The comedian Ben Elton was interviewed recently on Radio 4, and pointed out that when Morecambe & Wise appeared on TV at Christmas during the late 1970’s, they got an audience of 28 million people. Although I barely remember the late 70’s, I know there were only three television channels, and Elton’s point was that everyone sat down to watch the same programme at the same time, making the Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show into a unifying experience.
That doesn’t happen any more: broadcast media has atomised, there are hundreds of cable and satellite channels, plus online gaming, and the panoply of the internet to choose from. But one advantage of atomisation is the ability to find niche content. For the past while, I’ve been researching an American corporation which a distant relative founded a century-and-a-half ago. Postings on forums, personal websites and clips on YouTube have been priceless; in the late 1970’s, finding that content would have been impossible.
For example, without an enthusiast shooting a video on his iPhone, I would never have seen a mechanic working in a lumber yard somewhere in Oregon or Washington State on the west coast of the US. The Allis-Chalmers HD-21 bulldozer had sat idle, he speculated, for 15 or 20 years. He clambered onto its orange hulk, with saplings growing up through the tracks and idlers, and started tinkering.
A brand new HD-21 outside Allis-Chalmers’s earthmover factory in Springfield, Illinois.
In the 1960’s, the HD-21 was the world’s most powerful bulldozer. It’s 100% Allis-Chalmers, unlike earlier machines which were fitted with Waukesha or General Motors engines. The AC 21000 turbo-diesel fitted to the HD-21 had a reputation for being being easy to start, but what followed seemed miraculous.
The mechanic had fitted new 24V batteries beforehand, then barred the engine over by hand to make sure it wasn't seized. He cranked the starter for 30 seconds or so, with the fuel cut-off pulled out, in order to get oil flowing through the engine’s galleries again. He then took a break to let the batteries recover, pushed the excess fuel plunger in and pressed the starter button again.
If you listen intently you can hear the whirring of the pinion on the starter ring of the flywheel as the 21000 cranked a few times, and this time the mechanic sprayed Aerostart into the intake. There was a wisp of ether and unburnt fuel from the exhaust, then it caught on two or three cylinders, coughing and spluttering into life. The HD-21 took a couple of seconds to clear its throat, and that was followed by a fusillade of noise as it fired on all six.
The re-awakened 21000 kicked an enormous cloud of black smoke into the air from its stack, followed by all the years’ worth of dirt and crud that had scaled off inside the exhaust manifolds. By now the mechanic was no longer conscious of his mate with the iPhone; he was focussed on the oil pressure and temperature gauges, watching the needles creep round towards the green arc as the machine warmed up for the first time in a couple of decades. As the bulldozer's engine settled into a steady rumbling idle, I reflected that it was like Lazarus: a 30 ton bulldozer raised from the dead.
Although Ben Elton saw TV comedies like Morecambe & Wise as a way to unite people, the message of that YouTube video is that accomplishing something tangible is powerful. It’s already had several hundred thousands views on YouTube, which demonstrates how closely folk in the US Midwest still identify with Allis-Chalmers, and incidentally they snap up its merchandise too. Rather like Taylor Swift fans, they have literally been there and bought the t-shirt – plus the baseball cap, the coffee mug, and the bumper sticker too.
If it’s true that society, just like broadcast media, is becoming atomised then it’s more important than ever to ask the question, “What is it like to be you?” The video helps to answer that. For architects, it’s especially important to gain an insight into other peoples’ lives, since we can’t expect to design anything if we don’t understand how it will be used, and discover something about the folk who’ll use it. The bulldozer resurrection video is a rare example of social media with redeeming features, in an era when platforms are controlled by unhinged billionaires such as Leon Skum, who recently took over Twitter.
