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NOTES FROM THE FIELD
THEY’RE STILL THERE—AGAIN
Businessmen and preservationists bring a pair of irreplaceable technologies back to life
BY FREDERIC D. SCHWARZ
INVENTION & TECHnology used to have a column called “They’re Still There,” about antiquated industrial equipment that was still in use. Its author came to be known as the Grim Reaper because all too often, the subject of a column was shut down soon after publication. Sometimes, however, technology has the last laugh. “They’re Still There” is long gone, but two of its subjects that expired shortly after their write-ups have turned out to be surprisingly lively after all.
In 1987 we wrote about the Hulett ore unloaders of Cleveland, Ohio. Nothing symbolized Big Steel better than these enormous machines, weighing 1,500 tons apiece, which scooped up iron ore from Lake Erie boats in 17-ton bites and dumped it into rail cars. The Cleveland Huletts were taken out of service in 1992, and after a long and unsuccessful effort to preserve them, they were scrapped in 2002. Yet these behemoths have not entirely vanished from America’s industrial landscape. A pair of Huletts on the Chicago waterfront, the last two in America, which had been taken out of action and faced an uncertain future, now seem to be safe —for the time being, at least.
Those Huletts were part of a coke plant owned by LTV Steel that shut down in 2001 and was acquired the following year by Calumet Transfer Co. That firm considered selling the plant, but with the recent upswing in coke prices, it now plans to return it to operation—including the Huletts. These plans are good news for supporters of Chicago’s Steel Heritage Project, a nonprofit group that is raising funds to acquire the former Acme Steel Co. coke works, adjacent to the old LTV plant.
If it does acquire the Acme plant, CSHP plans to open a steel-industry museum, with equipment from the coke plant and other closed installations in the Chicago area. The Acme plant was the site of the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, in which Chicago policemen killed 10 striking steelworkers, and CSHP’s plans to interpret this event have drawn financial support from the United Steelworkers of America. The group already has more than $60,000 of the $250,000 purchase price and is optimistic about raising the balance in the next two years (for an update on the project, or to make a contribution, see www.chicagosteel.org). The Hulett unloaders will not be part of the museum, but the site contains an elevated vantage point from which visitors will be able to see them—in action, it is fervently hoped.
Meanwhile, in Sutler Creek, California, the Knight Foundry—which we profiled in 1992, four years before it shut its doors- hopes to be back in business later this year. The foundry was established in 1873 to serve California’s mining industry, and when Carl Borgh, a former aerospace engineer, bought it in 1970, it still had most of its original water-powered equipment. Borgh kept the company going for 26 years, casting equipment for construction, mining, and agriculture, but economic forces eventually forced it to close. He died two years later.
In 2000 Richard and Melissa Lyman, a pair of local preservationists, bought the foundry from Borgh’s estate. A nonprofit group called Knight Foundry Corp. was formed to survey the site, make restoration plans, and raise funds to put it back in operation. By last fall the effort had advanced far enough for Knight Foundry to accept a $105,000 contract to produce 25 ornamental cast-iron lampposts for the city of San Leandro.
“Over the last ten years,” says Andy Fahrenwald, the foundry’s project director, “the American cast-iron industry has become significantly automated, one of the last basic industries to do so because it is so essentially craft-intensive.” This shift has created a niche for smallscale operations that can still perform custom work for the booming historicpreservation industry. As it produces high-quality, finely detailed work in small lots, the Knight Foundry will keep alive the nineteenth-century skills and practices that are just as much a part of its historic importance as the machinery and tools it contains.
Once the foundry becomes fully operational, it should at least break even on its casting business, tours, and educational programs. But the money to start production, acquire the foundry, restore it fully, and preserve it for future generations will require millions of dollars in donations, both individual and institutional. Information about the project and how to make a contribution can be found at www.knightfoundry.org.
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THE BIKE BIBLE
A new and definitive treatment of the history of bicycles
WITH MOST TECHNOLOGIES, ONE CAN look back and point to a certain period when development was at its most feverish. Who wouldn’t want to have lived in Detroit in the 1910s or Silicon Valley in the 1970s? Today’s cars and computers may run much more smoothly, but the thrill of seeing them take shape is long gone.
In bicycling, the era of greatest change was the 1880s and 1890s. Each week seemed to bring some new wrinkle that promised to make the basic design cheaper, safer, or easier to use, some of them truly helpful and some destined to be forgotten. In the mid-1880s came the greatest advance of all, the perfection of chain drive. By the end of the century the diamond frame, freewheeling, and pneumatic tires had been added, along with higher and lower gears for those who needed them. These innovations, combined with advances in metalworking and fabrication, produced a bicycle that was within nearly everyone’s skill and price range.
And then it stopped. The standard model turned out to be eminently sturdy and serviceable, with no more big problems to overcome, and soon afterward motorcycles and automobiles put an end to the craze. The industry became mature and has remained so ever since. To be sure, materials and manufacturing processes have undergone continual improvement, and specialty products such as mountain and racing bikes, along with exotica like recumbent models, continue to develop. But the common bicycle of today is not much different from one of a century ago. This explains why David V. Herlihy, in his Bicycle: The History (Yale University Press, 470 pages, $35.00), devotes nearly 300 pages to the nineteenth century and a mere 100 to the period since.
Herlihy (one of whose early articles on bicycle history appeared in Invention & Technology in 1992) has spent the last 15 years delving into company archives and faded letters held by descendants of the industry’s pioneers in the United States, Britain, France, and elsewhere, along with rare books, periodicals, and scholarly studies. His book traces the bicycle’s evolution, beginning with the draisine, or velocipede, of the late 1810s. This device, basically a wheeled platform that allowed gentlemen to walk while seated, was a short-lived fad, and for the next several decades wheeled vehicles propelled by their riders were almost unheard of.
Not until the 1860s was the idea of a velocipede revived, this time with pedals. As the size of the front wheel grew, increasing the cycle’s efficiency along with its danger and inconvenience, riding became a craze in America and Europe. Toward the end of the century the modern bicycle emerged, and since then it has basically been a story of marketing, styling, incremental improvements, and clever accessories.
In Herlihy’s able telling, many aspects of the story are reminiscent of latter-day technologies. Patent litigation retarded the growth of the industry; consumers were advised to shun expensive early models and wait until prices dropped and the technology was improved; leading companies failed suddenly after assuming that the boom would last forever. Throughout the text, readers will find fascinating nuggets. For example, one popular French bicycle of the late 1860s had a frame made of cast iron, which was cheaper than wrought iron but unfortunately proved “prone to catastrophic failure.” Herlihy’s book exhibits the rare combination of absolute scholarly rigor with an easily readable style, and it will appeal to anyone interested in the history of bicycling.
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