Before Ripley proved she could operate this power loader in 2179 (aren't films great, the way they can show you the future?)...
...Ralph Mosher was operating a CAM (cybernetic anthropomorphic machine) in the mid-60s, having worked on variations for General Electric...
...I don't know if the 'outer mechanical garment', or 'Powered Exoskeleton', as GE later called it, ever caught on in any sphere of work. All I see used in factories are these...
...which have perhaps proved more trustworthy in the long run...although not as sci-fi futuristically exciting as a exoskeleton, obviously. Perhaps a few CAMs were tried out in warehouses, only to find them being abused horrifically when pissed-off, underpaid workers went on unstoppable rampages, tearing limbs off managing directors before smashing the factory to pieces...maybe. You can't do that with a forklift...though you could run someone over, I suppose.
My experience with work-based machinery that you climb into is limited to operating an elevated work platform (or 'cherry-picker') for one day when I helped my brother-in-law clean windows at Chelsea Harbour. It was self-inflicted torture since I hate heights, by which I mean being higher than than when I wear shoes. I've got worse since I stopped wearing platforms in 197-.
So I'm in this thing and having to elevate myself by pressing a button. That's how desperate for money I was. 'Can I sink any lower?' I wondered as I rose alongside one of the posh apartment blocks. I desperately wanted to sink lower, believe me, but the only way was up if I was to earn some cash. Worse was to come when I had to climb out of the basket and onto the balcony of an apartment. Somehow I managed. The view would have been magnificent, if you like that sort of thing. I was too busy trying to forget that I had to climb back in as I wiped those windows.
The actor Michael Caine lived at Chelsea Harbour, supposedly. Perhaps he still does. Returning to the sci-fi theme, I read a funny response from him when he was doing a press conference for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. When asked if he'd always been interested in wormholes he replied. "I'm a very good amateur gardener, and I see a lot of wormholes. That’s what I thought they meant."
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