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Originally Posted by Lloyd-TX
Great thread, keep it going!
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A couple of quick stories from the old PMD Engineering days.
1. My boss used to brag about putting together the 64 GTO parts list and other engineering / specification documents that actually told the assembly plants how to put those first GTO's together. In retrospect, I should have pressed him for more historical details. But there are two schools of thought: Either the participants involved in the design, engineering and manufacturing of a classic car performed a special act of magic OR they were just doing their jobs and deserve no extra credit or personal recognition.
2. This same supervisor was driving a company car through the Pontiac site carwash when his passenger brain-farted and pressed the button on the sun roof. Now there was an opportunity to tell a creative story to management.
3. In the trying days before drawing copiers and CAD, Original drawings were drawn on vellum or mylar by hand and then contact printed on Diazo (developed by ammonia) paper for distribution to the plants etc. My boss had a crew of "blueprint" machine operator who among other duties replenished the ammonia supply at the machines.
They took the empty ammonia carboy to the first floor and refilled it safely but one day when they brought it up to the second floor, they spilled it down the elevator shaft. The mechanics, lab workers etc were all sent home with pay because of the health "risk" of ammonia.
4. One of the Pontiac draftsmen made drafting tools & instruments in his basement shop for his peers. When he died, his boss was the first to talk to the widow and she sold him the power machinery (lathes, mills etc) the hand tools and pecision tools as well as thousands of dollars worth of nickel silver raw stock for like a thousand bucks.
5. The draftsmen worked a load of overtime drawing lines that became your fave cars. It is widely suspected that some of those draftsmen kept their wives updated on the extra cash flow. But many insisted that Salary meant just that: Salary and they got no extra pay for working six ten's each week. One draftsman's logic was "she has no room to complain, she gets one new dress a year. What more can she want?"
KTF
more to come
and thanks to Keith et al