Work - Overview
The tools, rules, and relationships of the workplace illustrate some of the enduring collaborations and conflicts in the everyday life of the nation. The Museum has more than 5,000 traditional American tools, chests, and simple machines for working wood, stone, metal, and leather. Materials on welding, riveting, and iron and steel construction tell a more industrial version of the story. Computers, industrial robots, and other artifacts represent work in the Information Age.
But work is more than just tools. The collections include a factory gate, the motion-study photographs of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and more than 3,000 work incentive posters. The rise of the factory system is measured, in part, by time clocks in the collections. More than 9,000 items bring in the story of labor unions, strikes, and demonstrations over trade and economic issues.
"Work - Overview" showing 3404 items.
Page 3 of 341
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
Pullman Porter's Blanket
- Description
- Part of a Pullman porter's job was to make up the sleeping berths in his assigned sleeping car, and to provide extra blankets to passengers requesting them. The standard Pullman blanket in the 20th century was dyed a salmon color, which became almost a trademark of the company. When a blanket became worn or damaged in service, it was assigned to those blankets reserved for porters' use.
- This wool blanket in use between the 1930s and the 1950s, was used by African American railroad porters. According to Pullman service rules, a porter's blanket was never to be given to a passenger. Ostensibly to avoid mixing these with the passengers' blankets, the porters' blankets were dyed blue. This was to comply with statutes in the South that dealt with the segregation of blacks and whites. The Pullman service rules were applied nationwide throughout the Pullman system, not just in the South. Dyeing the blanket blue made it easy to tell which blankets were used by passengers and which blankets were used by the African American porters and attendants. A dyed-blue Pullman blanket is today extremely rare, given its negative racial symbolism.
- Date made
- 1930-1950
- user
- Pullman Palace Car Company
- ID Number
- 1986.0133.01
- accession number
- 1986.0133
- catalog number
- 1986.0133.01
- 86.0133.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
International Harvester Model 1486 Tractor
- Description
- This 1979 tractor was owned by Gerald McCathern of Hereford, Tex., who used it in his fields for 700 hours before driving it 1,800 miles to Washington, D.C., to participate in the 1979 American Agriculture Movement demonstration. As wagon master, McCathern coordinated tractorcades that, while bringing the desperate situation facing American farmers to the attention of Congress, also substantially slowed rush-hour traffic. In the midst of the protest, a large snowstorm nearly paralyzed the city, and farmers used their tractors to pull cars out of snowbanks, earning the goodwill of many people.
- The American Agriculture Movement bought the tractor and presented it to the Smithsonian in 1986. The IH 1486 is representative of the technology that typifies modern agriculture. It has sixteen forward and eight reverse speeds, power steering and brakes, diesel turbocharged engine, wide adjustable front end, detachable front weights, air-conditioning, AM-FM radio tape deck, hydraulic adjustable seat, and an adjustable steering wheel.
- Date made
- 1979
- user
- McCathern, Gerald
- maker
- International Harvester
- ID Number
- 1986.0179.01
- catalog number
- 1986.0179.01
- accession number
- 1986.0179
- 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
Union Cap
- Description
- This International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) cap, dates from around 1933.
- Date made
- ca 1920-1960
- ca 1933
- referenced
- International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
- ID Number
- 1986.0710.0037
- accession number
- 1986.0710
- catalog number
- 1986.0710.0037
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Texas Instruments SR-10 Calculator
- Description
- The Texas Instrument Slide Rule-10, more commonly known as the TI SR-10, was a handheld calculator introduced in November 1972, just a few months after TI's first calculator, the Datamath. The SR-10 initially retailed at $149, but was produced in large numbers and soon sold at significant discount. The calculator made use of the TMS0120 single-chip calculator circuit derived from the TMS1802, better known as the first "calculator-on-a-chip."
- The calculator had a LED (Light Emitting Diode) display capable of showing 10 decimal digits, and used a NICAD battery pack to power the red numeric display. The user had to constantly charge and recharge the battery after a few hours of use. The NICAD batteries would usually go bad after a few hundred charges. This was a major drawback for early electronic calculators. Later LCD (liquid Crystal Display) devices used so little power that they could run on tiny solar cells.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1972
- maker
- Texas Instruments
- ID Number
- 1986.0988.354
- catalog number
- 1986.0988.354
- accession number
- 1986.0988
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
CompuPro S-100 Personal Computer
- Description
- Introduced in March of 1983, the CompuPro S-100 system was one of the last and most expensive CP/M systems that appeared. It was a very flexible system that could accommodate a wide range of S-100 bus cards built by a wide range of manufacturers.
- Compupro itself manufactured a large number of S-100 cards. Its S-100 system could be fitted with either 8-bit and/or 16-bit processor cards. One of the best-selling cards was a dual processor 8808 + 8085. This allowed running both 8 bit CP/M and 16 bit MP/M software at a speed of 2 or 5 MHz in a multitasking environment.
- The CompuPro S-100 included several cards from 8088 + 8085 to Z80 to 80286 at a speed of 4 MHz and up. There are 2 8"floppy disk drives. The three major options for operating systems were CP/M, CP/M-86, and MP/M. The machine had 16 KB of RAM, which could be expanded to 1 MB. Depending on how the computer was configured, its price ranged from around $5,500 up to almost $20,000.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1983
- maker
- CompuPro
- ID Number
- 1989.0070.01.01
- catalog number
- 1989.0070.01.1
- accession number
- 1989.0070
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center