Panel 1A. COMPARING WORKPLACES - Moderator: Mark Finlay
BOOMER MACHINISTS IN SAVANNAH'S COLD WAR SHOPS Angelina R. Long
Savannah's industrial heritage is rich in businesses dependent on the manufacturing abilities of machine shops. As local "Second Wave" firms such as paper mills, airplane manufacturies, and chemical plants move away from integrated systems of manufacture, they are turning more consistently to the ever-present market of job shops. For more than a century, job shops have offered specialized labor for contract work originating in both public and private sectors.
As these job shops break into the inter-regional and international spheres of commerce, they begin to reflect the technological and organizational attributes of larger industries. A great deal of information can be gleaned from a simple inventory of machine tools. The vintage, capabilities, and provenance of individual machines can reveal information regarding the skill, values, and functions of shop management and workers. Central to these developments is the belated and much contested adoption of computer-numerically-controlled equipment (CNC). Meanwhile, vernacular design in shop architecture directs attention to the properties of building materials, dimension, layout, and interaction with the environment that have endured past historic transformations, such as electrification.
Through interviews with employed and retired machinists and visits to their shops in the Savannah area , the author has explored historically prevalent characteristics of shop architecture, organization of workspace, tool selection, and administration that are being threatened by efforts to imitate larger industries.
MULE AND RING SPINNING: A TRANS-ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE Roger Holden
The fact that the cotton spinning industry in New England mainly used ring frames while Lancashire still depended on mules is well known. However, the presence of a mule for fine counts cotton spinning built by John Hetherington of Manchester, England, in 1909 on display at Slater Mill reminds us that at that date certain types of yarn could only be spun on mules. The research presented in this paper has used a variety of sources. Principally including patents, contemporary engineering accounts and the Platt-Saco-Lowell archive at the Lancashire Record Office, Preston, to understand the problems involved in developing the idea of ring spinning into a viable system. It also sheds understanding on why in Lancashire the mule was seen to be a superior system.
The cotton spinning industry in New England had originally developed very largely on the use of the throstle frame which did not require skilled labour but could only spin a limited range of yarns. Throstle spindles could only run at slow speeds, consumed at lot of power and produced small bobbins of yarn. The ring frame was developed in New England as an alternative to the throstle to overcome its limitations, but even so it took some 40 years before it had supplanted the throstle. Although in principle a simple system, ring spinning presented a number of serious dynamic problems which needed solving before it could supplant throstle spinning and begin to challenge the mule.
The principle problem concerned spindle balancing and lubrication, but there were other problems like finding suitable materials for rings and travellers and the 'balloning' of yarn during spinning. Spinning of weft (filling) yarn, which required less twist than warp yarn, was another difficulty. The industry in Lancashire had come to be based largely on the spinning mule, which although requiring skilled labour could spin over the whole range of yarn counts and amounts of twist. While New England was developing the ring frame, Lancashire was developing the self-acting (i.e. automatic) mule to replace the original hand mule. Although this was largely achieved, in the process the mule became a machine of considerable complexity and still required skilled labour input.
Automating the spinning part of the mule cycle was easy, the biggest problems were in controlling winding. Ring spinning technology was transferred across the Atlantic to Lancashire in the 1860s and 1870s, Platt Brothers, the largest textile machine makers in Lancashire, acquired the technology by industrial espionage. The ring frame was rapidly adopted by the remaining throstle spinners in Lancashire and for the production of certain specialised yarns. Not until later, in the 20th century, was the ring frame able to challenge the mule over a greater range of yarns. Today the majority of the world's yarn is spun on ring frames but 100 years ago Lancashire was spinning yarns on mules which were much finer than anything spun in the world today.
This presentation is based on: Roger Holden, 'Ring and Mule Spinning in the Nineteenth Century: A Technological Perspective', Journal of Industrial History, Vol.6(2)2003, pp.34-60.
THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT FOR TEXTILE SITES: A DRAFT TICCIH PUBLICATION
Mark Watson, Historic Scotland
The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) has agreed to provide a number of contextual studies to inform ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) in the advice it gives to UNESCO on various aspects of industrial heritage: bridges, railways, canals and coal, for example. The Textile Special Interest Section of TICCIH has discussed this at meetings in London, UK, 2000, Barcelona, Spain, 2001 and in Euskirchen, Germany, in 2003. The draft list may be viewed at http://www.mnactec.com/TICCIH/txtsec.htm
The text seeks to relate significant textile sites to the cultural criteria for World Heritage Sites set out by UNESCO but adapted so as to define them under the headings Pioneers; Giants; Time Capsules; Urbanism (outstanding examples of paternalist or utopian town planning); representative examples of International Interchange/( e.g. technological transfer/multinationals), or good examples of Textile Landscapes, living or dead.
It is acknowledged that only a very small proportion of the following sites is likely to win inscription as a world heritage sites. None the less it is useful to ensure that those that do are placed in the context of their peers. Not all of the sites mentioned will on detailed examination prove to be of universal value, sufficiently authentic or adequately protected. Not all will be considered a priority for nomination by the relevant state party. The term "technological ensemble" under which some World Heritage Sites were inscribed in 2001 is not a useful one, and has led to the assumption that some of these sites are not also inhabited towns or landscapes. Here some other headings are proposed:
Pioneers: into this category should be put those that had no real precedent, where innovations were first tried out and to which other textile sites acknowledge their origin.
Caraglio, Italy (silk), Cromford, UK (first cotton mill)
Panel 1B. HISTORIC BRIDGE SYMPOSIUM - Moderator: Bob Newbery
THE POLITICS OF BRIDGE AESTHETICS: THE 1936 RAILROAD ELEVATION PROJECT IN SYRACUSE, NEW YORK Dennis J. Connors, Curator of History, Onondaga Historical Association
For three decades at the beginning of the 20th century, citizens of Syracuse, New York faced the complicated challenge of how to remove over 50 active railroad grade crossings from the heart of their downtown. One right of way had been used by the New York Central since 1839. Another belonged to the DL&W. Eventually, the debate settled on two alternatives: elevating the tracks through downtown or re-routing trains around the city.
A major point of contention centered on the appearance and physical impact of several major bridges that would be required for the elevation option. Ultimately, the elevation proposal won in a 1927 public referendum. Between 1933 and 1941, a $23.5 million dollar public private effort elevated the two routes over a combined distance of 7.5 miles. Today, the New York Central Railroad's elevated pathway has been replaced with a major local expressway. Recently, the route's signature art deco passenger station underwent a major adaptive reuse. The DL&W elevation is still operational, controlled by the regional New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway.
Using contemporary newspaper accounts, information gleaned from original studies and several historic images, this paper will review the nature of the grade-crossing problem and examine the civic debate over the two alternative solutions that was waged in Syracuse. A brief summary of the elevation construction will be offered with special emphasis placed on examining the evolution of the bridge design. Influences included the politics of selling the elevation proposal to the public, the change in architectural motifs from 1917 until 1936 and the economic challenges forced upon the railroads by the Depression. Analysis of the project's influence on the image of Syracuse's urban landscape will be made, with a relevant comparison drawn to the impact of the elevated Route 81 interstate highway, constructed through downtown in the 1960s.
Finally the paper will examine the need to document the historic significance of the remaining 1940-41 DL&W Railroad structures, which are showing signs of increasing physical deterioration. This analysis is especially timely in light of the $ 8 million renovation in 2003 of Syracuse's former New York Central station, opened in 1936 as a crucial component of the elevation scheme.
PRESTRESSED CONCRETE BRIDGES - A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ADOPTION OF A NEW BRIDGE MATERIAL IN NORTH CAROLINA, PENNSYLVANIA, AND OHIO IN THE 1950S.
Patrick Harshbarger, Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers
Pre-stressed concrete originated in Europe during the early 20th century, but was slow to spread to North America. It eventually found its first bridge application on this side of the Atlantic in Philadelphia's Walnut Lane Bridge, completed in 1951. American engineers closely followed the details of the project, and many became motivated to consider the material's expanded use. By the end of the decade, pre-stressed concrete was well on its way to becoming one of the dominant bridge materials of modern times. As with many new technologies, pre-stressed concrete went through a period of trial-and-error prior to becoming a mostly standardized product.
This paper will look at early efforts in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. It will compare and contrast those efforts and extant bridges to demonstrate how the organizational and technical capabilities of state highway departments, and the tendencies and preferences of their chief engineers, influenced choices that were made about the application of pre-stressed concrete in each state. Pennsylvania emerged as a leader in the field based on its collaboration on voided box beams with the Concrete Products Co. of Pottstown. North Carolina's state highway department was quick to borrow ideas from others and adopted standardized channel and I-shaped beams with gusto. Ohio's state highway department, by contrast, viewed the new material with skepticism and long held out against pre-stressed concrete's use on state projects. Meanwhile, Ohio's counties and municipalities in partnership with private industry forged ahead building some of the nation's earliest and most innovative pre-stressed concrete bridges.
In conclusion, some observations will be made about how new materials - iron, steel, reinforced concrete, and pre-stressed concrete - have been used to mark watersheds in bridge history. Particularly, it will examine how the economic, political, and social forces that influenced the adoption of pre-stressed concrete may differ from those associated with earlier materials. This context suggests that the approach to documenting and preserving pre-stressed concrete bridges may also vary from those of older historic bridge types.
CONSTRUCTION TALES FROM SHOP DRAWINGS--LORAIN-CARNEGIE BRIDGE, CLEVELAND, OHIO William Vermes, P.E., Euthenics, Inc.
The Lorain-Carnegie Bridge is primarily a 13-span, 2,886 foot-long cantilever deck truss that has been local landmark since its opening in 1932 and a National Register property since 1976. Notable Cleveland bridge engineer Wilbur Watson, with Frank Walker as consulting architect, designed the bridge. The substructure and deck were built by Lowensohn Construction while the Mount Vernon Bridge Company fabricated and erected the 13,000 ton steel superstructure.
Mount Vernon was awarded the contract for erection of the steel superstructure on August 16, 1930, and had the first of the 524 shop drawings finished within four weeks. The entire set of drawings was finished in April 1931. Erection of the first pieces of steel started in late March 1931.
The 2000-02 rehabilitation of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge marked the first significant repairs to the steel superstructure of this Cleveland landmark. While reviewing the shop drawings and the only known surviving copy of the plans developed by Watson, details were identified that Watson and Mount Vernon incorporated to streamline both design and fabrication of the steel members. Knowledge of these features thus expedited fabrication of replacement components, and at times, the ability or inability to relocate these new pieces from one location to another.
Conversely, construction difficulties revealed that the ironworkers of 1931 incorporated undocumented shortcuts in the steel erection, which resulted initially in numerous repair difficulties. Review of the shop drawings also uncovered detailing differences between Mount Vernon draftsmen and also those adopted as the drawings and fabrication progressed. Fabrication changes made while erection was underway also tell of construction challenges encountered by the erectors.
Additionally, study of the shop drawings has revealed much insight to the draftsmen, engineers and erectors of the Mount Vernon Bridge Company. Though the "Bridge Company" (as it was know in Mount Vernon, Ohio) was a major steel bridge erector from 1900 to 1950, few records were left behind following its demise in the 1960s. Working with the Knox County (Ohio) Historical Society, the shop drawings have been used to identify staff engineers and draftsmen, thus suggesting the size of the engineering department. Further examination of the initials and dates in the title blocks has provided an understanding of the direction of the personnel.
Panel 2A. MUSEUMS ON THE MOVE - Moderator: Lance Metz
THE BOSTON RENAISSANCE 1860-1910 - A GROWING CITY AND AN EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY
Didier O. Thomas, Friends of the Waterworks
From a population of 25,000, Boston grew to 200,000 in 1860 and 500,000 in 1900, thus putting enormous pressure on the city's infrastructure, housing, education and public health. Following the Great Boston Fire of 1872, the business community and the city government joined forces to create a new, vibrant urban environment. Evolving technology and a dynamic engineering education played a major role in the development of Boston.
A fast moving industrial revolution provided not only jobs but also water, sewers, electricity, telephone, trolley cars, the basic infrastructure for a viable urban life at a time, in 1880, when a family of five lived on 14 dollars a week and the work week was 60 hours. Especially critical was the provision of clean and abundant water when disease was a constant threat in an overcrowded urban setting. The Chestnut Hill Waterworks met that need. The High Service Pumping Station, built in 1886, contains several historic steam engines, especially the famous Leavitt engine, and displays the evolution of steam technology throughout the 20th century.
The Friends of the Waterworks, a private non-profit organization, is planning a resource and education center in the Hall of Machines. Didier O. Thomas is a planner and architect, now retired, and as Vice President of the Friends, has advocated the preservation and adaptive reuse of this unique historical and cultural asset. How the museum and its interpretation of its artifacts is being developed is the subject of the paper.
MAKING AMERICA ON THE MOVE: TRANSPORTATION HISTORY AT THE SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY. Janet F. Davidson, NMAH
America on the Move, the National Museum of American History’s first major transportation exhibition in decades, takes visitors on a journey through history. The exhibition highlights the Smithsonian’s unparalleled and extremely popular transportation collections in new and creative ways. Using multimedia technology, immersive environments, and other theatrical techniques, America on the Move bring ships, trains, trucks, and automobiles back to life—or, more accurately, back to history. For the first time, visitors see these artifacts as they once were: moving people and products from place to place, a vital part of the nation’s transportation system, a vital part of our business, social and cultural history.
My paper will explore the making of America on the Move, looking at the content of the show and the exhibition techniques that the curatorial team used to contextualize the collection. In all the exhibition’s historically grounded settings, sights, sounds, and other sensations help transport visitors back in time, immersing them in that historical moment. My paper will use examples from the show to explore the process of reinterpreting the halls and the challenges the team faced making America on the Move.
MUSEUM ARTIFACTS: EVIDENCE, SUBJECT, OR WINDOW DRESSING
Duncan Hay, NPS
Why do museums collect what they do? What do they do with things once they have them? Art museums strive to acquire the best examples of paintings and sculpture. Therefore, the things that they collect and exhibit are often regarded as the finest in their class. History museums, and industrial museums in particular, are devoted to collecting and preserving the obsolete and passed-by elements of our material realm. Why do industrial objects end up in museums? It’s because they aren’t being used any more.
So how do we use these objects – machines, vehicles, buildings, and other big things, once they’ve made the transition from tools to museum artifacts? Anthropologists and curators claim that they are subjects for research – material evidence that can be examined to reveal greater understanding of the societies that produced and used them. The exhibit staff think of them as things to be displayed and interpreted – objects to engage the curiosity of visitors.
While there are brilliant examples of industrial artifacts used to provide important new insights that engage and can be explained to a visiting public, we all often fall short of these goals. Many of the big heavy things that we collect, care for, and occasionally put on exhibit neither provide new understandings of the past nor serve as a magnet for museum visitors. More often than we’d care to admit, the sorts of objects that excite industrial archeologists end up as little more than curiosities and lawn ornaments by the time they’ve passed into the caring hands of museum professionals.
Ultimately, in an industrial landscape where we can’t collect or preserve everything, the biggest challenge for curators is making choices. Not so much what we save, but what we let go to the scrappers. We have to ask what will become of these things, how will they be used – as evidence, subject, or window dressing.
Robert Casey - Recent Trends in the Museum Experience
Panel 2B. IA BUILDINGS BIG AND HEAVY Moderator: David Shayt
THE EVOLUTION OF FORT HAMILTON, ROSE ISLAND, NEWPORT, RI
Todd Croteau, HAER and Charlotte Johnson, Rhode Island Lighthouse Foundation
Rose Island's location at the entrance of Narragansett Bay made it desirable for defensive fortifications. Successive development of British, French and American fortifications incorporated the natural features of the18-acre island to strategic advantage until the end of the 18th century when Fort Hamilton was constructed. Subsequent development of the lighthouse on the southwest circular bastion of the fort, and the US Navy's use of the barracks as a magazine for explosives, are just two examples of how well-engineered fortification structures were later utilized with little modification. Documentation by HAER architects in 2000 provides a valuable benchmark for the next step in the evolution of Fort Hamilton - its restoration, which is being carried out by the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation.
INTERLOCKING CERTAINTY: THE INTERLOCKING CONTROL TABLE AT THE MIRAFLORES LOCKS OF THE PANAMA CANAL Jet Lowe, HAER
A study focusing on the interlocking control tables used to control water through the Panama Canal locks can provide insight into the significance of the Panama Canal as a technological achievement. The interlocking control table of the Miraflores Locks is representative of the controls used throughout the locking system used up to the beginning of the twenty first century. The control tables used to regulate shipping through the canal locks from east to west marry the older technology of canal design with a system of controls derived from what was then a new technology developed to keep trains from running into each other. The design thinking that went into the Miraflores interlocking control table was designed to eliminate the possibility of catastrophic error. One of the worst case scenarios being the draining of Lake Gatun-- the water supply lake for all the locks on both sides of the Isthmus of Panama.
The Panama Canal and the interlocking control tables that make it work as a system represent technology that looks forward and backward to tools man has used to manipulate the environment on a grand scale. Telescoping backward the canal and locks are the culmination of hundreds of years of canal making to put water in the service of agriculture and shipping. Projecting forward, the control tables themselves embody the managerial thought processes that built nationwide railroad and electrical systems. The hot wired electrical controlling systems used to connect the mechanical control table to the various electrical motors with their attendant synchronous motors and indicators prefigure "fly by wire" technologies used in modern aviation. Recent aeronautical design in airplanes such as the Boeing 777 bypass mechanical connections to the flight surfaces of an aircraft in favor of a sophisticated system that mimics the feedback to the pilot the behavior of these parts in similar or analogous fashion to the interlocking control tables. The electrical engineering that made the control indicators of the interlocking tables indicate precisely through electrical means what was happening mechanically through out the lock chambers, combined with the massive civil engineering effort that built the canal locks, represents a technological leap that integrated the competing technologies of railroads and canals. In so doing construction of the canal profoundly shaped and more than halved the cost of oceanic shipping and commerce in the first half of the Twentieth Century.
HEAVY TIMBER FRAMING IN NEW ENGLAND'S LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTURY COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS
Sara E. Wermiel, Historic Preservation Consultant and Visiting Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Most people interested in industrial archeology, as well as many preservationists and architectural historians, have heard of a construction system called "slow-burning construction," which was used in mills and other workaday buildings in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in New England where the system originated. The term has been applied, in the past and today, to any building with a heavy timber interior frame. Yet not all heavy timber-framed buildings should be characterized as slow-burning construction.
The purpose of this presentation is to distinguish between slow-burning construction and another system of heavy timber construction that was used to build city warehouses and factories, which I call "warehouse construction". The paper will cover the features of the slow-burning system developed by the Associated Factory Mutual (AFM) fire insurance companies, whose officials created and maintained the specifications for slow-burning construction as a fire-resistive system. The development of warehouse construction will be traced through a remarkable collection of lofts located in the Fort Point Channel historic district of South Boston. These lofts, built from the 1880s to the 1920s, were used for a variety of purposes - storage warehousing, wholesaling, and manufacturing. The paper will compare the features of the two systems, and explain how and why warehouse construction differed from slow-burning construction. Although superficially similar, warehouse construction lacked many of the fire protection features of slow-burning construction. The reasons for this were that the lofts often had to support heavier loads than mills, needed more widely-spaced columns, and were governed by city building codes. Since the AFM companies did not insure city buildings, their owners had no obligation to comply with AFM's guidelines.
An objective this paper is to help industrial archeologists, preservationists, and architectural historians recognize and understand the differences between these two forms of heavy timber framing.
SIZE MATTERS: THE IMAGE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MEANING OF THE SUPERLATIVE INDUSTRIAL CHIMNEY IN VICTORIAN AND PROGRESSIVE ERA AMERICA
Charles Parrott, Lowell National Historical Park
The tall mill or factory chimney that came to positively exemplify industry and the prosperity it brought to many 19th-century Americans, by the second decade of the twentieth had been rapidly transformed for much of the population, into a symbol of industrial avarice and exploitation. This change of heart on the part of the people was a byproduct of the explosive growth of late 19th century American industry, and the growing awareness of the burgeoning and unchecked environmental degradation that ensued. This unbridled industrial expansion, which rose to a feverish pitch in the 1890s, fostered a reaction from several quarters that focused on the nuisance as well as the health and property threatening consequences of the growing problem of smoke pollution.
It comes as no surprise that many industrialists responded to that criticism by building their smokestacks even higher - higher in the technically accurate belief that height equaled dilution, which at some point they expected would bring the pollution down to an acceptable level. However the story of the growing height of the industrial chimney is a complex one involving several variables that influenced industry's reaction to public opposition. Location, topography, and weather patterns, the physics of chimney draft, the nature and growth of industrial processes, the nature of the effluent and economics of its byproduct capture, and differing perceptions among varying industrial cultures all contributed to the patterning of the tall factory chimney.
This paper will examine these factors by following the upward trajectory of some of the tallest American industrial chimneys from the 1840s through the 1910s, few of which still survive, and the design of them and their appurtenances. And it will attempt to place the "Big Stack" in the iconographic and social context of the first era of widespread environmental awareness that grew out of our national industrial dependency.
Panel 3A. RESPONDING TO TECHNOLOGY - Moderator: Bob Stewart
ENGINEERING, INVENTION & KINETIC SCULPTURE
Arthur Ganson, Artist in Residence - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
For me, the practice of infusing material with idea and emotion began when I was a child. I was very introverted and found it difficult to talk directly to anyone about what I was feeling. What I did do, however, was retreat to the basement where I would pour my heart into little things that I would make for people. It became my way of speaking, and to some extent it was critical for my survival. My object making is rooted in that place of childhood.
I began to make machines in my second year of college when, in response to a 3-D design assignment, I accidentally discov-ered working with wire. This material, easily formed and joined, became the foundation for my investigation of art and engineering. With wire, any imagined mechanical component or system could be built and the result would function equally well as 'line in space'. Every decision would necessarily have both a mechanical and an aesthetic implication, and I found this to be a wonderful challenge.
The engineering problems presented by these machines are more or less difficult depending on the piece. Some require much testing and prototyping, while others are relatively simple. From an engineering point of view, there is little difference between one of these machines and your toaster, as each has been engineered to perform a task. A good toaster will toast bread evenly and consistently and its utility is easily judged. Unlike your toaster, the success of these machines is insepa-rable from your point of view and life experience. In the broadest sense, their 'utility' is only a catalyst for your contemplation. They are my attempt to lure you to that narrow place between two infinitely large fields of clarity and ambiguity and let you stroll around. If your walk brings you to new places, my childhood need to speak is realized.
ANCIENT CERAMIC INDUSTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE DEEP SEA
Brendan Foley, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Iron-age ceramic proto-industries were crucial to the ancient Mediterranean economy. Stored on ships, mass-produced ceramic jugs (amphoras) carried liquid and semi-liquid cargos over long-distance trade routes. Using new deep submergence robotic technologies, archaeologists now are able to survey the sea floor for the material remains of this ancient trade and industry.
This presentation is a comparison of amphora cargos from several different shipwrecks in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Shipwreck evidence demonstrates the importance of the ceramic industry during the first millennium BC. It suggests the ancient amphora industry was highly specialized and more complex than previously imagined.
Panel 3B: EMERGENCY SHIPYARDS DURING WORLD WAR II IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA - Moderator: Fred Quivik
PREFABRICATING VICTORY: SHIPBUILDING AT RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA, 1940-1945
Christopher James Tassava
The four shipyards at Richmond, California, ranked as the most productive in the United States during World War II. Elements of an empire run by the industrialist Henry Kaiser, the yards produced 745 ships, a quarter of all merchant vessels built in America during World War II and even larger fractions of America's fleets of standardized Liberty and Victory ships.
The keys to this stunning output were organizational and technological innovations that allowed Kaiser's managers to adapt to the exigencies of mobilization and to rapidly expand operations at Richmond. They accomplished this by working closely with the federal merchant-shipbuilding agency and the U.S. Maritime Commission. They added thousands of African-Americans and women to the workforce, replaced riveting with welding and implemented a sophisticated system of prefabricating massive, interchangeable ship parts. Essentially, they tried to build cargo ships as Henry Ford had built cars.
At Richmond, prefabrication centered on a 42-acre complex of buildings (including a mammoth manufacturing shed) and open-air production spaces called "skids," all located far from the waterfront but directly between Richmond's twin Liberty- and Victory-building yards, for which Prefab furnished giant subassemblies like deckhouses. By pushing the rationalization of ship production far beyond prewar norms, Prefab dramatically cut Liberty ship construction times at Richmond and pioneered shipbuilding techniques which were imitated during the war by other American shipyards (and, beginning in the 1950s, by Japan's rapidly emerging shipbuilding industry).
The Prefab complex at Richmond was thus both a conceptual and a physical pillar of the mobilized U.S. economy. Appreciating its role during and after World War II offers a clear perspective on the nature of American mobilization, especially as reflected in the vast array of production facilities spawned by the war and in the novel (if less tangible) production methods which contributed to Allied victory. Beyond World War II, the history of the Prefab complex deepens our understanding of how infrastructure, technology, skills, and knowledge intertwine to form industrial history.
INTERPRETING A LARGE INDUSTRIAL ARTIFACT: THE CASE OF THE WHIRLEY CRANES AT KAISER'S RICHMOND SHIPYARDS
Fredric L. Quivik
The National Park Service is developing a new National Historical Park, called Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front NHP, at Richmond, California. The park will interpret many facets of the experiences of Americans on the Home Front as they helped the Allies prevail over the Axis powers in World War II and as they inadvertently also participated in activities that would alter the future course of American society. Not the least of the themes that will be interpreted at Rosie the Riveter are those related to actual industrial production that took place at the Kaiser's Richmond shipyard no. 3. This yard built large ocean-going vessels, and at the Ford Motor Company's Richmond assembly plant, assembled jeeps and processed tanks and other combat vehicles.
During the war, each of the four Kaiser shipyards employed thousands of workers in a complex technological system. Workers wielded varied kinds of tools and performed numerous skills to transfer steel plate and structural shapes into ships. One of the tools or pieces of equipment that was integral to the technological system was the whirley crane. Each shipyard had several shipways, and each shipway had several whirleys. Alone, a whirley could hoist large pieces of steel and move them to the pre-assembly areas. Then working together, the whirley cranes could hoist giant pre-assembled units and move them to the shipways, where erection of the hull took place.
A nearby scrapyard has two old shipyard whirley cranes and has agreed to donate one or both to the NPS for use at shipyard No. 3. This paper will explore some of the difficulties the NPS may encounter in finding meaningful ways to use the whirleys for interpreting shipyard No. 3. The paper will summarize the history of development of the whirley crane and provide an overview of its pivotal role in shipyard operations. It will also describe the present physical condition of yard 3, highlight some of the likely difficulties inherent in interpreting large industrial hardware (especially in light of present conditions at yard 3), and suggest ways the NPS might overcome those difficulties.
SHIPS OF STEEL, WORKERS FOR VICTORY: WORK, GENDER, AND RACE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA DURING WORLD WAR TWO Robin Dearmon Jenkins, Carnegie Mellon University
The urban West during World War Two provided a racial and technological frontier in which both African American and white workers challenged previous notions of economic opportunity and social equality. Shipyard work in the San Francisco Bay Area became a focal point for civil rights organizing during the war, signaling the set of economic and legal issues which followed in the post-war period. Working in defense industries in one of the most strategically important areas of the United States, African-American workers called attention to a "steel ceiling" that relegated most African-American workers in the Bay Area to the lowest rungs of shipyard employment.
The technological changes in shipbuilding provided new points of entry for African American shipyard workers. Skilled and unskilled men and women challenged a "steel ceiling" which attempted to bar them employment and later promotion. As part of the "Double Victory" campaign nationwide, African-American workers organized themselves and other workers to put racial inequality and workers' issues at the forefront of Bay Area politics. Most significantly they demonstrated that an interracial unionism was possible in the exclusive Boilermakers union.
This paper will address how African-American shipyard workers used grass-roots organizing and the federal government to change shipyard work, both technologically and culturally.
