MAN AND SHOVEL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 265, 5 August 1937, Page 15

MAN AND SHOVEL

Example of Physical Co-ordination

BEAUTY IN GRIMY JOB

In the grimy surroundings of the retorts section of the Petone gasworks ' The Dominion” saw yesterday as fine an exhibitioii of perfect physical coordination and rhythm of limb and body movement as that presented by the best oarsmen moving ill trained precision across still water or any other good athletes.in the exposition of their sports. In this case the performer was a man with a longbandied shovel. Mr. Phil. Albrett, leading stoker lor the retorts into which the coal is fed to be heated for the extraction of gas is one of a number of stokers employed at the gasworks. Their job is to teed the <2 retorts each of which burns two and a half hundred weight of coal at a time. Mr. Albrett has so perfected his stoking of the retorts that it is fascinating to watch hi. in action. Yesterday he was feeding a retort oven sft. lin. from the floor of the retort house. There was 15 feet between the retorts and the opposite side of the house where the coal was heaped against the wall. Mr. Albrett bad a Oft. shovel. He took his stand midway between the retorts and the wall opposite. The retort he was feeding, like all the others, measured 12 feet to the back of its oven. The mouthpiece was 22 inches in diameter. '.rhe coal had to be filled from the back of its oven forward.

Under a test he did not know he was undergoing Mr. Albrett shovelled two and a half hundredweight of coal into the retort in lutin. 30 2-ssec. This took 24 shovelfulls. So exact was the movement and timing that not a lump of coal went on the floor. The alternative way of tilling the retorts is by mechanical scoop which has to be loaded by three men. They fill the scoop aud then fill the retort. This takes three minutes of each man’s time, nine minutes’ working time. It takes two scoopfulls to fill a retort. The new £30.000 automatic feed vertical retorts which are to be installed at the gasworks will mean the disappearance of this type of manual operation which Mr. Albrett performs so well that it comes within the scope of one of those many types of craftsmanship that the machine age is rapidly denying the means of pradioe. Mr. AZfcreit is worth a “sports slant” motion-picture short.