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 2256 items.
Page 1 of 226
Bakelizer
- Description
- This is the steam pressure vessel used by Leo H. Baekeland, the chemist and inventor, to produce commercial quantities of the first totally synthetic plastic, Bakelite. It was produced by reacting phenol and formaldehyde under pressure at high temperatures. The product was a thermosetting resin which proved to be an extremely versatile substance, readily moldable and quite strong when combined with fillers such as cellulose.
- The Bakelizer was used by Dr. Baekeland around 1909. It was dubbed "Old Faithful" by its early operators. Made of iron alloys and still in usable condition, it's about 35 inches wide, 40 inches deep, and nearly 72 inches tall.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- user
- Baekeland, L. H.
- ID Number
- 1983.0524.01
- catalog number
- 1983.524.1
- accession number
- 1983.0524
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Eli Terry Mass-Produced Box Clock
- Description
- In the opening years of the 19th century, a handful of Connecticut inventors and entrepreneurs transformed the way clocks were made in the United States. Recognizing a vast potential market for low-cost domestic clocks, Eli Terry and his associates Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley applied water-powered machinery to clockmaking. One of the proving grounds of the American Industrial Revolution, clockmaking changed from a craft to a factory process in which machines mass-produced uniform, interchangeable clock parts. This manufacturing technique appeared in other industries about this time and became known as "the American system" of manufacturing.
- The process called for a whole new kind of clock. The first mass-produced clocks had movements of wood, instead of scarce and expensive brass. Although the earliest of these wooden clocks had long pendulums and fitted into traditional tall cases, about 1816 Eli Terry designed a distinctly American clock small enough to set on a mantel or shelf. Sold largely to rural buyers by itinerant merchants, these clocks played an early and significant role in transforming the rural North from overwhelmingly agricultural to a modern market society.
- This clock demonstrates Terry's determination to make his clocks as economical as possible. The case is a simple wooden box and the glass door bears reverse-painted numbers that served as a dial. Terry's success spawned imitators eager to capture part of the market for machine-made clocks. By 1830, western Connecticut was home to over a hundred firms, large and small, making clocks with wooden movements.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1816
- maker
- Terry, Eli
- ID Number
- ME*317044
- catalog number
- 317044
- accession number
- 233061
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Aaron Crane Torsion Pendulum Clock
- Description
- Aaron D. Crane (1804-1860) of Caldwell, New Jersey, was a clockmaker of brilliant inventiveness who worked outside the mainstream. Most of his contemporaries concentrated their energies on the mass production of technically unremarkable clocks. Crane was a versatile inventor whose best-known work, the torsion pendulum clock (patented in 1841), was startlingly original. This clock employed a torsion pendulum, slowly revolving about the vertical axis in alternating directions, and incorporated a new escapement of Crane's own design. It worked with such freedom of friction that it was capable of running for extremely long periods. Crane advertised his clocks as "month clocks," "twelve-month clocks," and "376-day clocks." He liked to refer to himself as the "One Year Clockmaker."
- He installed most of his torsion pendulum clocks in unpretentious, rectangular cases, but in the last decade of his life he built a few clocks based on the ornate design of this one. Five survive.
- In addition to telling time, this clock has a dial marked "astronomical" that indicates the day of the year, the position of the sun in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, the length of day and night, and the time of the tides.
- Besides his clocks, Crane tried to market a variety of inventions through a number of businesses in Newark, New York City, and Boston. For all his mechanical ingenuity, he had little commercial success.
- Some twenty years after his death, the torsion pendulum clock was reinvented independently in Germany and marketed as a "400-day clock" or "anniversary clock."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1850
- maker
- Crane, Aaron
- ID Number
- ME*319768
- catalog number
- 319768
- accession number
- 241309
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Simon Willard Tower Clock
- Description
- Almost from the moment of the mechanical clock's invention, the local clock tower on a church or other public building dominated the landscape. Tower clocks announced the time to people within earshot of their bells and regulated urban life in the Western world. The introduction of the pendulum and the anchor escapement in the late seventeenth century made these clocks remarkably accurate. They were set at local noon (when the sun reached its highest point in the sky at a particular location), and thus gave each town a time of its own, depending on its longitude.
- In America, before specialized manufacturers began mass-producing tower clocks in the second half of the nineteenth century, the clocks were built to order by versatile individual clockmakers and, occasionally, by adventurous blacksmiths. The tower clock shown here is one of the few built by Simon Willard (1753-1848) of Boston, the most famous of the many clockmaking members of the Willard family. Willard was inventive as well as prolific, a clockmaker who worked not only for a regional clientele but also for Thomas Jefferson and the outfitters of the U.S. Capitol.
- Marked "Made in 1832 by Simon Willard in his 80th year," this tower clock served for more than a century on the First (Unitarian) Parish in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In all details the movement shows uncompromising craftsmanship. It has a pinwheel dead-beat escapement with maintaining power and a rack-and-snail hour striking train.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1832
- maker
- Willard, Simon
- ID Number
- ME*330398
- catalog number
- 330398
- accession number
- 288890
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button Inlayed with Pearl Chips
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0001
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0001
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button Inlayed with Pearl Chips
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0002
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0002
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button Inlayed with Pearl Chips
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0009
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0009
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button Covered with Multicolored Chips
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0013
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0013
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button with Gold Star Inlayed Around the Center Hole
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0025
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0025
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Round Button Inlayed with a Center Stripe of Pearl
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1960.233749.0051
- accession number
- 233749
- catalog number
- 233749.0051
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center