Old Exide battery making film

[jansens]

They don't make documentaries like this anymore. Or batteries for that matter.



Simon

[Renaud]

All these fellows would not have lived very old!

[Rpm]

Thanks for posting Jansens. Interesting! Funny to see one of the workers relying on a light bulb to come on when the process is completed.

[Dave Mann]

A lot of the workers look to be of pensionable age.

[Bob Culver]

Many thanks. Very interesting. And to think after all that many were then subject to charging without a voltage regulator! The world conqueing music usually applied to Spitfires and the like, not Series E. Wives were thinner then and not so well equipped to push. Surely the Series E had a crank handle. The date much later than expected. What year is the Bedford? 1955? The process very manual even for then. Must have umpteen of the slow acting battery box presses to match production.
Little wonder women married early to escape such drudgery. I wonder how often they rotated duties.
If the lead fumes did not addle your brains too much could make it to the management team and smoke yourself to death. 
Can  dustcoats still be bought? Why have such useful garments vanished?

What are the premises like today? Presumably if still existing then, as here , just an unpacking wharehouse for products from China.

I am still intrigued by the Youtube video of Indians reconditoning truck batteries on the ground.

[Chris Garner]

Dustcoats, Bob, can still be easily bought here in the UK. Known as " smocks "  here in the Midlands and North or occasionally as " cow gowns ",  beloved by farmers, usually with a piece of baler twine around the waist..
Brown smocks were de rigueur for assistants in hardware shops as they were for factory workers, with the foreman often in a dark blue one.