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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
To add a simple date to a tombstone in the late 90s, Ron Richard, an engraver based in Southern Massachusetts, would trace the numbers onto a sheet of rubber and cut them out with an X-acto knife. By the time he'd placed the stencil onto the stone and run over it with his sandblaster (sand bounces off of the rubber portions of the stencil and carves rock exposed in the voids in between), about 20 minutes had passed.
Today, the same process takes Richard about five minutes. "It's far, far different," Richard says of his job nearly 20 years after he started his business, Northeast Stonewriters.
Richard now uses his laptop computer, which he brings with him to the cemetery, to lay out the text he wants to engrave. He uses a specialized printer, designed for the sign industry, to cut the rubber stencil according to the appropriate sizes and fonts.
Engravers and etchers like Richard, according to a survey by the US Department of Labor, now have the most automated occupation in the United States.
In the context of the current narrative of robots and software taking over jobs, this sounds like a sad story. But when I called a handful of etchers and engravers who have been in the business for decades, that's not the story they told me.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:39AM (8 children)
Sounds like a CNC operator. Maybe not with a proper rig that can do full-size six-axis, but somebody still needs to come set up and align the machine. Though depending on the situation, gravestones might be a slow business even if you can do more in a given time frame.
Time to diversify the portfolio -- tools, leather, guns, whatever. Or just do what you can by hand at a 600% markup, because there's no shortage of trust-fund hipster babies who need a piece to brag about their hand-made bullshit they didn't actually make for the next few years.
Tattoos are a form of engraving. A simple engraver is not unlike a prison-improvised tattoo machine -- a sharp needle coupled axially to an electric motor coupled to an unbalanced weight. Perhaps, and this is my idea, don't you dare steal it, is that tattoos are next to be mechanized! Now that would be a sad state of affairs, but the built-in spellchecking feature would at least eliminate all the "I love you Sweathearts" out there!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:53AM
How about "typesetter"? The most automated professions are those which are no longer professions.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)
I can see it now, "I love you Sweathearts" with a red underline on the Sweathearts.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:57PM
Given how people have been naming their khyhydds, DO NOT turn on auto-correct!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:06PM (2 children)
Software spellcheckers should be banned! They are just one more form of computers taking away jobs. Computer automation replaces jobs of poor, uneducated workers. We need to keep uneducated people employed -- as spell checkers.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:23PM (1 child)
If they are uneducated, how are they qualified as a spell checker? Call in the H-1Bs!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:29PM
If ability to read and write are not a requirement to become president, then why should it be a requirement to be a spellchecker? Just sayin'
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @10:13PM (1 child)
but the built-in spellchecking feature would at least eliminate all the "I love you Sweathearts" out there!
This would be a terrible development. Why would you actively reduce available entertainment? Do we not suffer enough?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 17 2017, @11:17PM
This girl [thehollywoodgossip.com] at least has. Or maybe, to victim-blame, she hasn't suffered enough yet.