence to fleece their customers of their hard earned cash. Today? The average car in North America is 11 years old because nobody can afford to buy new. They made them well because Consumer Reports and social media will absolutely destroy any substandard quality. And when the profits don’t line up... the car executives spend money where it matters most-in Washington.
@@johndoe-so2ef This is what happens when Republicans in red states cut funding for education to the bone so they can produce stupid people who will unthinkingly vote for Republicans.
I googled "Jam Handy." He was actually an Olympic Swimmer (who lived to age 97) who got into communications later. His professor, at the University of Michigan, lived almost as long.
All of these measuring devices permit mass manufacturing of fairly complicated automobiles within fine tolerances. Of course computers assist with much of this type of work today yet in 1937 this was state of the art in the automobile industry.
Well personally speaking .... I think most people these says frankly just don’t give a fuck how anything works or is made... they just wanna use it and be done with it ... and when it breaks go out and buy another new guaranteed piece of shit
I drove a '48 Chevy for quite some time. It had the 235 Cubic Inch 6. The engine had no oil pump, but got oil from little cups on the bottom of the crankshaft. It worked well with the lower speeds at the time it was built, but as speeds increased, the engine couldn't get enough oil to the engine. In '52, Chevy changed the engine to a more modern oil delivery system.
Both early and late 235s had oil pumps. On the early ones (53 and earlier, but up through 55 in some international applications), oil didn’t go to the rod bearings, only the mains and valve train.
I find it interesting that, even though there were proportionally more people involved in manufacturing, the need for this film shows that there was still a great deal of popular ignorance of practical science, much less theory. One may argue that scientists like Einstein were more renowned then, but I dare say few truly understood their work, just like today. While we may moan over our education system today, the ability to distribute and access this information is much better.
True...but, in the "Good Old Days" you had all those industrial sinecure jobs (coal mining, steel mills, and the auto, home appliance and electronic manufacturing.) NOW-if you can't make it with your "Brains or Brawn" you can join the fifteen million Americans who get paid minimum wage in the restaurant industry.
@@drpoundsign Also, except for the auto repair business, we are a "throw away' society. In "the good old days" we had repair shops that would even repair a $10 toaster. Think of all the jobs that were in the repair business, ALL GONE today!
In his later days , my grandfather was a security guard at a chemical fertilizer company. I used to go to work with him at night , and we rode around on the golf Cart to go check the buildings and offices. One night , he took me into a huge room , in the main building/office , and it had a scale inside a glass/steel cabinet. It had tubes coming out of it , and some rubber gloves attached to the doors so you could do stuff with the scale , in a controlled environment. My grandfather said it was one of the most accurate scales in the state and that other companies and even state and federal businesses sent stuff there to get weighed/ tested. As a 10 year old, that was one of the coolest things I had ever seen......
We did OK in 1937. 1945 and WW2, gained a lot - but loss much over the years. Apollo 11 1969 and this video, only 32 years. Time frame 7:40. Nice. Need to find that newspaper. I am sure it is online somewhere.
This man is likely long dead now but if there is still a part of him that exists, it may help to know that now we have almost reached a point where all of our measurements have reached a point where we can now relate everything to physical laws. Once mass is finalized, we will have the ability to measure everything in relation to the standard model of particle physics meaning we will be able to precisely measure regardless of location in our universe.
They did not. They pretended to care to get the customers’ money. GM had just introduced planned obsolescence to the automobile world a decade earlier... forcing people to buy new cars if they were going to keep up with the times.
@@Bartonovich52 I don't believe in planned obsolesence. I do believe in material wear, i do believe in peoples decisions. The same cars you say as "obsolete"works by years, tens of years without problems when an correct maintenance is done in other coutries beside USA.
At least these were well done. Some TV commercials today after watching you don't even know what they were advertising. Also they are silly, and geared for the teens who don't necessarily buy anyway.
4:32 The old Argonaut Building in Detroit. From Wikipedia: The , renamed in 2009 the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education (originally the Argonaut, or General Motors Research Laboratory), is a large office building located at 485 West Milwaukee Avenue in the New Center area of Detroit, Michigan, across the street from Cadillac Place. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Lol. Compared to when this film was made. Literacy rates are higher. High school graduation rates are higher. Degree completion is higher. Kids are learning things in Grade 8 that this generation were learning in Grade 12 if they finished it. If you really want to go back in time as far as education goes... go to rural Mississippi... or Somali.
5 yrs later this technology and the advances made in those 5yrs is what we went to WW II with. The knowledge, (along with Von Braun) gained during the war is what led to the America that was the envy and the symbol of freedom and DEMOCRACY to the world post WWII. In the 50's all that cumulative knowledge gave rise to the Industrial Military Complex that Eisenhower warned against. And here we are.......
No, they haven't actually. An American car made in 1937 had a life expectancy of about a decade. My 2004 GMC Sierra 2500 HD Duramax Diesel runs as good as it did the day it was built almost 17 years ago. I've never had to pay for anything beyond regular maintenance.
Now computers CNC machining does all this precision measurments. Unbeliveable just how accurate the computer programming can complete such exacting measurements.
If we can measure gravitational waves from light years away, with a mile-long detector in 2019, then we most certainly could measure a pencil dot in the 1930s.
British and European car manufactures in the '30's understood and employed very tight tolerances, the idea that Chevrolet was a leader in accuracy is hilarious.
These were all part of GM's 'mass-selling' technique (there's actually a GM dealer training video on RU-vid which explains it). This films would have been shown in movie theaters, schools, factories and workplaces as genuinely educational short features but they more subtly emphasised all the good qualities of a Chevy and built up the public perception of the cars. So the film about the differential gear is a very good way of explaining why the diff is needed, how it works and what effect it has but makes sure to end by pointing out that the new GM hypoid differential is the best ever and because of it the '37 Chevrolet has a flat cabin floor, or whatever. Very clever marketing!
Call me a documentary nerd but I love this old stuff. Mechanical machining😊 and one precision tool has to be better to make a better precision machining tool down to the tolerance that they are after
The only reason you think things like precision measuring are boring is because you had a bad teacher. It takes a real fuckup to get the drama of human history, the highs, lows, the bloody battles and amazing achievements of the human mind and make kids just glaze over because you couldn't do your fucking job.
