File talk:WomanFactory1940s.jpg

Picture info
I guess there's no information on who this women actually is, or people don't think it's really important as she's an archetype and not really a human being? Marcus Taylor (talk) 06:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think the photographer ever asked so it is likely we will never know, but this is one of the best looking images I have seen from the 1940's! Theonlysilentbob (talk) 07:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is my husband's grandmother. She is alive and well living in Mesquite, TX. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.183.203.138 (talk) 11:30, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you guys know the name grandmother? — usernamekiran (talk)  20:28, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Re French translation
Words such as machinist, lathe operator, mechanic, etc can have false friends across languages, and I know that there is some false friendship among certain senses of machinist (en) & machiniste (fr) and among certain senses of mechanic (en) & mécanicien (fr). But, although I am not proficient in French, I am fairly certain that ouvrière-tourneuse is a better word to use in the French caption than métallurgiste. Metallurgist and machinist are two occupations that only overlap obliquely. A metallurgist can machine (usiner), and a machinist can be knowledgeable about metallurgy (métallurgie), but the occupational terms are not interchangeable. I would change métallurgiste to ouvrière-tourneuse but the page is protected. — ¾-10 20:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Provenance?
There's absolutely no way that picture is from 1942, I don't believe it for a second. The resolution and color detail are both much too good. Show me one photo from the 1940s that is anywhere near as high quality. If it were possible, shouldn't there be pictures of FDR and Truman that look just as good? It ought to be removed from every page citing it as a 1940s factory worker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.252.67.147 (talk) 01:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I can totally understand your point. It seems unlikely on the surface. Nevertheless, I don't doubt the provenance of the photo, because the thing about photography is that what was possible in any given year and what was common are two different things. First, this photo looks to me like it is most likely a (fairly high-quality) 1940s colorization of a B&W original. There was absolutely no shortage of the ability to take excellently sharp B&W photos by the 1940s. But, importantly, that applies particularly to studio work (whether literally in a studio or on-site in a factory with studio equipment) more than workaday newspaper-reporter shutterbugging. Second, it even could be native color photography, having been produced by the United States Office of War Information as a piece of public diplomacy. Take a look at the article "color photography" and at File:Duhauron1877.jpg (1877!) and File:Prokudin-Gorskii-12.jpg (1912!). The thing to understand about technological dissemination is that, again, what is possible in any given year and what is commonly available and widespread at that time are 2 different things. As for unusually high-quality photos of FDR, check out the images in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and imagine how some of them would look if someone did a good-quality colorization of them. I bet someone somewhere has in fact colorized a portrait of FDR, although Wikimedia Commons doesn't have any. Cheers, — ¾-10 17:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This is definitely authentic, and definitely not a colorized image. Take a close look and you'll see very fine film grain. It was most likely a 4"x5" sheet of Kodachrome shot in a Speed Graphic. It was very commonly used back then, and was famous for retaining strong color over the decades. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.108.250.130 (talk) 19:22, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Color photography has been around since the 1850's, but it was expensive and difficult to process, so it wasn't often used. The Russians embraced color photography as early as 1903, with Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky being the most notable photography from that era. By Russian standards, this photo is not so impressive as to cause disbelief due to its high quality. Badon (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

The photo is a staged fake and the woman is not making anything
This photo is obviously a staged fake, and the woman isn't really manufacturing anything. Reasons:


 * 1) The scroll-chuck does not have the jaws installed, and the scrolls are visible.
 * 2) No chuck jaws means no part being worked.
 * 3) The center of the chuck is visible, but there's nothing there.
 * 4) Low light requires a long exposure, but there is no evidence that the chuck is spinning.
 * 5) If there were a really small, nearly invisible part going through the center of the spindle and clamped down with a small collet chuck (unlikely when a massive scroll chuck is already installed), it would require such high turning speeds that even a fast flash would not be able to conceal all evidence of motion. Once again, this woman is not making anything in this photo.
 * 6) The woman is posing to appear to be feeding the turret head, but there are no tools installed in the turret.
 * 7) There is no measurement equipment visible. No dial indicators, no calipers, no micrometers. She's allegedly making aircraft parts, which typically have among the most stringent tolerance requirements. With no measurement equipment, she couldn't be making anything that must be fitted to other parts. Basically, that means she's limited to paperweights and door stops (etc).
 * 8) The number of tooling mounts attached to the machine seems excessive. They're so tightly packed on there you wouldn't be able to see the tooling and workpiece very well. That's convenient if you want to distract from the fact that there is no tooling or workpiece, nor even chuck jaws installed.
 * 9) The tooling mounts are all crowded in the area of the chuck. That might be normal if you're working very, very small parts, but those tooling mounts are massive, and the scroll chuck is massive too. So why is everything moved so close to be crowding the workpiece area? There's only one other reason: That's the standard position to move all of the lathe's components when the lathe is in storage, because it covers the machine's ways to keep them in contact with oilt, which protects them from dust and rust when the machine goes unused for a long time. It also prevents the heavy machine from sagging and distorting the shape of the ways, which would at least reduce the accuracy of the machine, and could also possibly cause irreparable damage if the machine settles into a non-neutral position with stresses in the frame.
 * 10) The woman is posing to appear to be feeding the turret head, and she should be watching the cutting process at the chuck, but she is instead looking down into space, past the wrenches in front of her and behind the turret head, NOT at the chuck. If she were looking at the chuck or workpiece in the position she is standing in, much less of her face would be visible, and the photo wouldn't be so nice.
 * 11) The woman's clothing is filthy, but lathe machinists don't normally get that dirty, even in the worst cases.
 * 12) The woman tied her apron in front, instead of the back. That's how dumb people, dead people, and people who want to die by getting pulled into a machine will tie it. Still, I've seen some people do it that way if they're not smart enough to tie behind their backs. They're not very good machinists, either.
 * 13) No eye protection! No eye protection!
 * 14) Her hat is resting gently on top of her perfectly groomed hair. If she leaned in to inspect the workpiece, it would slip off toward the left side.
 * 15) Normally the bill of the hat would be backwards, so the machinist can lean in to examine the dial, spindle, or vernier scales on calipers or micrometer equipment. It would be in the way facing forward, and machinists don't normally wear their hats that way. I'm not sure why the hat is even in the photo, let alone posed wrong. Maybe the photographer liked the color balance of the hat with her skin color, and so decided to have her wear it instead of dispensing it for the duration of the photoshoot. She probably wears a hat (or something similar) for safety, to keep her hair away from the machine, but a baseball-style hat would have to be backwards to be compatible with the job. Maybe the photographer just thought it looked classier facing forward, but still added enough of the "grungy" look he was trying to get, so he decided to have her wear it in an unnatural pose?
 * 16) The hat looks flawlessly perfect, like it is new. She wouldn't be able to keep it that clean with all that filth all over her. Even a real machinist that doesn't get so filthy would not be able to keep a hat 100% spotless like her hat.
 * 17) Oily grime is conspicuously placed on the top of her right arm, but there's nothing on her left arm. Most of the mess on a lathe comes from cutting oil being flung from a spinning part, close to the chuck, ON THE LEFT. If she got dirty at all, it would get the top of her LEFT arm dirty, NOT the top of her right arm.
 * 18) Her shirt DOES have a vertical string of droplets in a pattern of stains typical for a lathe machinist on the lower part of her left sleeve, but it is old and dried, as would be expected for an experienced lathe machinist. If that much dirt and staining on her clothing and skin were from real work happening at the time of the photograph, it would be impossible to keep her left arm as clean as it is. More likely, it took many years of abuse to get the shirt that dirty, and I'm guessing she was told not to wash it for a while before posing for the photo (assuming she's a real machinist, and not just a posing model).
 * 19) For a lathe machinist, if she got dirty at all (other than hands), typically the top of her left arm would be dirty, and the bottom much more clean. Then, the top of her right arm would be clean, and the bottom dirty. Put your hands out in front of you like you're holding a basketball (positioned for operating lathe controls), and imagine the oil droplets coming at you from the chuck on your left. The dirt on this woman's arms is not consistent with someone who got dirty working on a lathe.
 * 20) There are no chips in her hair, and no oil on her face or neck that would be natural for the amount of filth on her clothes and the top of her right arm. If her grime were authentic (maybe from working a horizontal mill before posing for the lathe photo), she would have some speckles of grime in those places too.
 * 21) The lathe is covered in dust. It hasn't been turned on in months. There's so much dust on it, I would guess it has been at least a year since it has been operated.
 * 22) An oily lathe that gets a worker as dirty as she is would require frequent wipe-downs. Even if that huge quantity of dust were deposited (from a neighboring building demolition?} a day ago, all dust is abrasive and it damages the fine workings of the machine, so rule #1 is to wipe down all dust, debris, and leaking oil before operating the lathe. Once again, this machine is not actually operating in the photo, and it probably hasn't been turned in many months.
 * 23) If there were enough oil on this lathe to get her that dirty, there would be enough oil to prevent the machine from rusting during normal use. But no, it's covered in light rust spots. This machine hasn't been turned on in so many months that the change in air temperature from the day-night cycle and advancing seasons has caused sufficient moisture to condense on the steel that it penetrated the ubiquitous coating of oil and caused some rust.
 * 24) Does the top of the turret have a shimmering reflective puddle of oil on it? I see a reflection of one of the jaw channels in the chuck, and what looks like a long yellow reflection from the photographer's lighting equipment. There's another oil puddle next to one of the bolts in the dusty area near the lower right corner of the photo. When a machine sits idle for many months, oil in the workings can seep out and pool. It's a fire hazard and makes a drippy, smokey mess when you turn the machine on, so once again, it appears this machine has been idle in storage for many months.
 * 25) Other than the dust, rust, and pooling oil leaks, this lathe is flawlessly clean. It has obviously been prepped for storage or maintenance. It could not possibly remain that clean if it were actually in daily use.

Badon (talk) 16:56, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * WP:NOTAFORUM.User:Volunteer Marek 22:42, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The photo is frequently presented as historically accurate, which is easily discernable as false with only the most rudimentary critical examination. It is a carefully posed caricature at best (call it "art" if you want), and an outright fraud at worst. This is 100% relevant to the photo's description, the photo's usage on Wikipedia, and its pervasive usage in texts purporting to offer an accurate portrayal of history. Badon (talk) 05:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is this photo still here?
It's obviously fake, photo quality was not this good in 1940. Why isn't this labelled as a artist's impression or similar?

Even just looking at the dust on the machine shows how fake this is. Assuming that that much dust managed to build up despite the machine ostensibly being consistently used, one look at the wrenches placed on top of the machine shows that this machine was not in operation. There are huge amounts of dust underneath the wrenches. Are we assuming that dust was somehow allowed to build up on this machine for months (in 1940, mind you) and then that the wrenches were put on the machine once? And never taken off and put back on again? You can't pick up and put down things on a surface and still leave dust on a surface.

Never mind the fact that there is dust on the shaft itself???

110.33.221.252 (talk) 04:02, 3 September 2022 (UTC)