While some schools might have engaged in mechanical tasks, the academy was not able to build shops or buy the tools necessary.
At first Montal's teachers were skeptical, doubting that a blind man could actually perform the necessary mechanical tasks.
Such multitasking is feasible when doing mechanical tasks that do not require much thought and have only little or no chance of an emergency arising.
His mind wanders and he pays little attention to it because it is such a mechanical and boring task.
But it is "odd," he said, because applying the subject codes "is a fairly mechanical task.
Only the robots occupy the lower level now, doing all the menial and mechanical tasks necessary to the operation of the city.
And now that he had no grave to dig or other mechanical task to perform, his thoughts were not to be denied.
A user can dial a telephone, operate the computer or, by using a sequence of spoken commands, have the robot perform mechanical tasks.
It wasn't as though he could trust them with anything more than mechanical tasks, not after their conduct during the last flare-up with China.
Still carrying out mechanical tasks, but not running on instructions left over from a long-dead society.