Speaking of interesting jobs and robots, I used to work as a lab technician at a research center for a polymers company.
The laboratory I worked in did physical or mechanical testing of plastics, that is I ran machines that would bend, pull apart and impact pieces of plastic to find out how much force it takes to make them fail. One of the most common tests I did was the tensile strength test.
In the late eighties, in fact, about the time of TNG, we got a robot arm that did a menial,routine test instead of a human operator and I had the fun of being assigned to operate the robot itself. So when I got to work in the morning, I would set the robot up to run tests by itself for about six to seven hours while I did other work ddering the day and then near the end of the workday, I would set it up again to run another eight hours before I went home. The robot could only operate up to eight hours without having to be set up again.
What the robot arm did was to grab a plastic test bar from a stack and put it into a testing machine and then when the test was finished, the robot would pick up the bar again, swing to one side and drop it neatly into a trash bucket. For some reason, everybody, including me, always found it funny how the robot would always neatly dispose of the test bars into the trash.
I was lucky to have that job, I really enjoyed working with the testing machines in that lab. Sometimes it was just sheer fun.
Some of the testing machines were called load frames, they were used to perform the tensile strength test, that is it would pull a bar apart that measured 7 in by 0.5 in by 0.125 in.
These load frames had clear lexan bulletproof sheilds because sometimes the material being tested was extremely strong and brittle. The load on this material could get up to 10,000 to 15,000 pounds or even more, before it failed and when it did so, it would literally explode with that much force on it as it shattered; so that's why bulletproof sheilding was needed.
Man it was so much fun, especially when watching how guests in the lab would jump when one of these loud failures would go off. Eye protection was an absolute must, no one was allowed into the lab without it and a rack outside the door was always filled with eye protection glasses.
As another aside, this was during the time TNG was in its first run broadcast, it was shown on Saturdays. A few of my coworkers at the research center also liked to watch the show so on Mondays, we would always discuss the previous Saturday's new episode.
You know that old question, "How do you introduce someone to Star Trek"? Well sometimes that question is answered for you.
On the monday after ""Best Of Both Worlds" part 2 had been shown for the first time, we were talking about the episode. A couple of other coworkers who didn't watch the show became intrigued and when they found out I had recorded both parts 1 and 2 on VHS tape, they asked to borrow it. They had to take turns so they flipped a coin to see who would get the tape first. In fact, I had been recording the series from the beginning so I also lent them the tape with "Q Who?" on it, telling them they should watch it before BOBW.
So I did my part to spread the holy Star Trek word, both of them started watching TNG from then on.
Robert
