winter 2017/2018 vermont 2018 double issue! · log drives on the white river • moonlight on...

Winter 2017/2018

Vermonters, Our Places & Our History

VERMONTm a g a z i n e®

$6.99 (CANADA $7.99) WINTER 2017/2018DISPLAY UNTIL FEBRUARY 28

Visiting St. Johnsbury • Liberty Hill Farm & Inn • Norwich UniversityLog Drives on the White River • Moonlight on Vermont Photo Essay

2018 DOUBLE ISSUE!

V E R M O N T M A G A Z I N E 7 57 4 W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 / 2 0 1 8

The museum’s home is the historic Windsor building that was originally the Robbins and Lawrence Armory, built in 1846 by gun makers Robbins, Kendall, and Lawrence.


American Precision Museum

This unique Vermont museum boasts the largest collection of machine tools in the nation.

Vermont is home to more than 136 museums. Those museums cover Abenaki history, natural history, art, organ making, anthropology, science, military, maritime, nature, transportation, skiing, and many other topics. One of those museums, the American Precision Museum, is located in Windsor

and holds the largest collection of machine tools in the United States. It is the story that the collection of tools tells that makes the museum well worth the trip. The exhibitions span more than 200 years of pioneering innovations in machine tool advances that set the world stage for modern warfare as well as modern life.

Story by Darcy Cahill/Photos by Dale Cahill

Inside the museum, visitors may see the vestiges of the system of overhead drive shafts, pulleys, and leather belts that transmitted power from the armory’s waterwheel to individual machine tools.


Museum founder Edwin Albert Battison was born in Windsor, Vermont in 1915. A child of the Depression, he was unable to attend college and instead began working in the machine tool industry. His fascination with clocks and watches inspired his first personal collection of them in the 1920s. Wanting to learn more about horology, the study of measurement and time, he contacted the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. They quickly realized that Edwin knew far more than anyone at the Smithsonian about the measurement of time, and he was offered the job of the Smithsonian’s Curator of Clocks and Watches. Eventually, Edwin traveled around the world as the Smithsonian’s Curator of Mechanical Engineering, and in 1966 learned that the Robbins and Lawrence Armory in Windsor, Vermont was scheduled for demolition. He recalled the building from his childhood and knew that the mid-19th century factory was not only an excellent example of factory architecture for its time, but a perfect location for a museum that could house Edwin’s lifetime passion for learning about machine tools. The addition of a library and archival collection that includes photos, drawings, records, and other material related to the past 200 years of precision manufacturing completes the museum. Executive Director Ann Lawless explains, “Some visitors spend a day here, others spend an hour.” They have more than 300 members, and their supporters have traveled from as far away as Alaska and Australia to visit the museum. It was an exhibition of Maxfield Parrish’s artwork in 1995 to 1996 that Ann says expanded the museum’s base of supporters beyond machine tool enthusiasts. The exhibition, Maxfield Parrish: Machinist, Artisan, Artist, explored the connection between Parrish’s machine shop and his painting studio. His highly technical methods when painting as well as his appreciation for technological precision, usefulness, and beauty made his work a perfect complement to the American Precision Museum’s own collection. The museum includes the uncirculated print The Gnome by Maxfield Parrish, and objects from his workshop in their permanent collection.

A massive vertical shaper (above) used linear motion and a vertical cutter to shape a stationary workpiece. This profile milling machine (below) might be considered the 19th-century forerunner of today’s drill press.


Since then, the museum has held exhibitions that make a deliberate connection between precision machine tools and the world around us. In 1997, Pedal Power explored how the bicycle initiated manufacturing advances and changed American society. In 1999, Carriage Wheels to Cadillacs explored Henry Leland’s work in adapting interchangeable precision parts to the engineering of sewing machines, steam engines, combustion engines, aircraft engines, and eventually automobiles. From 2008 to 2011, From Muskets to Motorcars examined the evolution of mechanical devices such as guns, wagons, and plows that before the American Revolution were made one at a time by a craftsman to 1927 when Henry Ford mass-produced 15 million Model Ts. And in 2012, Arming the Union and Full Duty: The Civil War Collection of Howard Coffin opened. Located in Windsor, Vermont, The Robbins and Lawrence Armory was built in 1846 by gun makers Robbins, Kendall, and Lawrence. They had received a government contract that same year to make 10,000 rifles with interchangeable parts. Their small shop could not handle that large a contract, so they constructed the armory with a massive waterwheel that used the Mill Brook’s water and a system of gears, shafts, and pulleys to power their machines. Eventually the gun makers attracted the best designers and machinists in the country and developed a type of precision manufacturing that became known as The American System. Thanks to Edwin Battison’s efforts, the building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Upon entering the building, a knowledgeable staffer greets visitors near the gift shop, and they are immediately captivated by perhaps the most unusual exhibition in the museum: a permanent collection of John Aschauer miniatures. Born in 1896 in Sauerlach, Germany, John apprenticed at Alois Stocker Maschinenfabrick in Pfaffenhofen, Germany. He began his apprenticeship at age 12 and two years later began his first miniature modeling project—a replica of the double-boiler steam power plant used at Alois Stocker. It took him four years to complete this project, which according to the museum

This schematic drawing shows how power coming from a waterwheel (connected to the massive, 12-foot-by-6-inch-diameter ring gear) was distributed throughout the building, technology that was commonly used in many 19th-century mills and factories.

archives was constructed on his kitchen windowsill in Germany. After retiring from Ex-Cell-O Corporation (which had acquired the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company in Springfield, Vermont) in 1960, John spent the next 20 years building miniatures in his basement workshop in Michigan. The collection includes two miniature working machine shops and 11 other models donated by the Association for Manufacturing Technology. John made every tiny gear, screw, nut, and bolt in his models that are scaled to 1/16, or 1/16th of an inch to a foot. Remarkably, he constructed all of his models from memory and made the tools used to produce the miniatures, a lathe, a bench sharpener, and a bench drill press, himself.

Next, the visitor encounters the Learning Lab, where visitors of all ages can investigate simple machines. The mission of the Learning Lab is to get children actively involved in problem solving and the spirit of innovation. The question that drives the lab’s mission in serving not only visitors but also school groups is “How can we create a new generation of kids who are no longer passive users of technology, but instead are thinkers and makers?” Adjacent to the Learning Lab is an area where visitors can watch introductory museum videos and learn about modern manufacturing through corporate member videos. A case displays a collection of firearms that includes examples by early, local makers and sets the stage for the displays of the


first machine tools located in the main exhibition hall. One of the first machine tools on display is an inletting machine designed in 1842 by Cyrus Buckland. The inletting machine, also known as a lock-bedding and routing machine, could cut out a lock bed in about 45 seconds. This machine created recessed gunstocks more accurately and much more quickly than they had ever been made. This machine also proved that it was worth the time, effort, and money to design and build it, as it increased production and decreased the necessity for individually hand-built gunstocks. Ann Lawless explains that while it took two to three years for an apprentice to learn how to hand-build the same gunstock, it now took only a few days to teach an apprentice how to run the machine that could mass-produce them. The inletting machine set the stage for arming the Union Army and producing machinery for producing gun parts during the Civil War. This portion of the museum is dedicated to Civil War-era innovations in machine tools such as the plain and profile milling machines, the rifling machine, and a threading machine. Alongside each tool is displayed the rifles and pistols that they manufactured along with the biographies of the designers and operators of the machines. The next portion of the exhibition examines the machines that sprang out of the Civil War innovations to make possible the consumer goods that we take for granted today. Toolmakers adapted the concept of creating precision interchangeable parts used in gun making to products used by the American public. The first such tool was Clark’s Revolving Looper, designed in 1859 to create the Windsor-made sewing machine. In 1861, Fredrick Howe, Richard Lawrence, and Henry Stone developed the turret lathe, which sped up the making of screws and other complex shapes. A vertical shaper, used for making other machines, stands next to one of the expansive factory windows and is as much a work of art as it is a tool. In addition to their impressive collection of tools, the museum also includes the biographies and oral histories of machine designers and tool operators. The exhibition Rosie’s Mom:

The museum’s inletting machine (above) routed out the recessed lock beds on gun barrel stocks; the gunstock lathe (below) rotates the wood, following a steel pattern, in order to shape the gunstock; it dates from 1857.


Above, some of the many amazing miniature steam engines made by John Aschauer; the human figure cut-out serves to give a perspective as to the actual size of the real machines from which these working models were made. Below, Austin Ockington, a high school intern, making miniature gears in the machine shop.


Forgotten Women of the First World War includes stories such as those of Vivian Wilson, who was one of 100 women who worked at the Jones and Lamson Company during World War I and assisted in the work that their daughters then did during World War II. It is these personal histories that help to connect the tools to America’s cultural and consumer background. In addition to machine tools, the museum has a collection of precision measuring tools such as the vernier caliper, which could read to thousandths of an inch, a micrometer, and the adjustable wrench, many of which have become standard tools that can be found at any hardware store. One of their most unique measuring tools is an Etheric Force Machine built by John E. Worrell Keely in 1818, made to measure the force of vibrations. At the center of the exhibition is a working machine shop where trained high school interns demonstrate how to use both historic and modern machine tools including 3D printing. Museum member Glenn Hopkins, who joined the museum in the 1990s, says this working portion of the museum is his favorite exhibition. “To think these machines were designed long before computers existed amazes me.” It is here too that visitors watch the trained interns make

The museum’s annual Model Engineering Show, held in late October, draws both children and adults from far and wide. Besides providing an educational display venue for their craftsmanship, the event gives exhibitors the opportunity to meet and compare notes on projects.

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JUST THE FACTSAmerican Precision Museum 196 Main Street PO Box 679 Windsor, VT 05089 Call (802) 674-5781 or 674-2524 or visit americanprecision.org.


miniature goblets, spinning tops, and gears that they make into key chains for sale to help support the program. Students gain the “soft skills” so essential to moving on into careers or further education. After seeing the entire exhibition and the connection between precision machinery and the advent of computer-controlled machinery, it becomes crystal clear that the tool makers who gathered to work together in the “Precision Valley” and specifically in Windsor, Vermont in the mid 1850s influenced not only the course of American history but the rapid industrialization that has led to today’s consumer culture and America’s role as a world leader. Longtime museum member Barbara Naef, who was a docent at the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology in the 1970s, was thrilled when she visited the museum. “Teaching about the development of American technology—the creation and

use of improved machine tools—the role of this technology in our history became a true passion of mine. Therefore, when I learned of the APM I joined to support its mission.” Having celebrated the museum’s 50th anniversary in August 2016, the museum’s Chair of the Board, Eric Gilbertson, is keenly aware of the challenges that he and the board face in taking care of the historic building in which the museum is housed, their one-of-a-kind collection, and in attracting new visitors and supporters. Last year the museum recorded having 4,589 visitors, 733 students who toured the exhibitions, and members who came from as far away as California, Alaska, and Texas. This past summer they expanded the list to include a member from Australia. As member Mike Protenic says, “APM has married both the preservation of history and the consideration of the future’s skilled craftsmen and engineers to the

A working model of a steam power plant’s engine, painstakingly completed in 1914 by John Aschauer at age 18, who had begun the intricate model project—building it from scratch on his kitchen windowsill—in 1910.

appreciation of industry and its meaning to development in this country. No other quite like it, and thus more than worthy to support and make possible its expansion.”

Dale and Darcy Cahill are freelance writers from Vermont who have written two books with Schiffer Publishing about the Connecticut River Valley tobacco sheds and tobacco farming. You can learn more about them and their books at their website tobaccosheds.com.

Windsor

winter 2017/2018 vermont 2018 double issue! · log drives on the white river • moonlight on...

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