The wars of the 20th century forced arms and metal manufacturers to re-evaluate the possibilities of these industries. After all, progress does not stand still, and the consumer needs more and more new models of goods. For people who often encounter industrial terms, the word "blank" is not new. So what is a blank?
Kings of Metallurgy
Any pot, frying pan, car frame is a metal part that is processed in a special way, giving it the desired shape. To make the delivery of the base more “comfortable”, iron is formed in a special way into dense monolithic ingots of various sizes. Such an ingot is a blank.
Metal rolling is familiar to most of the townsfolk only from films. Few people know that this is a continuous process that requires maximum attention and skill from steelmakers. In order to protect the workers of the hot shop when performing the assigned tasks, they are trying to reduce the time of interaction with the red-hot mass. The hot alloy is poured into special molds, forming ingots for sale.
Ancient Roots
Of course"blank" is a strange word. Do you know that it was created from an older version of "dummy" and "idol"? It comes from the Proto-Slavic language. The word "blockhead" was most often used to refer to stone idols installed on temples, or huge boulders and boulders that had fallen off the rock.
In the craft business, blanks are called templates or blanks used for further work. It was not for nothing that in the old days preparations were made by apprentices or students who were getting their hands on a chosen business. Wooden spoons, clay pots are a vivid example of this. With the advent of computer technology, it has become the norm to call drives or disks blanks. This does not apply to everyone, but only clean, ready to record.
Military
Many useful inventions only appeared because the military was looking for a way to speed up conquests or make life easier for soldiers at the front. Artillery shells exchanged between opponents had the shape of an elongated cylinder, pointed on one side. The second edge was flat, which made it possible for the powder gases accumulating in the gun to push it out of the muzzle.
Such cylinders could have different sizes, weights, and even be hollow inside. They were used to carry anti-personnel mines, leaflets, shrapnel or other lethal filler.
Over time, gunsmiths figured out how to remotely not only explode, but also program these elements for certain actions (explosion time, target search). For them, a blank is a way to achieve a givengoals.
