It Happened Here-- "Big Water"

 

Any discussion of the development of industrial power technologies in the United States often seems to have the adjective “Big” attached to it. Thus, our gasoline/ diesel fueled segments of our economy are dominated by “Big Oil” while much of the power for our electric grid is the product of “Big Hydro-Electric” and throughout most of the later 19^th and 20^th centuries the steam engines that propelled our transportation and industrial sectors were fueled by “Big Coal.”  I believe there are two aspects to this.The first, which we are more accustomed to thinking of, is the political/ economic dimension whereby the production of power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few big producers (think Standard Oil's role in the creation of “Big Oil”.) But the more fundamental second, is the technological dimension, whereby the utility of the power source blossoms with all sorts of new uses for it, inspiring ways to produce and distribute the power more efficiently. (Imagine Standard Oil's fate, without the advent of the internal combustion engine—had petroleum remained just a lubricant and a fuel for oil lamps!) 

 

Before steam power, fueled by coal, became dominant, I believe we can look to an era when waterpower became “Big,” in the second sense– was engineered in ways that greatly increased its power, utilized in many more ways to achieve much greater potential, and even distributed to greatly extend its reach. Evidence of this development is manifest here across New York State and is documented in its NYSHMs.

Main St., near Allen St., Catskill

   Waterpower, harnessed through waterwheels is an ancient technology used for millennia to drain mines, grind grain and saw wood. Watermills were often among the first structures built in the settlement of America, to handle the laborious chores of turning a millstone, or dragging a saw, via a crankshaft, back and forth over a log to render it into planks or squared timbers.
 

Montcalm St., Ticonderoga

(Before Lotbiniere built his fort, he first constructed a sawmill to provide lumber for barracks and other support structures to be located within and near the fort.)                

But with the first stirrings of the industrial revolution in America, the power of waterwheels began to be used in more diverse, creative ways. By the use of belts, pulleys and shafts the motive power of the turning waterwheel was conducted around factories to power all sorts of machinery*. Turning pawls pumped bellows in refineries and trip hammers worked pig iron into wrought iron and steel, while other machines bent and shaped pieces, boring and cutting them. 

Rte 156, Berne

Machines in carding and fulling mills worked and combed wool while water-powered spinning and weaving looms turned cotton, flax and wool into fabrics, and sewing machines enabled workers to turn them into clothing.

Rte 4, Schuylerville, at the Bridge

And water power turned lathes, band saws and jigsaws to make furniture, wagons and intricate architectural pieces for early Victorian homes.

Valleys with a good flow of water filled with mills, and entrepreneurs sought ways to extract the most power from the downward flow. 

 

Rte. 5, Elbridge

Turnpike Rd. (10B), Throop

In 1851 Henry Burden built the world's most powerful waterwheel in Troy.  Sixty two feet in diameter, it was twenty two feet wide and could produced 500 horsepower.

Cor. Mill St., Burden Ave, Troy

           

 

Others filled or surrounded

their mills with combinations

of waterwheels.

Reservoir Hill Rd., Hammondsport

In 1837 Peter Harmony built his first textile mill at the Cohoes falls and twenty-nine years later his sucessors built Harmony Mill #3, the worlds largest cotton mill, with state of the art technology-- five water-powered Boyden turbines, beneath the mill, each delivering to all five floors motive power via belts and shafts to power some 2,700 looms.

Mill #3, Mohawk Ave, Cohoes

*It is easy to forget that until the last decades of the 19^th century (and well into the 20^th) motive power in factories was centralized, whether it was supplied by a turning waterwheel or a central steam engine. Belts, pulleys and shafts transferred power around the factory to individual machines, making factories noisy, dangerous places to work. It would not be until factories were electrified and small AC motors were connected to individual machines that the motive power in factories was decentralized.

 

 Marker of the Week -- Well, it finally happened.  For over two years now, my wife has been accusing me of dragging her all over "Hell's half acre" to chase down and photograph NYSHMs. This summer on a vacation trip to the western Finger Lakes and the Genesee Valley we finally, actually, got there.

Rte 5 & 20, cor. of Half Acre Rd., west of Auburn

A Final Note-- I'm baaack! From the last half of September, until now I have been unable to publish any new posts. I returned from two weeks vacation with a bug that layed me low for two weeks. I think I was finally able to get rid of it by giving it to my wife for another week.

After getting things back together I'm looking forward to resuming my more-or-less-weekly posts. Over the summer I was able to photograph a great number of signs and I look forward to returning to regular postings.

It Happened Here -- Welcome to a "Tech Valley" --1830's style!

You well might wonder what would provide the employment of "so many mechanics" in West Berne in 1830-1834, some seventy-five years before automobiles came into existence. and no railroads  within many miles of the Helderberg mountains. But "mechanic" is a term that became increasingly narrow in it definition.  In pre-industial times anyone, who was not a merchant or a farmer, who used tools and worked with his hands to produce a product might be called a mechanic. Thus carpenter/joiners, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, glassmakers and gunsmiths might all be called mechanics. But by the first decades of the 1800's a mechanic was coming to mean, predominately, someone who built or maintained the machines that produced products. In effect, most mechanics were becoming "millwrights." And mills were sprouting up all over the northeast in towns with fast moving streams  that could provide waterpower for powering mills. Hamlets like East Berne, Berne, and West Berne coalesced around streams like the Switzkill and the Foxenkill. 

The Berne falls--In the 1800's multiple millponds and sluiceways were here

As early as 1751 Jacob Weidman built a gristmill at the Berne falls. In 1832 Malachi Whipple rebuilt the gristmill, which was operated until the end of WWII.

Saw mills were built in several locations, first with reciprocating vertical saws then, later in the century with circular saws, that might be "ganged" together to saw multiple planks with a single pass.

In 1858 East Berne saw the construction of a large five story grist mill which by 1886 had four sets of mill stones powered by a 22 foot diameter mill wheel which also powered a mechanical lift used to raise bags of flour to its upper floors.

In colonial times mill construction might be shared by the miller and a local carpenter/millwright who had had some apprenticeship training/experience in mill construction, but as mills became more complicated the trade of millwright/mechanic became a profession all its own.

In 1785  Oliver Evans, a young inventor and wheelwright by trade, developed the first automated flour mill using a variety of devices to move bulk materials--bucket elevators, conveyor belts and archimedean screws.  Despite taking out patents, his ideas were widely copied and finally in 1834 he published them in a book, The Young Millwright and Miller's Guide.  Mill construction and maintenance was becoming a vocation for a specialist.  He also developed a machine for drawing and bending wire and inserting it leather straps' to be used in the wool carding process.

Carding was a process of straightening or combing out wool fibers so they could be twisted into strands to be woven, and fulling was a process of stripping the excess oils from raw wool, to plump it up, to ready it for spinning.  Both of these had been done, by farm families, laboriously, by hand before machines had been created at the end of the 18th century. Malachi Whipple with William Ball and Lyman Dwight also built a Carding and Fulling Mill at the Berne falls.

The largest employer in Berne was Daniel Simmons Axe Factory built in 1825, which was said to have employed 200 workers and turned out 600 axes and other edged implements a day!  Using the abundant Helderberg timber for charcoal and for ash tool handles, it refined pig iron, produced elsewhere, into steel axe heads. Water power, from sluiceways on the Foxenkill no doubt both operated the factory's bellows and powered its trip hammers and other machinery.





Marker of the Week--Revisiting 11/12/13
Last year I posted a set of Markers of the Week which featured some "Remnants of the Horse Powered Society" which included the Unionville Reformed Church with its set of horse and carriage stalls. Recently I came upon another old church, a Quaker meeting house dating back to 1790 (the existing building 1807).  Located in the hamlet of Quaker Street on NYS Rte 7 near its intersection with NYS Rte 20.  It too, has a set of stables, and like the Unionville church, appears to be still going strong.