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 847 items.
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Bread-slicing Machine
- Description
- This commercial bread-slicing machine was designed and manufactured in 1928 by Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960). It was used to slice loaves of fresh bakery bread at Korn's Bakery, in Rohwedder's home town of Davenport, Iowa, beginning in late 1928. This is Rohwedder's second automatic bread-slicer, the first having fallen apart after about six months of heavy use at Bench's Bakery, in Chillicothe, Missouri.
- The public loved the convenience of sliced bread and, by 1929, Rohwedder's Mac-Roh Company was feverishly meeting the demand for bread-slicing machines. By the following year, the Continental Baking Company was selling sliced bread under the Wonder Bread label. Having achieved success, Mr. Rohwedder reflected on his invention in the June 1930 issue of the Atlanta-based bakery trade journal, New South Baker: "I have seen enough bakers benefit in a big way from Sliced Bread to know that the same results can be obtained by any baker anywhere if he goes about the matter correctly. A good loaf, a proper presentation of Sliced Bread to the grocers and a truthful, clean advertising program based upon successful experiences and the baker can build his business far beyond what he could do without Sliced Bread. . . We are continuing our experimental and developmental work confident in the belief that the real possibilities of Sliced Bread have scarcely been scratched."
- This 1928 bread-slicing machine was manufactured by the Micro Machine Company, of Bettendorf, Iowa, for the Davenport-based Mac-Roh Sales and Manufacturing Company. It was donated to the Museum by Mr. Rohwedder's daughter, Mrs. Margaret R. Steinhauer, of Albion, Michigan, in 1974.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1928
- maker
- Micro Machine Company
- ID Number
- 1975.315261.1
- accession number
- 1975.315261
- catalog number
- 1975.315261.1
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Triple Chocolate Liquor Mill
- Description
- There are many stages in the process of making a luscious bar of milk chocolate from dried and roasted cocoa beans. This machine, a chocolate liquor mill used in the Hershey chocolate factory from about 1920 to the late 1970s, was critical in the early stages of the process. Between heated stones, the mill ground the "nibs," or cracked cores of the cocoa beans, melting the cocoa butter contained inside. The resulting liquefied cocoa butter and ground nibs produced a mixture called "chocolate liquor," (a liquor with no alcoholic content). Unsweetened chocolate liquor is very bitter, and, while normally it isn't eaten as is, it can be used in the production of certain food products or sold as baking chocolate. To make "eating chocolate," like that in candy bars, the chocolate liquor requires many more additives, as well as the processes of mixing, refining, and conching.
- Milton Snavely Hershey's (1857-1945) road to becoming the most recognized name in the American chocolate industry was neither smooth nor entirely sweet. After failing at the confectionary business in Philadelphia, Denver, and New York, Hershey moved back to his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and began a business making caramel candies. While the company enjoyed modest success, Hershey was continually experimenting with new products.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1918
- maker
- J. M. Lehmann Machine Works
- ID Number
- 1980.0021.01
- accession number
- 1980.0021
- catalog number
- 1980.0021.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Chocolate-Making Conch
- Description
- The chocolate-making conche was named for the resemblance of initial designs to the shell of the conch, a sea-dwelling invertebrate. Invented in 1879 by Rudolph Lindt, the conche is outfitted with large stone rollers that are used to mix and aerate the liquid chocolate. An ad for the "Longitudinal Refining Machine" offered by J.M. Lehmann in an 1899 catalog describes the function of the unit: "In working Chocolate by this machine the highly prized melting character of the chocolate is obtained and besides the taste is considerably improved...No other machine will obtain similar favorable results...[a]s Chocolate handled by this machine becomes very fluid, obviating an excessive addition of Cocoa Butter. . ."
- The process of conching is one of the last stages in the production of milk chocolate. It develops the chocolate flavor, darkens the chocolate's color, stabilizes the viscous properties of the chocolate mass by covering all aspects with cocoa butter, and generally lowers the moisture content of the mass. Manufacturing processes vary; some producers add milk, sugar, and flavorings to the chocolate mass or liquor (a semi-liquid ground cocoa bean mixture), before the mixture is refined and conched. Others contend that the heat involved in conching destroys volatile flavor compounds, so flavors are added later. Conching can last from one to four days, and once it is finished, the mixture is melted, deposited into bar molds, and allowed to cool.
- The conche was part of a donation by the Hershey Foods Corporation of three machines representing major steps in the chocolate making process: the grinding of "nibs" (the roasted core of the cocoa bean) in the chocolate liquor mill is one of the first steps, the conche performs important mixing and heating functions in the middle of the process, and the depositor ejects milk chocolate that hardens into the final candy bar form. This conche was manufactured in approximately 1920, and was in use at the Hershey chocolate Company.
- Milton Snavely Hershey was a candymaker long before he became a significant figure in the American chocolate industry. After failed business ventures in Philadelphia, Denver, and New York, Hershey was finally able to establish a successful trade in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, making caramel candies. He traveled to the World's Columbian Exposition (1893), and visited many of the agricultural and food-related exhibitions there. The J.M. Lehmann Company had a fully functional chocolate bar production line on display in the Machinery Building, and before the close of the Exposition on October 30, 1893, Hershey had arranged to buy the machines that had been in the display. By New Year's Day 1894, Hershey was making cocoa products. He began offering solid chocolate candies in 1896, and, in 1900, the first Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars were offered for sale in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1920
- ID Number
- 1980.0021.02
- accession number
- 1980.0021
- catalog number
- 1980.0021.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Chocolate Depositor
- Description
- This depositor was in use at the Hershey chocolate factory from 1906 until it was donated to the museum in the late 1970s. Markings on the machine indicate that it was used to make milk chocolate and almond candy bars. A set of two depositors would be used to fill stainless steel bar molds with the semi-liquid chocolate mixture, each machine filling alternate rows on the molds. Moving on the conveyor belt, the chocolate would set into bars as it cooled in the molds on a twenty-minute ride through a "cooling tunnel." The molds were subjected to bumpy vibration as they traveled along the conveyor belt; the vibration helped to remove bubbles and air pockets, ensuring a solid candy bar. Once the chocolate had completely cooled and set, the finished candy bars would progress to wrapping and packaging.
- The famous factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania was not the original location of Milton Snavely Hershey's candy-making enterprise. M.S. Hershey had attempted a number of business ventures in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago before settling back in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the early 1890s, and opening a caramel candy making company.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Racine Engine and Machinery Company
- ID Number
- 1980.0021.03
- accession number
- 1980.0021
- catalog number
- 1980.0021.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Gilbreth Stopwatch
- Description
- Using custom stopwatches, specialized timers, and still and moving pictures, Frank Gilbreth and his wife Lillian created a system for analyzing human motion in time. Their main clients were industrial managers, who sought to increase worker output while saving time and money. Their study subjects were workers, whose job satisfaction the Gilbreths hoped to increase as they decreased wasted motions.
- The Gilbreths did not invent stopwatch studies. Instead, in their system of motion study, watches were secondary, in direct reaction to worker resistance to earlier stopwatch studies conducted in industrial workplaces by management reformer Frederick Winslow Taylor beginning in the 1880s.
- Taylor's approach came to be known as Taylorism or "scientific management" and included numerous measures to make industry more productive and cost-efficient. As a small part of this program, he advocated the stopwatch as the "scientific," objective arbiter of work, a means of measuring, controlling, and standardizing the amount of time a worker spent at a task. The popularity of stopwatch studies rose among industrial managers, and Taylor's work inspired generations of industrial engineers, who used stopwatches in their research well into the 1960s.
- But as stopwatch studies spread at the beginning of the 20th century, craft unions mounted bitter campaigns against them in open revolt against the new techniques aimed at speeding up their work and controlling their time. The stopwatch became an object of contention between managers and workers, the single most visible manifestation of the new management systems.
- In the short span of Taylor's lifetime, the stopwatch became the symbol of everything hated and revered about scientific management. Although the stopwatch no longer provokes the passions it once did, scientific management's compelling emphasis on standardization, order, and efficiency and its obsession with time persists in our own age.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- associated date
- 1910-1920
- referenced
- Gilbreth, Lillian Moller
- Gilbreth, Frank Bunker
- ID Number
- 1980.0808.01
- accession number
- 1980.0808
- serial number
- 367102
- 376880
- catalog number
- 1980.0808.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Bliss-Baldwin Lathe
- Description (Brief)
- This metalworking lathe was built in New Ipswich, New Hampshire in the 1820s. The lathe is remarkable because of its unusual gearing arrangement. In typical lathe construction the gearing is located near the lathe’s drive pulleys, this lathe’s gears are at floor level. Such a variation in gear placement suggests that the builder of this lathe was influenced by similarly designed textile machines of the period. The bed length on this lathe is 45.5 inches, and it has 10 inches of swing.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1986.0637.01
- accession number
- 1986.0637
- catalog number
- 1986.0637.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Krispy Automatic Ring-King Junior Doughnut Machine
- Description
- The Krispy Automatic Ring-King Junior was introduced by the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation of Winston-Salem, N.C., in the 1950s. It was designed for making the company's signature product—hot glazed doughnuts—in small retail operations around the United States and abroad. The Ring-King Junior could produce about 60 dozen doughnuts an hour, and was used until the late 1960s.
- This doughnut machine was part of a collection of artifacts and archival materials donated to the Museum in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation. The collection documents the history of an American business enterprise and also provides a view into food technology, marketing, and southern regional food traditions.
- maker
- Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation
- ID Number
- 1997.0179.01
- accession number
- 1997.0179
- catalog number
- 1997.0179.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Alfred Press
- Description (Brief)
- The machinist Augustus Alfred constructed this press in his Connecticut shop around 1850. Like many Americans of the time, Alfred did a lot of different work. He was a part-time clock maker, part-time farmer, and part-time machinist. Alfred likely built this particular press to form lightweight watch parts and other metal pieces required for his work. This press has a hand-actuated 38 inch flywheel with four inch stroke, a slide guiding system, and was belt-driven at some point in its history.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Alfred, Augustus
- ID Number
- AG*MHI-M-7884
- catalog number
- MHI-M-7884
- accession number
- 235982
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Columbian Press
- Description
- The Columbian iron hand press was invented in 1813 by George Clymer (1754–1834), a Philadelphia mechanic. From about 1800 Clymer built wooden presses and versions of new iron presses from Europe. The extravagant design, incorporating levers and counterweights, was quite original, but Clymer did not find a market in the United States. Perhaps printers were not ready to give up their old wooden presses. He moved to England in 1818 and acquired a partner. By the 1840s their presses were being manufactured by several dozen firms across Europe, including Ritchie & Son of Edinburgh, which made this press about 1860. It is a super-royal Columbian and its platen size is 21 by 29 inches.
- Clymer's Columbian presses were widely used in European printing offices during the 19th century, and today they are found in a number of European museums. Although Clymer made several dozen presses before leaving Philadelphia, no American Columbians are known to survive. The only Columbians in the U.S. today were made in Europe and brought over here some time later. American printers preferred the Washington iron hand press, which occupied the place in 19th-century American printing offices that the Columbian and Albion presses held in Britain.
- The Columbian press is covered with symbols, including its name as a reference to the United States. An American eagle in full relief serves as a counterweight at the top of the frame. He holds in his talons Jove's thunderbolts combined with the olive branch of peace and the cornucopia of plenty. The press was adopted in 1819 as the emblem of Washington, D.C.'s Columbia Typographical Society, a local union of journeyman printers, and it represented their republican sentiments both in the larger political sense and as their expression of pride and independence in their craft. The Society met at the "Press and Eagle" Tavern, and members carried banners emblazoned with images of the Columbian press in their parades.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1860
- maker
- Ritchie & Son
- ID Number
- GA*21028
- accession number
- 237265
- catalog number
- 21028
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
John H. Gage Iron Planer, c. 1837
- Description (Brief)
- John H. Gage made this iron planer in his shop located in Nashua, New Hampshire. Gage’s shop is considered to be the first shop in the nation devoted to the manufacture of machinist's tools. On a planer the cutting tool stays stationary while the workpiece moves back and forth. This configuration allows for precise work on large jobs. The table’s bed length is 44 and 5/16 inches long and 11 and 7/16 inches wide. The table is driven by a 2 inch diameter screw of 1.25 inch pitch.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Gage, John H.
- ID Number
- MC*315150
- catalog number
- 315150
- accession number
- 217241
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center