Vintage work crew photos

[Frank S]

Looks like a nice, bright cheery place... Until you notice that it's lit (on darker days or nights, by a handful of bare, incandescent bulbs that look to be about 10' - 12' apart. In my shop I have 4' LED lights every 8' or so that give of 10X the light of those bulbs. Now ask women and children to work around a bunch open spindles and other pinch points and moving parts... YIKES!

Lighting options has greatly improved over the years
While hazards in the work place have been reduced immensely throughout the years so has training and awareness of the hazards which still exist, and are more difficult and in some cases nearly impossible to completely eliminate.
I worked around some flat belt equipment as a teenager most all of it had been converted to individual motor drives and could be stopped independently of everything else it was still next to impossible to change speeds unless the belts were turning maybe not actually under power at the time usually we changed the speeds as the motors were winding down. Slowing the speed of the machine was easy as gravity helped you. You simply used a push stick to slip the belt down to a smaller diameter pulley then used it to force the belt over the larger one on the bottom, but when changing in the other direction you had to do this in reverse meaning the belt had to be lifted and forced to climb over the larger pulley. Do this while the motor was still turning fast and if you weren't careful it would grab the stick before you could get it fully out of the way and smack you right in the face or send it flying through the shop or break it. Do the change when the RPMs had fallen off to the point that momentum was lost and the 4 or 6 inch wide belt might not rout itself in place. if it was mostly seated then you simply started the motor if it was only partially on then you had to roll it by hand but if it failed to make the climb and the motor stopped then you had to start the motor and try again.
Trust me when you are 12 or 13 years old you learn very quickly how to time things just right very quickly