Cool video! Is it just me, or does the same guy do the voiceover on ALL those old videos? He must've been a busy dude.
Those soldering stations are bigger than the combined mass of all the equipment on my bench. They were probably built by Honeywell or Litton and cost $32,000 in the 1950s. "Oh, but that's because we had to X-ray the Powerstat core and windings for stress fissures, and document everything from where the iron and copper ores were dug out of the ground, to the shoes Margie was wearing when she packed it in the box. AND the box."