Safety first

Building machines today isn't the hit-and-miss venture to create a thing of engineering beauty it was in the past. Safety rather than aesthetics rules the design, and we are unlikely to see again industrial sculptures using brass ball governors rotating at high speed at head level.

As technology has evolved, so the need to protect those operating or working around machinery has moved forward. Severe penalties are handed out to companies (and individual company directors under corporate manslaughter legislation) not doing all they can to look after their employees.

As an illustration of the scale of the problem, the Health and Safety Executive reports that in the manufacturing sector in 2004/05 there were 41 fatal injuries, with the number of reported major injuries at 6,078. many more thousands of incidents went unreported. Of course, not all of these were down to poor machine design, but there is, no doubt, room for improvement.