Edmund Bringer Memoir - Brookens Library

Edrmd A. Bringer 26
A:
(chuckles) He's the one that instigated all of this.
Q: k11 so that ms pretty dangerous to wrk out there on those lines?
A: Q11 yes it did used to be because e'd have to go at night and-especially
art in the cuuntry on a storm or anything like that and. . . .
it was bad. But everything has changed so much since I first started
with the cqany. I doubt if I could--oh I probably could keep up with
it.
Q: (Intervievier produces some magazine articles about the narrator)
Thought I'd get this article out.
A: Is that the one from Popular Mechanics?
Q: Wll Po lar Mechanics has just got the photograph but this is an
article in +?- atsod et News fran April of 1942 about the bard that
yaumade. Do you t t t you could tell n[re a little about that?
l-2E-L-
A: Qll--I was taking a safety course at that time in safety psychology
at Millikin [Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois] frmthis S b at
eht school. And on top of that why I'd also been teaching first aid
and everything like that for the company for quite a while when I mt
into that and I'd been on their--* used to have first aid teams, all the
toms had a first aid team and then every so often we'd have a big contest
and w 'd go to those and the American Red Cross, or the safety people
from other industries wid judge us on our performance and werything
and we 'd see &ich one ws the best safety team in the country. & 'd go
to Chicago for contests and over to Springfield and everything like that.
W practiced all the time and everything and then I saw one of these
safety damnstration boards. The fellow that mde it I mt him, he ws
fran Indianapolis, the guy that mde the first one--or Indiana, he ms
with the Indiana Bell Telephone Company and I rnet him at a National
Safety Council meeting in Chicago one year after I'd gone up there with
mine.
Q: This was a demonstration board.
A: Yes. It shows how accidents happen and how-everytime w 'd have an
accident why w could demmstrate it on that bard. Like if a mm got
electrocuted on a light pole or smthing like that w could hnstrate
it on that. That was wired with electricity see. And the wires wre all
copper and the poles. . . . w d1 that's kind of hard to tell you &at it
is but it's all--it's authentic ew-t that vie used then see I wen. .
. . you can see that the cross arms are on it (pointing at photo of
demonstration board) and the wires are running betwen than and here's a
cable and I had letters and what VE called "drop wire reels" to unwind
the wire off that we was using to go into houses and things like that--te
used to have cable reels or drop wire reels. And w had safety signs and
I mde little safety signs and placed then where they should he placed
and everything like that.
Q: This was to scale of what . . .
Edmund Bringer Memoir - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS