Thursday, December 8, 2005

100 years ago

The Yorkshire coal trade so far as it related to Hull, maintained its activity, as shown by the official returns relating to the previous month. The tonnage received in November reached 331,600 tons, giving a substantial increase of 26,216 tons over the same month of the previous year. The total up to date for the year stood at 3,467,616 tons, an increase of 185,968 tons over the same period of the previous year.

50 years ago

Automation would make factories safer, according to Sir George Barnett, Chief Inspector of Factories, in his annual report for 1954. He said that although Britain was only at the beginning of this new development and the "push button factory" would take a long time to arrive, automation would make factories cleaner and because the machine would be remote from the human supervisor, safer. Automatic handling, too, was bound to increase and this would eliminate many accidents caused by handling goods and materials. Because there were more people than ever at work the year before, there were more accidents. These increased from 181,637 in 1953 to 185,167. The rate per 1,000 workers, however, showed a slight decrease to 22.4 compared with 22.7 in 1953. Too many young people and women were still being injured at work, and there was no decrease in the accident rate for either of these groups. Full employment and an unsatisfied demand for labour had brought more women into the factories, and the report questioned whether the same attention was given to training women and girls as was given to training men and boys.

25 years ago

Fake sound effects were notoriously more "realistic" than an actual live-recording of a sound. That was just one of the snippets of advice provided by York Cine Club at its exhibition in York City Library. The exhibition was providing information and advice on how to make movies, and advertising the activities of the club, which included the showing and making of films, advice on equipment and lectures from film-makers. The club had recently made two films -- one of the Lord Mayor's Parade for York Junior Chamber and another of the Derwent Valley Railway. "Many more people own cine cameras of some kind these days and we are trying to persuade as many of them as possible to include sound with their films," said Mr David Simpson, secretary of the club.

Updated: 16:32 Wednesday, December 07, 2005