FOOL-PROOF HOUSE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20931, 10 January 1938, Page 14

FOOL-PROOF HOUSE

HOME OFFICE WONDER PREVENTING ACCIDZUYo There is a building in London where they like you to try to hurt yourself, says a writer in the "Daily Express.” The sombrely-named Home Office Industrial Museum, known in the neighbourhood of Horseferry Road. Westminster, as Fool-proof House, recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. Employers and workers from all over the world have discovered its value as a place to study the prevention of accidents. but London so far has not discovered the entertinment it has to offer.

The museum staff are grateful for London's ignorance. If it became generally known how many ways of not getting hurt they were able to demonstrate. the museum would be overrun with people anxious to practise narrow escapes in perfect safety. Its ground floor and its gallery are like a great, clean factory, containing machines for every process, from metal stamping, printing, meat mincing, cake mixing, woodworking, shoe and box making, to rubber rolling, laundrying. clothes pressing, and aerated water bottle filling. But the machines all have one thing in common. They, or their like, have all at one time or another hurt somebody—crushed an arm or a hand, lopped off a finger, or even drawn their minder to death. Now they stand muzzled. Attached to them are all the latest ways of preventing anybody foolishly risking life and limb. The thing needed to prove hov; well muzzled they are is to risk life and limb among them. A Home Office factory inspector taking his month’s turn-of-duty. plus refreshercourse. in the museum obligingly risks his for you over and over again. Protective Measures He tried to thrust his hand under a descending power press. An automatic grid shot out like a kicking gate and jolted him back. The next power press in which th« insj>ector did his best to jam his fingers had a rubber-sheathed guard which leapt out horizontally and pushed his arm aside. Other guards simply refused to allow him to place his hand near the press. Not even a finger could wriggle its way past their barriers.

A pair of heavy steel rollers used for rubber manufacture automatically stopped whenever hand or any other par* of the body approached them. The guard of the heavy, paper-cutting guillotine threw him roughly back when he tried to meddle with the dropping knife. An automatic washing machine, with its rotary cage for swirling clothes round, would not start until its lid was clased and foolish hands were out of the way. and would not allow its lid to be opened until it had stopped rotating. One clothes press would not do its work unless both hands were applied to separate switches. Try to smooth out a garment crease at the last minute as the press came down, and it simply stopped. Another rotated out of reach of hands before applying its pressure. It Stormed First A cake mixer with sinister steel revolving arms inside its drum would not allow its guard to be raised until the arms had stopped revolving. A pastry roller, like a steel mangle, started rotating the other way whenever hands came near it. so that fingers were pushed away instead of being drawn in. Even cardboard box-making machines and sewing machines had the anti-meddie devices. It was impossible to put your finger under the jabbing needle of the sewing machine. The small electric interlocking guard not only pushed it aside, but would not allow you to work the sewing machine without it.

You could, if you liked, slice your fingers with the woodwork plaining and cutting machines, but it was difficult if you held your wood clamped in one of the many new and variously shaped “jigs” designed to prevent your hands from coming near the tools. Nor could you slip against the circular saws and other cutting edges. The floor, which had been polished by workers’ feet and gyrating sawdust, was covered with the varieties of the most obstinate non-slip material. Falling Down Stairs It was just as difficult to fall downstairs. Each step w T hich led to the museum’s gallery had a difficult nonslip surface to show how many ways there are of not breaking your leg. The builder's crane, in the gallery, did not prevent you from overloading it and dropping a few hundredweight on yourself or somebody else, but it did its best to warn you by making a noise like half a dozen alarm clocks whenever you reached danger point. A whole section of a ship’s deck rigged up nearby showed what stresses and strains your derricks could stand if you were to load her up in safety. Ways of not injuring yourself while repairing a hot furnace or working in a refrigerator were curiously similar. A polar bear suit of thick wool and felt padding for the furnace; another of wool and leather for the refrigerator. Two rooms devoted themselves to showing how not to blow up your factory by dust explosion or enfeeble your workmanship by inadequate lighting And, finally, there was a special tip—how, by fixing a sliding metal guard, not to get your foot caught in a lift gate, and, how, by using a safety valve to prevent excessive pressui n ot to die of a burst blow-lamp.