Several years ago when Reverse Dial was still in its infancy, two millwrights were assigned to a job where some machinery had to be aligned via the reverse dial method. Other millwrights were already on the job, but none knew reverse dial. Both new arrivals were very experienced, but neither of them knew how to do reverse dial. (Each had taken the job thinking the other would be lead man and the job would go smoothly.)

Once these two flies were trapped in their own stew, they had to sink or swim. They (at least) knew how to set the indicators up, so they made several attempts at aligning the two units. Each unsuccessful attempt was to result in a bigger mess than the one before. (Three lateral moves at the rate they were going would have put the two units in different time zones). Finally they devised a plan to beat the odds. While one of the two played lookout , the other reset the indicators to a rim and face format and did an expert job of aligning the two units. Then they re-formatted the indicators back to the reverse dial setup and confirmed the two units to be in alignment.

As mentioned, they were both expert millwrights and the whole of their time spent on the job was less than what had already been spent on the same job by lesser mechanics. They were considered as being some sort of supermen because they knew reverse...