We’ve had many warnings, some quite shrill, about the dangers of automation. RH Helm and P Stuart’s Fracture of Humerus During Use of an Arm Wrestling Machine is anything but shrill.
Published in 1975 in the British Medical Journal, it arrived ever-so-quietly, making but little impression on a public long used to seeing direly worded reports about the harm done by modern farm tools, manufacturing machinery and office equipment. The wording is simple, though studded with technical phrases for which there may be no easy substitute. There is but one illustration – a stark photograph of a mustachioed man in an inexpensive sports jacket. The man’s two arms are engaged with levers projecting from a machine….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.