When I attended the Schwinn factory service school in ummm 1971, the instructors showed us step by step pictures of a group of ladies in Chicago lacing wheels. The best trick ( which I later learned and it is still with me, pretty much) is that they could reach to a box of spokes and swiftly pick up 9. Not 8 or 10, but nine. Since all they built were 36 hole hubs. The cool part is that by rolling the nine spokes between their thumb and first two finger, they could splay/fan them out just perfectly so that in one smooth motion, they could "roll" the fanned spokes into the holes on the flange of the hub which was held in their left hand between thumb and first two fingers. By turning the hub clockwise to meet the incoming spokes, they would simultaneously "fill" the hub. If I recall correctly, they put all the spokes in first, before then attaching the rim, etc. Then it was onto those spoke tightening and truing machines.
A year later I was running a new bike shop in town and we were selling Peugeots (blessed U-O8's) by the carload. In addition to the multitude of broken Simplex rear derailleurs to repair, I had many a customer bring back his bike with his steel Rigida rims all bent up ( from matching too-low tire pressure with too sharp an obstruction). This was before low-cost replacement wheels were generally available wholesale. The typical shop backlog meant that customers would have to wait a week or more to get their repaired wheel back. My genius moment was realizing that a cheap French rear hub was no big deal to the rider and odds were there weren't that many miles on the the customer's hub. So I built up a stock of similar wheels and simply swapped out wheel for wheel. Later, I rebuilt the "old wheel" when I had slack time and hung it up for the next customer. With same day service, word got around and I was very busy after hours relacing new rims to these hubs and the other local shops never figured out how we could do it so fast all the time. We told the customers we had a "machine".
A few years later, I remember a salesman from West Coast Cycle Supply offering me built wheels at very attractive prices. I asked what kind of machine they bought to build all these wheels with. " Machine?", he snorted, "we got a warehouse full of Mexicans!".
Riccardo Bulissimo Verdi nuh Vaaaaaaa da.