to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

ZIKh museum archives.
Sergey Petrovich Gorbunov, the stalwart young
director of Factory No. 22, shown in 1931.
Factory No. 22
machines turned out almost the entire
list of standard hardware: screws, bolts,
and nuts. 10 The stands had a multi-step
belt drive driven by a common transmission,
which in turn was driven by
the only electric motor on the entire
line. If the electric motor’s drive belt
broke, a line of five to eight machines
shut down. The shop foreman would
then storm around the factory in search
of the duty electrician, whose job it was
to sew together and retighten the belt,
start up the transmission for the entire
line, check the lubrication of the bearings,
and see whether the electric motor
was overloaded. The shop foreman also
noted in the duty logbook how long
the stoppage lasted. If the total stoppage
time over the course of a month
exceeded the norm, this had a substantial
impact on your paycheck.
It was much more pleasant to do business with the milling machines section.
The Wanderer milling machines had individual electric drives with their own
circuit breakers. 11 Work on the milling machines was considered women’s work.
The female milling machine operators beat out their male counterparts in terms
of the cleanliness of their machines and entire workplace. In terms of productivity,
however, especially on the night shift, the women lost. For a respite, the
cleverest millers learned how to select an operating mode that would trip the
circuit breaker relay.Then a meeting with the duty electrician was unavoidable.
A mutual exchange of pleasantries about the accident might end with an
instructive admonition, or even an agreement to meet at the factory stadium
where we trained to pass the physical fitness tests to receive “Ready for Labor
and Defense” (GTO) pins. 12
It was primarily the old guard of workers who worked on the various models
of lathes at the factory. Lathe operators tried to outdo each other and receive
orders for the most complex operations.They knew how to correct simple electrical
failures themselves if the lathe had an individual drive, and they did not
bother the electricians without good reason.
10. Pitler was a machine tool manufacturer.
11. By the mid-1930s, the German company Wanderer Werke AG was the largest milling machine manufacturer
in Europe.
12. GTO—Gotov v Trudu i Oborone.
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