1975: MAN vs MACHINE Street Sweeper Challenge | Tomorrow’s World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Michael Rodd pits Charlie - a veteran street sweeper with a spotless track record - against a new-fangled street sweeping machine, which is claimed to be capable of sweeping more efficiently and quickly than carrying out the job by hand. Can Charlie strike a vital blow against the machines for humankind, or is this abominable contraption about to render us all (with the possible exception of its driver) obsolete?
Come on Charlie - you can do it!
This clip is from Tomorrow's World , originally broadcast 19 June, 1975.
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[@gabriel771100]

And the irony is that now, they don't do either.

[@joethebrick6382]

Can we get some ❤️s for Charlie that was a honest working man his whole life and is probably not with us anymore

[@H_E_N_X]

Yes a hard working man but also a luddite, You can operate a mechanical street sweeper and still be a hard worker. He could've retrained as an operator quite easily.

[@krunkle5136]

It's easy to ignore litter, but removing it changes a place so much.

[@JustMyFish]

They replaced handcarts with machinery only to make the machinery redundant later and leave the streets in a mess. That’s progress 🤣

[@fidelcatsro6948]

This half century old machine looked more futuristic than the thrash sweepers we actually spot on the streets today! Are we going backwards?

[@ilovegot7754]

You people will really find a way to wake up and complain about anything

[@matthewtrow5698]

I'm not sure we even went forwards. Fact is, more people and more tat to buy = more rubbish. I don't remember the last time I saw one of those street sweeper vans, what I do know is that luckily, in my town, there's a lot of "Charlies" - plenty of locals who do the job the council should. Kudos to them too!

[@gary7vn]

Okay, sure.

[@xr6lad]

Yup: it must be about 50 years since any council bothered to send in man or machine to clean residential streets like that. They just take the council tax, increase their bloated council staff and do nothing.

[@jimmypenn]

Very much so , sadly !

[@LarryFeinburg]

Blame cuts from central govt!!

[@xr6lad]

@@ezza2x899 lucky.

[@theblurredcrusade.2557]

I'm sorry but I do this all the time in London 🤔

[@isaacsrandomvideos667]

Exactly

[@Totalavulsion]

Charlie had that broom for 20 years

[@JC-il6ps]

And it that time it only had 4 new heads and 5 news handles.

[@this_is_a_tiny_town]

@@JC-il6ps four candles

[@18in80]

That's two decades!

[@bassaseven]

Funny enough had a sweeper in our street first time for years!!! 😮

[@colshythecomedian]

Yeah but it couldn’t smoke a pipe like Charlie!

[@xr6lad]

Charlie retired 65, looked 105 and with bronchial issues but probably lived a long life despite that. They seemed hardier.

[@privatelyprivate3285]

@@xr6lad Want to have fun? Rewatch an entire old show (I dunno, Littlest Hobo or something) and look up the handful of different actors in each episode - you’ll find the majority of people born in those born pre-WWII lived to see 85+ (if not STILL alive) while most of those born post-WWII (even those born in the 70s have already gone! 🙁

[@adailydaughter6196]

Can't remember the last time I saw a council street sweeper, man or machine. But the fact that so many jobs have gone is so sad anyway. Especially when taxes keep going up 🤔☹️

[@ferraridinoman]

Very sad state The UK. We have these type of machine round every two or three days sweeping the streets/gutters here in Madrid. Mind you the dustman (or sorry WOKE UK! "Disposal officiers(or persons?) come around and collect our bins everyday. Why is the UK such a mess?!! (I'm British by the way! before the snowflakes attack me!)

[@joethebrick6382]

@@ferraridinoman you get your house bin emptied everyday? By the council ?

[@ferraridinoman]

@@joethebrick6382 Yes, thats normal here. Mind you when I was a lad that was normal in Ilford Essex too! (God knows what its like now!)

[@joethebrick6382]

@@ferraridinoman we get a recycle and general rubbish bin, they get picked up once every 2 weeks,

[@ferraridinoman]

@@joethebrick6382 Wow! Sorry to hear that! Why??

[@jasonayres]

They replaced a good man doing an honest job, with a petrol engine street sweeping machine. That's Council Culture.

[@jonwita]

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the council workers use this as this would clean up our areas quite a deal 1:38

[@TeardropSidemarker]

Pretty sure a cousin to this, the Hillman powered _Blaw-Knox Pathmaster 42_ shows up in James Cameron's _Aliens_ as part of the overrun colony on LV 426

[@jboomhauer]

Seems we're always on a budget!

[@ferraridinoman]

Except Council officials wages!!!!!

[@hoppimike]

Well thank goodness this never led to a machine-dominated dystopia where everyone is being put out of work :P

[@isaacsrandomvideos667]

What a perfect looking street.

[@davidcoupland9468]

Theres just something about the way things used to be done that makes me love the past and the way things where done back then, we lack this sort of thing in 2022 and this is coming from someone born 2 years after we started the new millenium

[@lafreewaylafreeway]

People took pride in the state of the streets…not now…I don’t know how people leave rubbish outside their properties 🙄🙄

[@adailydaughter6196]

Indeed

[@xr6lad]

I still do. I have a rural property but if someone throws something out like a can or paper and it sits on my nature strip or even across the road I’ll go and pick it up. Doesn’t matter I didn’t do it- it still reflects on me if it looks untidy. But I know many don’t: they leave it there on the basis ‘I didn’t do it’. So it just builds

[@lafreewaylafreeway]

@@xr6lad ….I think I must have been a road sweeper in a previous life as I practically sweep the entire street 😂😂

[@heresjohnny602]

Comment sections like these used to be full of people talking about the good ol days now there's every generation ever born rightly sharing how their council and government are bloated useless tubs of lard. And I adore that. 😂

[@krunkle5136]

Part of the problem I think is no one wants to do the job. It's not glamorous enough, yet it's easy to forget the government and it's jobs are made up of people.

[@privatelyprivate3285]

Effective in the streets, yes, but by way of lifting+spreading much filth onto the house windows that my mum refused to clean until “sweep month” had ended each spring! Lol

[@emilian7052]

Michael Rodd is still here at 79

[@privatelyprivate3285]

I don’t remember any OTHER form street cleaning and I was born in the era of this video (tho on another continent) - seems they caught on fast!

[@matthewtrow5698]

These days there's no Charlie and there's no street sweeper in most towns and cities, at least none that can keep up with the challenge. There's not many bins either, or recycling centres, or ... I'll stop before I head into "four yorkshiremen" territory...

[@tommern84]

Here in Norway we have machines like these that cleans every single street, sidewalk and roads every spring

[@adeksadeksinski681]

In uk you need it every Sunday

[@tommern84]

@@adeksadeksinski681 I can imagine you need it due to all that asfalt dust in the biggest cities? In Norway we use a loot of fine gravel to sprinkle the sidewalks etc.. And when all the ice and snow melts in the spring,it is a LOOT of gravel after a long winter. They collect it and reuse it again next winter 😆

[@privatelyprivate3285]

@@tommern84oh my - where I’m from gravel-filled “spring slush” occurs as well but they just leave it there. Forever. So messy.

[@JohnSmith-rw2yn]

We only ever see sweepers in the Midlands when a new housing estate is being built and they have to keep stuff clean from falling off the Lorry. Other than that nothing. They have to send out men with weed killer which is growing in the road/curb but if they just swept up the dirt it wouldn't set like soil.

[@mrdeathgaming1457]

I drive a scarab minor in 2024 and it doesn't have the suction of this machine!

[@PAOKTSIS_staurpoupoli_fcknwo]

Why, this channel has so few subscribers?

[@fidelcatsro6948]

the rest of them are cats watching youtube..

[@PAOKTSIS_staurpoupoli_fcknwo]

@@fidelcatsro6948 yeah, probably

[@stephenbarton8861]

Bbc init

[@VictoryRRR]

The council try to avoid taking the bins nowadays let alone this. Psthetic council are trash.

[@jimmypenn]

That's so bloody true as I've found out recently so much so that I've refused to continue recycling until they come up with a better system for flats in our area where all the bins go out together and god forbid there is a bag in the cardboard waste bin ( put in by someone else I should add ) and they won't empty it !

[@xr6lad]

@@jimmypenn I so resent having to sort recycles. To me, that’s getting me to do the job of a private business AND charging me council tax for the privilege. If a business wants to make money out of recycling, let them pay people to sort the rubbish into paper, glass etc. not me do half their job. And they keep the profit.

[@jimmypenn]

@@xr6lad Totally agree , I was all for recycling until they started this policy of not emptying bins with the wrong waste , so maddening !

[@Dan23_7]

I call those a moustache machine.

[@privatelyprivate3285]

Same!!!

[@thelemonddropskid5445]

Very old man vs his feet.

[@xr6lad]

Old? Charlie was old 28. He had a hard life though.

[@sh-ig9fm]

I'm glad thay got rid of those machines or at least cut them down all that ever did was kick up the litter and scatter it thay brought back litter pickers and the streets look a lot better and thay titan the response to littering Al little. I saw a guy throw a plastic bottle after that I saw a guy with a clipboard talking to him wrighting down something like a £80 fine and a dozen people saying that to also witnessed him litter trust me it was funny 🤣.

[@DavidThomas-fb8bq]

That machine can't clean between cars or change bins or litter pick.