Personally, I would think it was the toughest job of any USGS personnel, for the time involved. Probably a minimum of 16 hour days while you were there would also be a rough guess of a typical day.
Additional comparisons involve circuitry.
I've seen Mr. John R. Evans circuit last year. It has alot of individual parts and alot of them involve nonstandard values. I've used for over a year, has very few. Not withstanding some kind of damping mechanism, which could be eddy current also, let alone the possiblity of other electronic means. These devices all used just standard 2 pole magnets in various configurations.