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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 21:45:09 :
In Reply to: Re: Chinese cast iron posted by Dave [76.182.149.93] on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 18:40:03 :
Back then, an engine was a wonderful thing in itself. It was a the pinnacle of modern technology. Just possessing an automobile was a step into the future. Of course it was expensive. A rich man wouldn't have it any other way. I used to work for a man who had a 1933 Deusenberg gathering dust in his garage. Once in a while I'd sit in it. The engine was a big straight 8. A car, and most importantly an engine, was a different thing back then. It wasn't a commodity. It wasn't an evil CO2-spewing beast to be poisoned by filling its oil pan with sodium silicate and running it until it seizes up. Back then, an engine was the future. It was nothing less than liberation from muscle power. It allowed a man to go wherever he wanted at the speed of a locomotive, which itself had been a miracle not long before. It's a wonderful thing to be building the future, especially when you're building it for men who are willing to pay for the very best. I understand why the men who built those engines took pride in their work and their profession.
We should tip our hats every time we unscrew a bolt or a nut that was last tightened by a man long-dead in a factory long-silent. Think of the smoke of oil and steel in the air, the leather belts slapping on the pulleys of the line shafting, the clatter of chain hoists and sharp-shod hooves, the men in coveralls, farm boys come to a city they could never have imagined to earn high wages and send some of the money to the old folks back home. Yes, there were dangerous, dirty, and hard jobs. Sometimes there were more workmen than there was work. But they were building the future. They were building the machines that would make it possible to build the machines that would make it possible to build the machines that gave us CNC mills and the Internet. There had to be cast iron before there were computer chips.
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