Think it was simpler, back then? Think again… (Adding machines had nearly a hundred keys?)
Email me with the things you remember from the “good-old-days” that I forgot to include…
- Drafting was a highly regulated, mechanical art form? (It took a new guy several months just to develop the skill for applying “text” to a drawing.)
- Sprinkler designers wore white shirts and ties, smoked like chimneys and knew how to use Scum-X? (A bag of powdered pencil eraser for removing smudges from a “paper” drawing.)
- Blueprints were actually BLUE? (and stunk of ammonia.)
- There was no email, internet, or distractions on the job… unless you counted “practical jokes” on your coworkers? (Remember the time… )
- A phone call at work meant your wife was having a baby, or someone close was injured, or worse?
- Two, or three beers, at lunchtime was no big deal, especially on Fridays?
- There were only three types of sprinklers? (Upright, pendent and sidewall.) In only two sizes? (Standard 1/2″ and Large Orifice 17/32″.)
- Sprinkler fitters were real men, wore bibs, had huge biceps, bad backs and carried lunch in their back pockets? (That’s Jim Beam to the younger crowd), cutting-oil was an after-shave and the NFPA pamphlet 13 was a “Red Book” that would fit in your back pocket?
- Becoming a Designer, or a Sales Rep was considered a promotion!
- Plastic pipe and fittings, in a residence… WTF?
- The AHJ was an insurance company?
- There were only a few choices of installation contractors in the whole country… Grinnell, Automatic, Viking, Reliable and ?
- Fittings were made of cast iron, threaded, or flanged and only welded in extreme cases?
- The pipe sizes used were based on past practices and listed by a “schedule/table” in NFPA 13… and the only system configuration available was a center-center, end-center, or an end-end TREE? (No loops, or grids before hydraulics became common).
- Backflow protection was a detector check valve at the city connection? (Now it is almost a seperate industry.)
- Anti-freeze solutions were mixed in a bucket and installed on every exposed loading dock in cold country?
- Grooved fittings and couplings were unheard of in the sprinkler industry? (Started to be used somewhere around 1970.)
- Hydraulic calculations were a closely guarded secret by senior designers and there was no such thing as a calculator?
- Tools like come-alongs, jack-ladders, pipe wrenches, channel-locks, ropes, chains and pulleys were a fitter’s “go-to”? (Ask an old-timer.)
- In apprentice school, we taught our apprentices another definition for a “peckerhead”… (The wiring box mounted on an electric motor.)
- Submittals were a copy of the install prints sent to the owner/insurance company and permits were not even required in most localities?
- Making copies of documents involved sheets of “carbon” paper and heavy pressure on a pen?
- Designers used a slide rule, a T-square, triangles, curves, a compass, dividers, lettering guides, templates and the most used an erasing shield. (CAD – Huh?)
- Drawing on cloth, mylar and even “paper” ?
- Pencil pointers?
- Pocket protectors?
- Rolling scaffolds?
- Everyone knew what a “star” and a “running” dimension were and what CIF, TOS, FF and CYA meant?
- Hydraulic calculations, before computers (BC)?
- Cutting hanger rods on the plan, before ATRs and portable ban saws?
- Dry pipe valves were as big as a Prius?
- Threading and cut-grooving Sch 40 pipe, unloading and moving 6” and 8” Sch 40 on-site.
- The first time you used a JLG, or a scissor lift?
- The last water-motor gong you installed? (Before electricity…)
- When inspector’s test connections were installed at the farthest point on the system from the supply?
- When apprentices weren’t job foremen?
- When an FPE was unknown and PEs were not interested in “Fire Sprinklers”. (No money in it.)
- There was an “ASCOA”, a “GEM and a “STAR” company that manufactured sprinklers?
- NICET? CEUs? CPDs? InterWHAT?