Dive Brief:
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A photo essay by the blog io9 takes a look back at construction workers goofing off on scaffolding and steel frames while perched many stories above the ground.
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In some of the pictures, taken in Manhattan and other cities between 1925 and 1940, the workers appear casual and relaxed—one is eating his lunch while seated on the edge of a steel building frame far above the skyscrapers surrounding him, for example. Another depicts a reclining man smoking a cigarette on a narrow perch atop the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center.
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A few shots captured crew members calmly clinging to wrecking balls or chains and being hoisted into the clouds to get to their stations. But most of the photos show daredevil workers hamming for the camera: swinging a golf club, walking blindfolded, or straddling beams without holding on, for instance, despite the death-defying distance from the city below. View the photos here.
Dive Insight:
Don’t try this at home! The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists falls first among its Fatal Four causes of deaths on construction sites. The other three: being struck by an object, electrocution, and getting stuck in-between two things.
Falls from scaffolding were so common in the late 1980s that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration strengthened its safety standard for working on that equipment. Read that standard here.