Energy & Power - Overview
The Museum's collections on energy and power illuminate the role of fire, steam, wind, water, electricity, and the atom in the nation's history. The artifacts include wood-burning stoves, water turbines, and windmills, as well as steam, gas, and diesel engines. Oil-exploration and coal-mining equipment form part of these collections, along with a computer that controlled a power plant and even bubble chambers—a tool of physicists to study protons, electrons, and other charged particles.
A special strength of the collections lies in objects related to the history of electrical power, including generators, batteries, cables, transformers, and early photovoltaic cells. A group of Thomas Edison's earliest light bulbs are a precious treasure. Hundreds of other objects represent the innumerable uses of electricity, from streetlights and railway signals to microwave ovens and satellite equipment.
"Energy & Power - Overview" showing 19 items.
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Ship Tools from the Propeller Indiana, Shovel
- Description
- All the hand tools were found in the engine and boiler space below decks in Indiana’s hold, indicating that they were used for the machinery. The crew used the shovel to add coal to the fires.
- date made
- mid-1800s
- when the Indiana was found
- 1972
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.58
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.58
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Propeller Indiana’s Capstan
- Description
- The capstan, most commonly found on the decks of early steamboats, was used as a vertical winch for raising or lowering anchors, hoisting sails and cargo, hauling heavy lines, or other jobs where individual manpower was not enough.
- It was operated manually, by putting timbers into the holes and using the resulting leverage to wind a line wrapped around the center of the device more easily. Sea chanties, or rhythmic songs, were often employed by ship crews to ensure that everyone hauled at the same time. Later in the 19th century, steam capstans and donkey engines replaced human muscle on the larger vessels.
- date made
- mid-1800s
- ID Number
- 1984.0359.02
- accession number
- 1984.0359
- catalog number
- 1984.0359.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Tools from the Propeller Indiana, Hand Truck
- Description
- These hand tools were found in the engine and boiler space belowdecks in Indiana’s hold, indicating that they were used for the machinery. The crew used the shovel to add coal to the fires.
- The hand truck—virtually identical to modern examples—is one of four found aboard Indiana and used for moving cargo into, out of, and around the cargo hold of the ship. This hand truck was the artifact that actually identified the vessel when it was located in 1972, for the words “PROPR INDIANA” were stamped into its handle. The other three had different ships’ names stamped on them, indicating that they were secondhand or borrowed equipment.
- Date made
- ca 1858
- when the Indiana was found
- 1972
- ID Number
- 1994.0033.01
- catalog number
- 1994.0033.01
- accession number
- 1994.0033
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scow Schooner Milton
- Description
- The 102-foot three-masted scow schooner Milton was built by Ellsworth & Davidson at Milwaukee, Wis., in 1867. It spent 20 years hauling lumber on Lake Michigan, along with hundreds of other small boats nicknamed the “mosquito fleet.” Built to carry as much cargo as possible, many of these flat-bottom boats did not sail very well.
- The Milton collided with the ship W.H. Hinsdale at Milwaukee in December 1867, causing about $100 in damage to each vessel. It also ran aground twice during its career.
- On 8 September 1885, while transporting a cargo of cedar posts and cordwood, the Milton sank off Two Rivers, Wis., during an autumn storm. The entire crew of five men was lost—three of them brothers.
- Date made
- 1962
- Milton built
- 1867
- ID Number
- TR*321529
- catalog number
- 321529
- accession number
- 246222
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Model of Snagboat Charles H. West
- Description
- Introduced in the early 19th century, snag boats were designed to clear trees, stumps, and other obstructions from navigable rivers and channels. Most were in the form of a catamaran, with two parallel hulls between which trees were hauled in, cut up, and disposed of on land.
- Designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for maintaining the national waterways, Charles H. West was built at Nashville, Tenn., in 1933-34 by the Nashville Bridge Co. at a cost of $227,260.48. It measured 170’ in length and 38’ in beam but only drew 4’-6” of water. Instead of a catamaran design, the West had a normal, shallow sternwheeler hull. At the flat or scow bow, two A-frames hauled snags up a ramp for disposal. It cleared snags along the lower Mississippi River for many years.
- In 1969, the West was sold to a private party and converted to the restaurant boat Lt. Robert E. Lee in St. Louis, Mo. the following year. The name was fitting. Although best known as a Confederate general, in the late 1830s, Lee had been an officer in the Corps of Engineers. His work installing pilings and wing dams had helped the Mississippi currents to clear silt and keep open the main St. Louis landing.
- Moored on the Mississippi near the St. Louis Arch, the Lee was a successful restaurant until a 1993 flood devastated the waterfront. After several failed attempts to reopen, the vessel was auctioned on December 19, 2008, for $200,000. Its new owners plan to renovate and reopen the famous ship once again as a restaurant and nightclub in St. Louis.
- Date made
- 1966
- ID Number
- TR*326538
- catalog number
- 326538
- accession number
- 265606
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Self-unloading Ore Carrier James R. Barker
- Description
- The James R. Barker was built in 1976 by the American Shipbuilding Co. at Lorain, OH for the Interlake Steamship Co. It was named after the head of the Moore-McCormack Steamship Company, which owned Interlake. Costing over $43 million, Barker was the third 1000-footer to sail the Great Lakes, and the first built entirely on the Lakes. These big bulk coal and ore carriers were constructed to fit the largest locks connecting the Great Lakes.
- Barker's two big 8,000-hp engines turn two 17-1/2-foot propellers, pushing the vessel at a speed of 15.75 knots (18 mph). The ship can transport 59,000 tons of iron ore pellets or 52,000 tons of coal. The self-unloading rig has a 250-foot-long boom that can unload 10,000 tons of ore or 6,000 net tons of coal per hour. By contrast, Interlake’s first bulk carrier, the 1874 wooden-hulled steamer V.H. Ketchum, could carry only 1,700 tons of ore and took nearly twelve days to unload using manual wheelbarrows.
- The Barker was still in service in 2009.
- Date made
- 1978
- year the James R. Barker was built
- 1976
- built James R. Barker
- American Shipbuilding Co.
- bought the James R. Barker
- Interlake Steamship Co.
- maker
- Boucher-Lewis Precision Models, Inc.
- ID Number
- TR*336153
- catalog number
- 336153
- accession number
- 1978.0374
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Abraham Lincoln Patent Model Replica
- Description
- Abraham Lincoln had considerable maritime background, although it is usually eclipsed by his political heritage. At the age of 19 in Anderson Creek, Ind., he built a flatboat for $24, loaded it with a local farmer’s produce, and floated it 1,000 miles down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, where he sold both the boat and its cargo. When he was 22, he was hired by an Illinois store owner to take some goods down the Mississippi and sell them in New Orleans. Lincoln built another flatboat and successfully piloted it from New Salem, Ill. to New Orleans over a three-month period.
- In the mid-1840s, as a lawyer in Springfield, Ill., his law partner William Herndon recalled watching Lincoln working on a large boat model with a local craftsman. A Springfield resident recalled Lincoln demonstrating the idea for his model in public. His model embodies an idea Lincoln had for raising vessels over shoal waters by increasing their buoyancy. That idea became patent #6,469 in May 1849—the only patent ever obtained by an American president. After he became president in 1860 and moved to Washington, he visited his model in the nearby Patent Office at least once. He also enjoyed reviewing naval vessels and ideas, and he personally approved inventor John Ericsson’s idea for the ironclad warship Monitor.
- Lincoln’s original patent model was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1908 and has left the Mall only once since then, for an exhibit at the US Patent Office. This replica was built by the Smithsonian in 1978 for long-term display to preserve the fragile original.
- date made
- 1978
- ID Number
- TR*336769
- accession number
- 1978.2284
- catalog number
- 336769
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Steamship John Heckmann’s Steam Whistle
- Description
- Ships’ steam whistles were powered by steam lines from the boilers. They were used to signal other ships or the shore, to announce a vessel’s presence or its intentions. Whistles were especially useful when approaching or leaving a port or landing, or in foggy or dark waters.
- This whistle originally belonged to the 1895 Army Corps of Engineers towboat Gen. H. L. Abbot, built at Jeffersonville, Ind. and named after a famous general in the U. S. Army Corps. In 1906 it was renamed Gen. J. H. Simpson, after another Army Corps staff. The vessel was dismantled in 1919.
- The cabin fittings, the ship’s wheel, and the whistle were purchased by Edward Heckmann for his new Missouri River packet boat, the John Heckmann. The Heckmann was 165’ long and 30’-6” in beam but only drew 4’-6” of water. Uniquely, the Heckmann had two independently operated or “split” sternwheels, which provided much greater maneuverability than a single, wide sternwheel could offer. Its boilers came from the hulk of the steamer Majestic, which had wrecked in 1914 at Chain of Rocks, St. Louis. The Heckmann’s engines were acquired from the obsolete Army Corps sternwheel towboats Aux Vasse and Isle de Bois. Employed in the packet trade between St Louis and Jefferson City, the Heckmann lost money because of competition from the railroads.
- The John Heckmann was later converted to a Missouri River 1,200-passenger excursion boat by the Heckmann family. Operating on the Missouri as far north as Sioux City, Iowa, its normal summer route was between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. In winter, it resumed packet service on the Cumberland, Tennessee, Illinois, and Ohio Rivers. Wrecked in an ice breakup at its homeport of Hermann, Mo. in 1928, it was dismantled.
- date made
- 1895
- purchased whistle
- Heckmann, Edward
- ID Number
- 1979.0542.01
- accession number
- 1979.0542
- catalog number
- 1979.0542.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
The Propeller Indiana’s “Philadelphia Wheel”
- Description
- Indiana's propeller was manufactured by Spang & Co. of Pittsburgh, PA, as stamped on one of the blades. This firm, a large iron manufacturing company centered in Pittsburgh, PA, was founded in 1828 and was one of the earliest and largest manufacturers of iron products in the United States.
- The hub of the propeller is cast iron; the blades are rolled iron. One of the intact blades is chipped and dented, suggesting a collision. Another blade is missing outside the yellow line, which marks where a large section broke loose, probably from hitting an object in the water. This piece struck the Indiana's sternpost, literally “shivered her timbers,” and started the leak that sank the ship. The blade broke off completely when the ship struck the lakebed and was found at the wreck site, buried in the sand under the stern post. It is reproduced here in fiberglass.
- The closest design is by Richard Loper of Philadelphia, who registered three propeller-related patents in 1844 and 1845 and licensed his ideas to shipbuilders Reany, Neafie & Co., also of Philadelphia. Contemporary accounts state that Loper’s design was the most popular in the Great Lakes region, and some Lakes propeller manufacturers even advertised his design as the “Philadelphia Wheel.”
- Date made
- 1848
- possible patentee
- Loper, Richard
- maker
- Spang & Company
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.05
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.05
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Coal from Propeller Indiana
- Description
- The abundance of timber along the shores of the Great Lakes gave steamboats a ready supply of fuel. Partly burned logs from Indiana's boiler grate indicate that the boiler had been stoked just before the steamboat sank.
- Pound for pound, coal provides more energy than wood. Coal was found in the vicinity of the boiler in the hold, and historical sources indicate that it was a common fuel on upbound (northerly) voyages, while wood was the principal downbound fuel.
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.07
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.07
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center