Retrotechtacular: The Master Hands of the Early Automotive Industry [Hackaday]

View Article on Hackaday

When motion pictures came along as a major medium in the 1920s or so, it didn’t take long for corporations to recognize their power and start producing promotional pieces. A lot of them are of the “march of progress” genre, featuring swarms of workers happy in their labors and creating the future with their bare hands. If we’re being honest, a lot of it is hard to watch, but “Master Hands,” which shows the creation of cars in the 1930s, is somehow more palatable, mostly because it’s mercifully free of the flowery narration that usually accompanies such flicks.

“Master Hands” was produced in 1936 and focuses on the incredibly labor-intensive process of turning out cars, which appear to be the Chevrolet Master Deluxe, likely the 1937 model year thanks to its independent front suspension. The film is set at General Motors’ Flint Assembly plant in Flint, Michigan, and shows the entire manufacturing process from start to finish. And by start, we mean start; the film begins with the meticulous work of master toolmakers creating the dies and molds needed for forging and casting every part of the car. The mold makers and foundrymen come next, lighting their massive furnaces and packing the countless sand molds needed for casting parts. Gigantic presses stamp out everything from wheels to frame rails to body panels, before everything comes together at the end of the line in a delicate ballet of steel and men.

The whole process is fascinating, not least because it shows just how little cars have changed in 88 years. Health and safety standards have changed, of course. How close the workers were allowed to come to machines that could easily turn them to pulp is amazing, especially on the frame assembly line; a worker standing just a few inches out of place would have a very bad day when those giant riveting machines swing in to attach cross-members to the frame rails. It also appears to be very dark in the plant, which is in marked contrast to the brightly lit assembly floors of today’s auto plants. Also of note is just how vertically integrated the process was, as it looks like literally every part of the car was made in the Flint factory, and just as it was needed.

While this film is ostensibly about building cars, as the name suggests it’s more a celebration of the craftsmanship that made the whole process work. There are a lot of close-ups on the hands of these workers, most probably long dead now, engaged in work that’s in turn delicate and brutal. There’s also a lot to be said about the engineering that went into the assembly line itself; coordinating a process spread out over such a vast area and getting all the people and parts into the right place at the right time without the aid of modern control systems is just mind-boggling.