Industry & Manufacturing - Overview
The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.
The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.
The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.
"Industry & Manufacturing - Overview" showing 2 items.
Fisherman’s Hard Hat
- Description
- The weather deck on a factory trawler like the Alaska Ocean can be a dangerous place, especially when the huge net is being launched or hauled aboard. While mechanical winches do the heavy lifting, deck hands have to be present during such operations to attach or change cables, to secure or launch the trawl doors, to open the cod end of the net into the fish bins in the hold, and to accomplish a range of other tasks accurately and efficiently. To protect themselves while working on the deck, fishermen wear hard hats, earplugs, and other gear.
- This hard hat was worn by Alaska Ocean deck hand Matt Prebezac in 2007. Like other fishermen aboard, he customized the standard white hard hat so there would be no confusion over which hat to grab when the call came to report to the deck. Using a black permanent marker, he wrote the words “Rock Star” on the back of the hat. This ensured it wouldn’t be mistaken for his buddy Ben Boyok’s hat, which was adorned with the profile of a hawkeye, the team mascot of the University of Iowa, in Ben’s home state. Throughout the 2007 season, the Rock Star and the Iowa hawkeye, with four other deck hands, a lead fisherman, and a deck officer, worked 12-hour shifts in two teams.
- date made
- 2007
- Associated Date
- 2007
- used
- Prebezac, Matt
- maker
- Bullard
- ID Number
- 2007.0178.02
- catalog number
- 2007.0178.02
- accession number
- 2007.0178
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Factory Processor’s Bump Hat
- Description
- The factory inside a large trawler like the Alaska Ocean is filled with equipment for filleting, processing, freezing, and packing enormous quantities of fish. Workers are trained in safety procedures and also wear protective headgear and earplugs as they work. While not required to wear certified safety helmets like the fishermen on the weather deck, they wear bump hats molded from high-density polyethylene for protection from minor bumps and bruises.
- This yellow bump hat was worn by Thelma McFarland, a fish processor, who was working her third season aboard the Alaska Ocean in 2007. She wore it over a disposable hairnet, which covered and held her hair in place, a requirement for maintaining sanitary conditions in the factory. There are typically four factory shifts, and the bump hats are color-coded according to each shift—blue for A, yellow for B, green for C, and orange for D shift. The color-coding allows managers to quickly assess the number of workers that will be needed on extra kicker shifts. The lead managers in each area wear red bump hats.
- date made
- 2007
- Associated Date
- 2007
- used
- McFarland, Thelma
- maker
- Bullard
- ID Number
- 2007.0178.13
- catalog number
- 2007.0178.13
- accession number
- 2007.0178
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center