Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#41

Post by KineticLensman »

bloopernova wrote: post #35
keiferski wrote: post #16

The philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford argued that the origin of modern industrial machines goes back further than the Industrial Revolution and Renaissance, all the way back to the regimented and time-based lives of medieval monks. Knocker uppers seem like a direct obvious example of this phenomenon of humans as proto machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.…

Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

> All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

Well they did have radios, telephones and radar as well. The fire control systems of battleships and anti-aircraft guns led to massive advances in distributed analogue computing that provided early insights into human/machine interactions as well as the beginnings of system-level architecting. The Brits during the Battle of Britain exploited telephone networks and switchboards in innovative ways to create a highly fault (bomb) tolerant decentralised command and control system that formed an early version of the sensor-to-shooter kill chains we see today.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

cen4 wrote: post #38
bloopernova wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. People have more time to think about what they can achieve. I vaguely remember Planning for Normandy taking 2 years or something, just cause of all the resources they had to mobilize from around the world. Contrast with today's wars, were all the real time tech in the world is producing lot of half baked outcomes.

A frequently repeated excuse for WWI germany is that Wilhelm II had expressed desire not to invade the west, but had been told by his military that it was too late to recall the trains. Apparently the guy in charge of the german army's logistics in 1914 wrote a book after the war to explain that not only could he have turned everyone back before the border had he only received a command to do so, but also included appendices with the timetables for doing so.

[my book with the reference is currently unavailable, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan#Der_Weltkrieg suggests it might have been Groener, Das Testament des Grafen Schlieffen: Operativ Studien über den Weltkrieg (1929)]

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#43

Post by bloopernova »

KineticLensman wrote: post #41
bloopernova wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

> All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets. Well they did have radios, telephones and radar as well. The fire control systems of battleships and anti-aircraft guns led to massive advances in distributed analogue computing that provided early insights into human/machine interactions as well as the beginnings of system-level architecting. The Brits during the Battle of Britain exploited…

If you've not read Most Secret War I highly recommend it. Dr R V Jones details some of the different systems involved in the Battle of Britain and it's a great book too.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#44

Post by KineticLensman »

ahoka wrote: post #9
madaxe_again wrote: post #3

A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house. It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came…

I find it fascinating that I don’t understand a sentence of this.

'mandatory milk'

Many primary schools in the UK in the 1960s/1970s would have had 'milk monitors' - pupils whose job was to help distribute small servings of milk to their classmates. The milk distribution was an attempt to offset child malnutrition. The role continues to evoke strong feelings today. The Brit ex prime minister Rishi Sunak was described as a 'jumped up milk monitor' and when (in the 1970s) Margaret Thatcher as education secretary (minister) cancelled the school milk programme, she was reviled as 'Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher'.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#45

Post by gurjeet »

I find it very interesting how the same phrase is now used for a completely different meaning. Others might see a connection between this use and the one meant in the movie 'Knocked Up' [1], but not being a native speaker of the language, I don't.

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478311/

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#46

Post by Ylpertnodi »

morkalork wrote: post #39
madaxe_again wrote: post #3

A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house. It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came…

Coming from a north american public school, I can't imagine one's family paying large sums of money to send you to a boarding school... just to be some older boy's servant. Get your own ass up, or don't, not my problem. I am by no means a rabid libertarian but that kind of environment would drive me to it.

Chances are your public school doesn't have boarders. If your parents/ siblings ever woke you up...they were fagging (if not voluntary). Admittedly, some fag systems were just pure bullying, but generally not. If course, the smokers - after being woke up - would go outside and suck on a fag, but that's another story.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#47

Post by Ylpertnodi »

oersted wrote: post #10
madaxe_again wrote: post #3

A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house. It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came…

Gotta love british boarding school jargon. In the 90s no less! Sounds like 18th century.

My school still exists: founded in 15xx. Fags still fagging in '24.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#48

Post by KineticLensman »

bloopernova wrote: post #43
KineticLensman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets. Well they did have radios, telephones and radar as well. The fire control systems of battleships and anti-aircraft guns led to massive advances in distributed analogue computing that provided early insights into human/machine interactions as well as the beginnings of system-level architecting. The Brits during the Battle of Britain exploited…

If you've not read Most Secret War I highly recommend it. Dr R V Jones details some of the different systems involved in the Battle of Britain and it's a great book too.

I read 'The Secret War' by Brian Johnson which was based on a 1970s BBC series. I think it's an earlier version of the same thing.

Another great (although very dry) book is 'Between Human and Machine - Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics' by David A. Mindell. This goes into the fire control stuff that I mentioned, and describes how one effect of the war was to force together the different groups that were working on analogue computation.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#49

Post by mlyle »

cen4 wrote: post #38
bloopernova wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading about world war 2 has given me a new appreciation for just how manual everything was. It's amazing that the Allies managed 2 major amphibious landings in June 1944: Normandy was one, Saipan the other. Saipan was about a thousand miles from the nearest Allied forward base, and >3000 miles from Pearl Harbor! All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets.

Sometimes its a good thing that tools slow you down. People have more time to think about what they can achieve. I vaguely remember Planning for Normandy taking 2 years or something, just cause of all the resources they had to mobilize from around the world. Contrast with today's wars, were all the real time tech in the world is producing lot of half baked outcomes.

Note that we got a lot of half-baked outcomes and military disasters with manual processes, too.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#50

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

madaxe_again wrote: post #3

A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house. It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came…

> ironically, whoever was on knocking up used to get to lie in for the week.

I need to know more about "mandatory milk at the same time" to understand this

Post reply on HN