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 138 items.
Page 1 of 14
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
George Washington Masonic Memorial Medal
- Description (Brief)
- The Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut produced this medal during the early 20th century. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, medals, coins, and tokens.
- Obverse: Image of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. The legend reads: GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC NATIONAL MEMORIAL/ ALEXANDRIA VIRGINIA.
- Reverse: Image of the Masonic symbol of the G inside a square and compass.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Scovill Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- 1981.0296.1580
- accession number
- 1981.0296
- catalog number
- 1981.0296.1580
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Billiard Balls
- Description
- This is a set of three Bakelite billiard balls, in its original wooden box. The balls were made by the Hyatt-Burroughs Billiard Ball Co. of Newark, N.J. The date of manufacture is unknown. The label on the box states that "Bakelite Billiard balls are of the same resilience as the best ivory balls. 2-3/8 inch balls weigh exactly seven ounces, are of exact diameter, are perfectly and permanently round and balanced, unaffected by climactic conditions, and are practically indestructible."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- after 1907
- after 1910
- invented hyatt billiard ball
- Hyatt, John Wesley
- patentee of bakelite
- Baekeland, L. H.
- maker
- Hyatt-Burroughs Billiard Ball Company
- ID Number
- 1981.0976.01
- catalog number
- 1981.0976.01
- accession number
- 1981.0976
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Eli Terry Tall Case Clock
- Description
- Between roughly 1790 and 1820, American clockmaking changed from a handicraft to an industry. The principal setting for this transformation was western Connecticut, the principal product was the wooden clock movement, and the main character was Eli Terry (1772-1852).
- Terry began his clockworking career traditionally enough. He acquired the metalworking skills to make brass movements during an apprenticeship with Daniel Burnap of East Windsor, who in turn had been apprenticed to the British immigrant clockmaker Thomas Harland. Terry's teachers for wooden movements were probably Timothy or Benjamin Cheney, clockmaking brothers from East Hartford.
- Once on his own, Terry specialized in thirty-hour wooden movements for tall case clocks, although he accepted commissions for brass movements as well. Over a period of years, he experimented with many variations of thirty-hour movements, one of which is in this clock. The town of Plymouth, Connecticut, named on the dial, was incorporated in 1795; Terry made this clock some time between 1795 and 1807. After 1807 Terry's wooden movements had different characteristics. In that year he introduced large-scale factory methods and water-powered machinery into the manufacture of wooden tall case-clock movements. His pioneering application of mass-production technology to the clock industry and his highly successful mass-produced shelf-clock won Terry a prominent place in American history.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1795
- maker
- Terry, Eli
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.006
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.006
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
A Pillar-and-Scroll Shelf Clock
- Description
- Eli Terry began to mass-produce his austere but serviceable box clock (See Cat. 317044) in 1816 and immediately proceeded to refine it. The plain box case acquired a pair of slender pillars on the sides, scrollwork on top, and a set of graceful feet. A dial was added, and the lower portion of the glass door was reverse-painted. In the movement, Terry experimented with modifications of the escapement, revised the gear trains, and replaced the rack-and-snail striking mechanism with the more economical count wheel. The result of these efforts, patented in 1823, was another wooden, weight-driven, hour-striking, thirty-hour clock that soon became widely known as the Connecticut pillar-and-scroll clock.
- As the design of the clock was perfected, Terry set about organizing its manufacture. Production was underway in 1822. By 1825, Eli Terry, in partnership with his brother Samuel and his sons Eli, Jr., and Henry, was operating three factories, each turning out two to three thousand pillar-and-scroll clocks a year. Originally, Terry's clock cost fourteen dollars, but before long its price dropped to under ten dollars.
- Other clockmakers, notably Seth Thomas, soon produced clocks after Terry's design. The output of the new clock industry soon became too large to be absorbed by the local market. Scores of traveling salesmen were dispatched to sell clocks in the rural West and South. "As to the Yankee clocks peddler," reported an English traveler in the 1840s, " in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and here in every dell of Arkansas and in every cabin where there was not a chair to sit on, there was sure to be a Connecticut clock."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1825-1828
- maker
- Eli & Samuel Terry
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.033
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.033
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Pennsylvania/Kentucky Pistol
- Description
- Physical Description:
- This .54 caliber smoothbore “Kentucky” pistol was assembled by Melchior Fordney. The stock is curly maple, stained with a piano finish. The curved grip has a brass butt cap with a rear extension towards the tang. The brass trigger guard has an English acorn finial with a French front bar. It has two brass ramrod thimbles with two brass side plates.
- It is stamped “C.Arb” on the barrel. “J/Holland” is stamped on the lock. There is a stamp of “IB” possibly for J. Bonewitz.
- History:
- Melchior Fordney made pistols and rifles in Lancaster, Pennsylvania from 1807 to 1843. He was famous for his Kentucky rifles. His life and career were cut short in 1843 when he was killed with an ax by a Baptist Preacher named John Haggerty. Apparently, Haggerty he did not approve of the fact that Fordney lived with a woman outside of wedlock.
- Fordney’s work often had very elaborate detailing and was made one at a time when he was not contracted by the government. This pistol, because of its large size and lack of “C” stamp, is believed to be one of the later pistols of Fordney’s work.
- References:
- Flayderman, Norm. Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American Firearms…and their Values, Gun Digest Books, Iola, 2007. 9th edition
- Gardner, Robert E. Col. Small Arms Makers: A Directory of Fabricators of Firearms, Edged Weapons, Crossbows and Polearms, Crown Publishers Inc, New York: 1963, p. 66
- Smith, Samuel E. and Edwin W. Bitter. Historic Pistols: The American Martial Flintlock 1760-1845, Scalamandre Publications, New York: 1986, p. 308.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1815
- maker
- Fordney, Melchior
- ID Number
- 1986.0024.16
- accession number
- 1986.0024
- catalog number
- 1986.0024.16
- collector/donor number
- P88L
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Multiblade Folding Knife
- Description
- This knife could be described as the Mother of all Swiss Army knives. If you count the miniatures inside the tortoise shell handle covers, it has 100 “blades.” They include pocket knife blades of every style imaginable, a serrated blade, two dagger blades, several different types of shears and scissors, an auger, a corkscrew, two saws, a lancet, button hook, cigar cutter, tuning fork, pens and mechanical pencils, mirror, straight razor, and a functional .22-caliber five-shot pinfire revolver. The one modern convenience it doesn’t seem to have is a bottle opener, but the bottle cap as we know it wasn’t invented until 1892.
- This knife wasn’t really meant to be carried. Knives like this were made exclusively for exhibition to highlight the cutlers’ art. They were so difficult to make they were only attempted by the most notable firms with the most talented artisans. They could be seen at various fairs and industrial expositions during the nineteenth century. This particular knife was made in Solingen, Germany about 1880 for J. S. Holler & Co.’s cutlery store in New York City. It was used it to display the fine craftsmanship available to their customers. At the time, German cutlery firms were attempting to establish themselves in the American market, which was dominated by the firms of Sheffield, England. The workmanship and complexity of this knife make it one of the finest examples of the cutlers’ art in America.
- Location
- Currently on loan
- date made
- ca 1880
- associated dates
- 1867-1906
- owner
- Holler, John S.
- ID Number
- 1986.0101.03
- catalog number
- 1986.0101.03
- accession number
- 1986.0101
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Experimental Sulfur Lamp
- Description
- New lighting inventions occasionally appear from unexpected directions. The development of this microwave-powered lamp provides a case in point. In 1990 Fusion Systems was a small company with a successful, highly specialized product, an innovative ultraviolet (UV) industrial lighting system powered by microwaves.
- Discharge lamps typically use electrodes to support an electric arc. Tungsten electrodes are most common, so materials that might erode tungsten can't be used in the lamp and care must be taken to not melt the electrodes. Fusion's lamp side-stepped this problem by eliminating electrodes entirely. Microwave energy from an external source energized the lamp. This opened the way for experiments with non-traditional materials, including sulfur.
- During the 1980s engineer Michael Ury, physicist Charles Wood, and their colleagues experimented several times with adapting their UV system to produce visible light without success. In 1990, they tried placing sulfur in a spherical bulb instead of a linear tube. Sulfur could give a good quality light, but did not work well in the linear tube. Other elements only gave marginal results in the spherical bulb. But when they tested sulfur in the spherical lamp they found what they hoped for: lots of good visible light with little invisible UV or infrared rays.
- They began setting up "crude" lamps like this one (one of the first ten according to Ury) in order to learn more about the new light source. In the mid-1990s Fusion began trying to sell their sulfur bulbs with limited success. The lamp rotated at 20,000 rpm so that the temperature stayed even over the surface, and a fan was needed for cooling. The fan and spin motor made noise and reduced energy efficiency of the total system. Then they found that the bulbs lasted longer than the magnetrons used to generate the microwaves that powered them. Finding inexpensive magnetrons proved too difficult, and the company stopped selling the product in 2002.
- Lamp characteristics: A quartz stem with notch near the bottom serves as the base. The notch locks the lamp into its fixture. The sphere has an argon gas filling, and the yellow material is sulfur condensed on the inner lamp wall. The pattern of condensation indicates lamp was burned base-down. Tipless, G-shaped quartz envelope.
- Date made
- ca 1990
- date made
- ca. 1990
- maker
- Ury, Michael G.
- ID Number
- 1992.0467.01
- catalog number
- 1992.0467.01
- accession number
- 1992.0467
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Prototype Heat-Mirror Tungsten Lamp
- Description
- During the 1970s, energy crises lamp makers scrambled to develop products that would be more energy efficient. One manufacturer, Duro-Test, began working with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on an improved version of the ordinary incandescent lamp. The resulting product was called the "MI-T-Wattsaver" and was produced by the company from 1981 through 1989.
- The basic concept seemed simple. The hotter a tungsten filament operates, the more efficient it becomes. Most of the energy emitted by the filament is in the form of invisible infrared rays that we feel as heat. If some of that heat could be directed back at the filament to raise its temperature, the lamp would give more light with no additional electricity needed. The researchers at Duro-Test and MIT called this concept a heat-mirror. They developed a special coating that would allow visible light to pass while reflecting infrared back to the filament, and put the coating on the inside of the glass bulb.
- The concept worked but problems emerged. Tests showed that the coating aged with use, reducing the amount of heat reflected to the filament. The lamp was also difficult to make since the coating needed to be precisely applied and the filament needed to be mounted exactly in the center of the round bulb. As the price of compact fluorescent lamps fell in the late 1980s, Duro-Test decided to discontinue the MI-T-Wattsaver. The heat-mirror concept continues in use today in some tungsten-halogen lamps though.
- The lamp seen here is a prototype sent to the U.S. Department of Energy for testing and evaluation in 1981.
- Lamp characteristics: The piece has two sections-the lamp itself and a base adapter. The lamp has a brass bi-pin base (1/2" pin spacing with exhaust tube in between). Tungsten filament (broken) in CC-8 configuration with crimp connectors. A metal disc inside bottom of envelope may serve as a heat shield (the base pins pass through this disc). Tipless, G-24 glass envelope made in two halves. Both halves have an interior coating of infrared-reflecting film. The base adapter has a brass medium-screw shell, the insulator is part of a three-piece plastic skirt. Twist-lock receptacle on top connects to lamp.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1980
- date made
- ca. 1980
- collaborator
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- maker
- DURO-TEST Corporation
- ID Number
- 1992.0553.09
- catalog number
- 1992.0553.09
- accession number
- 1992.0553
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center