About a year ago, I, in a cold medication-induced stupor, suffered from a bout of insomnia. Therefore, in the wee small hours of an ice-cold morning, I explored the internet in my typical haphazard fashion, before stumbling upon a Chrysler Master Technician video starring “Tech,” who proceeded to explain the fundamentals of the Carter AFB to actual human technicians. It was the second time in my life that I wondered if I had fallen fast asleep into the clutches of a lucid dream. I hadn’t.
The first time I suffered from that strange sensation, I was watching the video for Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” and my initial thought then was that there is no way a record company would actually release a song that ludicrous. Of course, I had overestimated the taste of the American public again, and it was a huge hit. Shows how smart I am. Tech, too, turned out to be a real thing, and I discovered that Tech was not only trippy in the way that only Chrysler Corporation can be, but he was also helpful and philosophically stimulating.
In this 1965 video, Tech explains the concepts of electricity, a common theme in Chrysler’s “Master Technician Series” of pamphlets and filmstrips, which were apparently distributed once a month to an assuredly eager staff of technicians. After watching a few (or a few dozen) of these videos, I began to wonder if Tech didn’t exist in a utopia of sorts, the perfect workplace.
After all, Tech is a eight-inch or so tall doll with a gruff voice and a receding hairline. In most workplaces, Tech would not be taken seriously as a knowledgeable mechanic. In these service videos, however, the other technicians and engineers treat Tech like an absolute equal, avoiding workplace hazing or pratfalls of any kind. Tech would fit into the glovebox of almost any Chrysler product, yet there is no evidence that any technician shoved him in there like some Neanderthal high school jokester might.
That kind of collaboration seems to be rare in the world in which we occupy, and I can unfortunately imagine actual Chrysler techs being forced to watch these quite informative videos each month and deriding poor Tech. Fortunately for us, there is a video archive of a perfect place beyond the unrighteous tee-heeing of those less enlightened. The Imperial Club has been gracious enough to upload all the tech materials an insomniac could ever desire, and here is the website: http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/.
Until next time, be nice to your plastic coworkers.
Haha. They lost me almost immediately! I’ve always been slow to read schematics and understand the hydraulic action of electrical systems. But now that it’s so easy to stop videos with a simple click, one can always go stop or go back.
Not so when these training vids came out. Those annoying beeps are quaint reminders of the filmstrip visual aides some of us were subject to in childhood. They would indicate to whoever was running the projector that is was time to change to the next slide so the image would match the narration, which was, on the earliest training strips, a shellac or vinyl record. It wasn’t possible to stop and go back without lifting the tone arm on the record player, which would cause a loss of synchronization. When I was a kid, most of the “public service” videos we saw (driving safety, sex, etc.) were movies, gradually replaced by videotape shown on monitors, but only for small groups, as only film could be projected in large scale. However, there were still some film strips shown, and I remember thinking them very old school, and associating them with my Dad’s sales office, and businessmen in a darkened meeting room watching while tendrils of cigarette smoke cast shadows on the screen.
“At the sound of the tone, [booop], please turn the page.”
And with every single showing, the operator would miss one of the beeps or dings, then would eventually realize the mistake, then tentatively, slowly move the film ahead one picture in the hopes that nobody would notice.
If you were lucky the teacher was able to snag one of these bad boys from the A/V closet. Behold the Cadillac of filmstrip projectors, the Dukane Micromatic. Put the cassette tape on the “automatic” side, start it on the appropriate frame, and let ‘er rip. No beeps! If it was an old strip that didn’t have the automatic signal you simply pushed a button to advance to the next frame. There was even a remote control….
Cassette! Sheesh, you kids. 🙂
This is much higher tech than any I experienced. At my school, we saw the ones with records for sound.
Elementary in the mid-late ’70s, middle school in the early ’80s. By then filmstrips with records were pretty much done. I do remember seeing some, with audio supplied by a Califone record player that was built like a tank. Most of the time it was a manually operated projector with a separate cassette player. The Micromatics were expensive and most schools only had a few.
My elementary school even had a Califone with detachable stereo speakers, but only the music teacher got to use that one!
I guess that is the difference, I am about 10 years older than you are. The cassette was an exotic thing that would elicit Oooohs and Ahhhhs in my world around 1971. Just like electronic calculators and microwave ovens. Now, I still like to do dictation on regular cassettes and everyone laughs at me as being a luddite.
You had to be careful with those record players, we had the same thing, and some beige ones and every one of them would shock the crap out of you if you touched the screws on top of it when it was plugged in. It got to be a game to get the new kid in the AV room to touch one. One kid screamed like a dog yelping when he did it. I heard him down the hall, I wish I would have seen it. When I got shocked, all I did was yell, “SHIT!”
Now, instead of filmstrips, we have gimmicky eye-charts from PowerPoint™ Rangers. This is progress.
Glad y’all enjoyed those. My buddy and I put those together. Between us, we have just about every one of these. Our collection is kind of thin in the 70’s. But, going back to the ’40s, we’ve got every issue. I spent many nights scanning and cleaning up those booklets. Lots of fun!
We hired out the film transfers and they turned out great. One piece of trivia… The booklets were printed for the US and Canada separately. The Canadian copies got their own number in the series.
Mark,
Did you upload all of these to the Imperial site? If so, thanks! It’s too bad that there aren’t more websites like that for other cars.
we have a team of “Webmonsters”. We all do the uploading, archiving etc. The bulk of the material on the website are provided by members and sometimes our interests stray outside Imperial. That’s how “Techy” came about. I also have included my “Chryslers in WWII” collection at
http://imperialclub.org/Yr/1945/index.htm
Love it! Gee, I would have thought that any Chrysler film series on electrical or carburetion issues would have had a weekly run as long as Gunsmoke. 🙂
In what may be a strange offshoot of the CC effect, I recently actually watched my first filmstrip (on DVD, oddly) since elementary school, where they were a staple. I was suddenly transported back to about 3rd grade.
I wish they were showing these when my ’01 Grand Cherokee was made; trying to punch in numbers on the power seat control would change the radio station.
Remember those silly educational films popular in schools (e.g., by Coronet)? I now believe they were a way for teachers to avoid a day’s worth of curriculum. My high school physics teacher showed them for laughs, since they featured nerdy-looking kids from the ’50s.
Admit it – who among us did not secretly rejoice whenever we saw a projector of any kind at the back of the classroom. 🙂
++1
Being a teacher, I can totally understand all of this. In fact, I (sadly) own a filmstrip projector and over 100 old filmstrips on cars and geography and science. This obviously illuminates my stone-aged proclivities!
Yes!!
As a special ed teacher I found these to be the only things that worked. Obviously I was teaching the TV/Computer generation and anyone with an IQ above 50 had no place in my classes. A combination of this and “hands on” allowed me to pass on a surprising amount of information.
I’ve seen some of those Coronet films on Youtube. Corny now and, I suspect back then too.
“How to spot the homosexualist” OK, I made that one up but you get the picture…………
And I too used to rejoice when there was a projector in the room. They were replaced by VCRs in my last year at High School. No one could ever get a
decent snow free pic from them back in 1977.
If you like Coronet Films, visit the Prelinger Archives online, or AVgeeks.
http://www.avgeeks.com/wp2/our-films-online/
Tons of old “ephemeral” videos there! More time wasted!
MST3K did their own version of some of those old Coronet film shorts. I’d love to see them take on these.
I sense a huge timewaster. Must. Not. Click. Link…. 😉
Do it.
You will wonder what happened to your life once you discover the joy that is “Tech.”
I am on a conf call, and I gave in…
Vibration diagnosis? Is that suspension-related, or have we stumbled upon the ancestor to Ford’s trade-mark “Wiggle Test”?
Speaking of high school jokers, I can recall the first time we stumbled upon the Wiggle Test in shop class. The class (all 12 or so of us) were standing around the open hood of an ’88 Grand Marquis, the dedicated “example vehicle” that never left the shop and had all of 62 miles on it. One kid was at the wheel, and one was leaning over the fender, ready to aid in the demonstration.
Our instructor was showing all the options on the school’s new OTC Monitor 2000 before cutting us loose on it. When it came time for the Wiggle Test, the screen began flashing the word “WIGGLE! WIGGLE! WIGGLE!” and the teacher instructed the student leaning over the fender to “start wiggling”.
Without missing a beat, the wheel-man began doing a “wiggle dance” in the front seat as well. “Everything wiggled? Temp sensor? Check. Oxygen sensor? Check. Driver? Yup, he’s wigglin’ too!”
In defense of Mr. Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” he always asserted that the song/video was intended to spoof hip-hop and rap. Sadly with the rise of “Bro-Country” music, country has sunk to the same level of misogyny.
As for Trace Adkins, I always preferred “Her Favorite Color is Chrome.”
We used to watch Tech videos in Auto shop class in the mid 80’s. I think it was actually Ed the Sock who did the voice for Tech 🙂
Ha Ha! I’d forgotten all about “Tech”. Lots of these strips were still in use when I did my apprenticeship in the early ’80s. I think he lasted until the early ’70s at least. Maybe he retired when “Lean Burn” appeared?
I was in the Chrysler tech school 40 years ago. We had some kind of viewer that used slides to document something like removing the AC compressor shaft seal. Must have been 50 slide trays at the back of the room.
Went to school with a girl that worked for a company in Detroit that made videos for the Big 3. They did sales, service, parts, anything done at a dealership. Those were VCR tapes.
If they had used a Carter Thermo-quad instead of the AFB, that would have kept you awake. 17 different adjustments to make. I asked my instructor at tech school which 4 barrel was the hardest and didn’t take a moment to say TQ….
Fear not!
http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/290/index.html
Now you can adjust your Thermoquad!
I liked working on the TQ on my ’74 Roadrunner a lot better than the Quadajet my ’72 Cutlass had. I even put a TQ on my ’77 Power Wagon’s 360 in 1978, after having flat spot issues with the AFB I had when I first switched to a 4 barrel intake. I got very good at changing metering rods and stuff on TQs, as my truck and two friend’s Challengers had them and due to all three of us modding them, tuning was a necessary thing to do, and often.
Everything is just like it was then except “You Are There” (in echo chamber)…
Jeeze ;
Thanx for the trip down Memory Lane there .
I remember dozens (? hundreds ?) of those film strips , if you could manage to pay attention , you’d learn quite a bit .
I remember my GM Delco Training rather fondly….
-Nate
I thought the wiggle test was putting a glass of red wine on the air cleaner…
Wouldn`t mind having the one from 1948 with the Scotsman-or is it an Irishman in my man cave with my other auto memorablia.
I found those at a swap meet, so they’re hanging around out there.
That is a nicely optioned New Yorker in the electrical video.