Office Cubicle Manufacturing (1954) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Office Cubicle Manufacturing (1954) [video]

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39 points1970-01-0125 comments

Interesting to see mitigation of passing noise be casually mentioned as an obvious requirement. It feels significant that, as we've shifted more of the economy to knowledge work, we've placed less of an emphasis on the physical conditions that allow people to work without disturbance.

Cubicle farms felt cramped and busy, but I look back at films and TV negatively portraying cube life, and think it looks pretty good compared to open plan offices now.

I never minded working in a cubicle when I started working professionally in the early 00s. For me, it was around 1000% times better than around 2015 when the place I worked at went to full open office.

Probably the nicest I had was a shared private office with someone on my team. Got privacy and the ability to collaborate at the same time.

There are still plenty of employers that haven't moved to open-plan offices, at least not for engineering staff. They're just usually in 'old-fashioned' industries.

That is good to hear. Currently fully remote, but workspace will definitely be a criteria if I move on to a place with an office.

Can't help but notice the lack of face masks on the sound proofing and painting parts. I mean, it was a different time but tough to watch folks do that work in this and breathe all that in.

In a similar vein, I recall just 15 years ago how helmets were rarely seen when skiing and snowboarding, and now pretty much everyone is wearing them.

I never had to wear a seatbelt in the back of the car when I was growing up, regularly used to travel in the boot. Now kids are in a cacoon.

Growing up in the 60s, we never wore seatbelts in the car and it's not like there were even airbags or a zillion other safety features that there are in modern cars.

It's easy to make fun of some of the safety obsession we see in society but the fact is that if you look at some dangerous toys list of years past, a lot of them we wouldn't have today for mostly pretty good reasons.

Was wondering if seat belt laws would be evident in the data, just eyeballing it looks like 1989-92 decreases in motor vehicle fatalities [1] could line up with the rise of state bans starting in 1984 [2].

But seeing a pretty linear decline from 1921 to 2021 and looks like big annual drops in fatalities are more connected to economic conditions than safety features (i.e. only double digit % drops I'm seeing are 1932, 1938, 1942, 1943, 1974, 1982, and 2008).

So the drop in the late 1980s into the early '90s may've had more to do with the early '90s recession.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_laws_in_the_United_S...

There are a ton of confounding variables.

All the other safety features. As you say, maybe differences in miles driven because of recessions/fuel price spikes. DUI/DWI becoming less socially acceptable, at least in many segments of society. The overall evolution of attitudes towards risk.

I wouldn't expect the laws themselves to have a huge effect. They mostly trailed public opinion, enforcement was limited, and penalties small if someone really didn't want to wear a seat belt.

Car seats as contraception:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046#...

I love the mom with a baby in the front seat at 15 seconds in this video implying that DUI and seat belt laws will lead to communism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/10vc5jt/...

As kids, we were usually in the back of a Ford pickup on I-95 bouncing around in a sea empty beer cans. My mom was very safety conscious, however, so we were forbidden from sitting on top of the wheel wells.

I admit I don't but I also don't do a lot of downhill skiing any more and I'm not being hardcore when I do. (And I do have a hat with ribs of D3O impact-resistant material which seems a reasonable compromise.)

I think there were probably a few dynamics in skiing/snowboarding in addition to an overall trend, especially among the mostly higher income people doing those sports.

When snowboarding became the hot thing, it was a sport where you were more likely to fall backward and hit your head on some ice than was the case with skis.

In addition, if there was an overall safety trend, there was an even more pronounced overall safety trend with children. Activities that were pretty commonplace like "easy" skiing with very young children in some sort of back harness would probably leave people aghast today. And I assume it's hard to tell kids you need to wear a helmet but I don't because I'm the mommy or the daddy.

And the guy smoking while unloading sugar - or the other guy just casually standing inside the sugar (that still happens today).

> In painting, electrostatic action pulls the pain onto the surface, ensuring an even coat and safe working conditions.

See? It's safe. Because they said it's safe. I'm sure the electrostatic action will pull *all* of the paint onto the surface.

We had cubicles like that at the Canadian Space Agency (back in 2017). Man were they ever nice. Some of the best concentration I ever achieved at work back then – no doubt about that. Coming from someone who is easily distracted, that was especially important.

The time is missing: https://youtu.be/RNp5QxPyvHM?t=470

This Youtube account (PeriscopeFilm) is a goldmine. I was recently recommended this film by the mighty algorithm:

"BASIC PRINCIPLES OF FREQUENCY MODULATION 1944 U.S. WAR DEPARTMENT FILM FM RADIO 86794"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzvxefRDT84

It explains how AM and FM radio works in great detail (30 mins).

Video uploader: https://periscopefilm.com/about-us/

Jeff Quitney on Vimeo is another great channel. He used to be on YT but got booted for some reason. https://vimeo.com/jeffquitney

This whole video is interesting, including the intermissions (A message from Industry to You...)

Film info: https://sova.si.edu/details/NMAH.AC.0507#ref396

Off topic from the OP’s submission title, but to me the most interesting segment was on mobile home manufacturing later in the video.

I recently learnt that at the time, the largest building construction companies were in prefabricated housing - in other words, mobile homes.

Stories about factory-built housing as a panacea to the affordability crisis still make it out as if the they are some new concept, but they’ve been around for a long, long time.

I think there's a big difference between manufacturing mobile homes and manufacturing homes or multifamily buildings like they to do today.

That is having frames built, wired, and drywalled, is better than building onsite. However mobilehomes are themselves no where near the quality in construction you expect for a permanent structure (that can appreciate in value rather than depreciate).

Was this type of promotional films often played in theaters in the 1950s?

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