3-102-265 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Cutting the familiar crosses: a metal-stamping machine, used in the making of rubber heels, which stamps forty thousand an hour, 1909. 'The Heel of Achilles & the Heel of the Modern. [View of] the machine which, out of sheet-tin, stamps out the metal centres for the heels at the rate of 40,000 an hour. The firm's output of rubber heels varies from 750,000 to 1,000,000 per week...the Wood-Milne revolving rubber heel was invented some thirteen years ago. Like most of the useful, great inventions of the world, Mr. Wood's was a simple one. It occurred to him that instead of tough leather, or of tough leather tipped with clumsy iron, some new material, at once springy and durable, might be found as a comfortable cushion between the foot and the ground. That substitute was found in indiarubber, one of the most lasting and elastic of fabrics. Doctors have long since recommended patients suffering from nervous or spinal troubles to wear rubber heels'. Factory in Preston. From "Illustrated London News", 1909.