Vintage work crew photos

[schuylergrace]

What were they pumping or spinning up behind the engine? Maybe getting the turbine spinning?

[Toolmaker51]

What were they pumping or spinning up behind the engine? Maybe getting the turbine spinning?

Performance test, that's a dynamometer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamometer

[schuylergrace]

Performance test, that's a dynamometer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamometer

No, not the original post, but the follow-up that had video of one of those engines starting and running. They joked about having to get folks from the audience to help with whatever they were cranking/pumping back there. Another thought was that they might have been winding up a flywheel used as a mechanical starter.

[Frank S]

its a pile of rags. But surely there must be other things for 2/3rds of those men standing around watching could be doing.

[Toolmaker51]

Aaaah. It must be some kind of flywheel with tremendous gear reduction; it's heard clearly when audience member lays into it.

[jimfols]

2338

Inertia Starter

Crank-starting a WW2 Panther tank - GIF

[12bolts]

Dad used to have an Allis Chalmers bulldozer with an inertia starter. We kids used to love winding that thing up!

[TrickieDickie]

For entertainment as kids in rural Mississippi my cousins, some 19 of various ages, and I would push papaws farm wagon up the hill on the county dirt road in front of their shotgun house. At the top we all jumped on and road it down steering it by the tongue (flipped back to us), heaven help us if a car was coming, no brakes and just a ditch to steer into.

[Jon]

Setting an extension shaft during the installation of a 44-inch blooming mill in the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. September, 1953.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...w_fullsize.jpg

[jimfols]

I like the way the lifting cables are attached.