You would bbe surprised how much (expensive!) damage a stapler can do!
A long time ago, in a big broadcasting company, far, far away....
Back in the days when TV programs were recorded on very expensive tape, we used to record "viewing copies" simultaneously on relatively cheap, black and white, industrial video recorders. These were used so that the program directors could view their rushes cheaply, in the comfort of their own offices, and make many of the important editing decisions before appearing in the video-tape area for their expensive, broadcast quality, "on-line" edits.
One particular day, a call arrived from the office of one programme to complain that their viewing machine had died. A replacement was wheeled up to the office, and the broken one returned to the basement, where it was found that the two video heads had been totally destroyed!
Replacing them was a bit of a chore, but any damage to the tape could cause damage to the heads, which were spinning around pretty quickly to scan the tape. The damage here was far in excess of anything seen before, and the repair engineer was somewhat puzzled as to the cause.
Before the repair was complete, the office called again, complaining that the new machine had died!
On arriving upstairs to investigate, the engineer asked to see the tape they were playing. He was presented with a tape that had somehow got cut in two, and spliced back together using - STAPLES!
A few short, sharp words of advice were exchanged about the expensive consequences of this approach to splicing tapes, and a threat to charge any further damage to the programme budget rather than maintenance!
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Pete
Biting the hand that feeds IT
