Jim Papadopoulos, my wife, and I visited the Schwinn works in Chicago in the Fall of 1974. At that time, assembly of run-of-the-mill steel-rim wheels was a two part process. Humans spoked the wheels. They were then put on a machine that mechanically tensioned the spokes. It was certainly "good enough". This had been going on for a long time, so I'm pretty sure it was not even computer-controlled.
I believe that Jim eventually patented a concept that would do the final tensioning in a single pass around the wheel.
Harvey Sachs mcLean va usa +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jerry Moos wrote: Kind of amazing that someone could build 6 wheels an hour. I guess one could get pretty fast at spoking them, but the tensioning is what takes time. I've read a few places that In The Day inexpensive wheels were tensioned "by machine", but I've never seen a description or photos of the machines used. Is JB using some sort of tensioning machine? If these guys are spoking and tensioning 6 wheels an hour by hand and sustaining that all day, its amazing they can even get them true enough to not drag on the brake pads. I'll bet some of these guys get good enough that they could probably build some really excellent wheels if they were ever given the time and decent pay for doing so.