Transcripts For CSPAN3 Origins Impact Of Steam Power 20240714

Exhibit at henry ford. An exhibit that traces the origins of developments of an firsting of steam power in england and then in the United States. The purpose of power has been collected here relates to the beginnings and the developments of the Industrial Revolution. These were machines involved in industry and one way or another. The collection was started by henry ford. It begins in a number of places. Ford himself was interested in steam power. It very mechanically inclined even as child. For him it meant something emotional but it meant something significant. He goes on to found a company that has a great deal of investment in technology. All of it powered by steam or internal combustion engines. None of this happened accidentally but a lot of it did not happen intentionally. Steam engines are initially developed in england to pump water out of minds. Like an awful lot of technology, things that are produced for one specific reason and up being of interest to people who have other ways of applying them and essentially that is how the Industrial Revolution gets started. Its the 18th century. This with another engine in england survives as the oldest steam engine. This is the representative type of engine of the initial ones that were built in england and deployed on coal mines. Without getting lost in the andils it is a rocking beam the operating cycle allows this pump rod to go up and down and pump water out of the mine. In its own way it is sophisticated. As an Energy Conversion device. It is actually cutting edge in its day. Most all of this might have been recognizable to people for centuries prior. The cylinder at the end and whats going on courtesy of the steam supplied by the boiler. This could pump water at a rate that wasnt possible through any other means. A singlepurpose solution for a single problem. It was a game changer. The coal was still being mined by humans. Some of them very young. It was still very dangerous. It was a matter of pumping water people, ip minds think its no different than what happens now. If i took it this way i could make it do this other thing. You get an entrepreneurial streak. You get an innovation type mindset and before you know it something that doing one thing specifically can be made to do something else. Probably the key individuals early on in the Industrial Revolution would be Matthew Bolton and james watt. Bolton was an ingenious manufacturer. James watt had come up with some fundamental improvements to an existing steam engine. Their application of steam engines, things like polishing machines. A sequence of events where other people start seeing ways of using the steam engine as well. Watts designed by james and billed by the bolton water company. It was used in a pumping house in birmingham, england because that is where it was when henry ford acquired it. Engines like this were about three times the efficiency of the earlier engines. You think about someone looking this is aengine, great example of it. Used for pumping water in a canal system. Aixa now system on various levels where you are always going to have water running out of the system, you got locks to go up or down, you need pumping engines to restore and maintain the fundamental level of that system. Now youre talking about a steam engine that is tethered to an infrastructure which has its own needs. The equilibrium of a canal system is a more finely honed thing and engines like this would be used as a fundamental part of that and i think that is an interesting conceptual leap. A Network Power Source Associated with a large transportation infrastructure. Steam engines that are built in the u. S. Are imported from england. They are a huge success. They of interest technologically. The factors were different. A huge amount of the application of steam power in england was that it was mining. Not a lot of mining going on here. A lot of what was being extracted on the surface was very wooden based and a lot of coal. Really, it comes down to how do you apply steam power effectively to a problem that needs solving and the biggest problem in the United States was not extracting things out of the ground, it was distance, traveling distance. Transporting goods. Really that is how it gets its foothold in the United States. Coastal vessels, river vessels like on the hudson. More particularly the mississippi, the missouri. If you think of what was then western rivers, that was a huge attentional transport infrastructure. Easy to get from pittsburgh down to new orleans. Difficult to go the other way unless you can propel yourself. Steam power gets the foothold in a way that solves problems that are real. This is one of the earlier engines we have any collection that was built in the United States. Steam power, as it gets adopted in the United States in a leaner affair than that which we have already seen in england. This is an area when engines are smaller, somewhat more efficient, built in a way that initially allows them to be used on river going craft. This is an example of one of those types of engines. It is quite thinly made, cheaply made. Useful in a mill. A good example of steam power stepping ashore from a boat and being useful in a manufacturing facility. Wherever there is fuel. If you look closely, you can start to see the valve mechanism, classical columns. Even the base has a paneling effect. Paint. Ead, the original this is an area where the technology is starting to take on the personality of the people building it and buying it. It would have been in a back room. It is celebrating something. It is still what we do with Technology One way or another. This is an evolution of an engine like that. Built by asigned and fellow called george corliss. In his dayjames watt was. This is precivil war technology. If you look at the flywheel, you have to understand it is quite precisely manufactured. It was a massive belt that came off of this. A machine larger than this that had to machine this machine to make that. The notion we have now in terms of the scale, and it is huge. In terms of reach, it is massive. Its very wrong to think of mid19th century manufacturing, whether in europe or the United States, as being this bumbling, lowlevel, amateurish affair. It was a high tech of its day. George corliss was involved, like other manufacturers, he took it to a high extreme in terms of standardized manufacturing. When people understand mass production and Assembly Lines, that did not happen suddenly. The components achievements that allow that to take place can be traced back to the 19th century with people trying to standardize casting, so you can use them in different sizes of engines. They were trying to use motion. Slaughterhouses were using disAssembly Lines. Certain kinds of interchangeability on a smaller scale with sewing machines and watches. All of these very different, but at the same time complementary achievements. That is what starts the dovetail and convergence. In many ways, detroit was like a great many other cities in the United States. It was wellplaced because of the skills that were here. And, the kind of capitalistic entrepreneurial attitudes that were here. Look at any new industry and take it on one way or another. What happens is you get one particular industry that really holds sway in the form of the ford motor company. A Critical Mass effect takes place once the moving Assembly Line and the approach to manufacturing and selling the cars that henry ford and his cohorts designed really changes the face of this whole area. It actually makes it a real hotbed for automobile vendor factoring. We are standing on an engine that was used to generate electricity for the Highland Park plant. The Highland Park plant was not the first plant where they produced model ts, it is the first one where they produce them in quantity. Highland park was a good site for a number of reasons for henry ford to build what became a pretty highly refined manufacturing. The powerhouse grows incrementally from the single engine to by 1919, nine of these engines. They are twin engines. They are essentially two engines driving a single generator. It was a magnificent plant. Fully visible from the streets. Massive plateglass windows. You probably could have eaten off the floor. It was almost like a temple to power generation. It was fundamental to Highland Parks success. The level we are on originally when this engine was installed was streetlevel. Everything below was quite out of sight. The original floor went all the way to the engine. This looks a little skeletal. This is kind of raised, but initially it was very firm, solid looking. This is one of the nine engines that was eventually generating electricity for the Highland Park plant for all the machinery that was being deployed. It is a hybrid engine. This side is a steam engine, compound steam engine. A valve system established in the mid19th century. It has a more advanced form of valves there. This side on the other hand is internal combustion. Two cylinder engine again. This is using coal gas. This is an internal combustion engine. This is running very hot, like an engine in your car, so it has a very elaborate cooling system. Even the piston rods are cooled. There is a swinging link you can see. That offers us to talk about how the two engines are integrated. One of the things they were trying to do, in addition to generating electricity, was maximize the efficiency. Henry ford, who grew up on a farm, did not care for farm work. He could not wait to get out of the farm. You could not get the farm quite out of henry. It always seemed to inform all of his enterprises. I think it informed anyones success but in terms of reducing waste and being independent. It took a judicious use of resources. That always informed his approach to design. The engines were built by a company from hamilton, ohio. The generator in the center was built out of new jersey. Ford was a stickler for cleanliness so these things were kept in a very high state of presentation. The finishes and all the fittings, all very deliberate. That is a kind of grace and practicality and a good use of nickel plating. These have a high degree of finish. This is what started things up. This is the beating heart of the center of the facility. It was something he was very proud of. If you plugged in your smartphone to charge it, you connected to a power network, probably back to power stations that are steam powered. There is wind power, solar power, but a huge proportion of electricity we are still using is generated through the means of steam. Usually through steam turbines, not steam engines. It is really quite part of our world now. The world we are in right now, the expectations we have regarding technology, the availability of power, those are all stories that emerged from the engines and equipment we have behind us. The cspan cities tour is on the road, exploring the american story. As we continue our special look at detroit, our tour guide takes us down 8 mile rd, which marks the northern border of detroit. We are heading to the northwest part of the city. Wall are at the eight mile. It goes by a number of names. This wall was built in 1940 by a white housing developer who was building homes. This wall separates two streets. Government in 1934 passed the First National housing act, which was going to help workingclass people get home mortgages. It was part of roosevelts new deal. It is the First National housing act. It is going to create the federal housing administrat ion. It is going to help streamline loans and make them more accessible for people to get a home loan. There are some issues. One of the issues is to get one of the home loans, the federal Housing Administration states the neighborhood has to be racially homogeneous. That means the people have to be from the same racial and ethnic group. They do not believe the neighborhood is stable if it is integrated. They will not give loans if the neighborhood is integrated. There is a problem. To help create in detroit neighborhoods that had been integrated and become segregated. African americans had been coming from down south since the early 1900 to get jobs in the factories of detroit. Africanamericans are concentrated in blackbaud him. Blackbaud him is overpopulated. There is no more room in black bottom. Families move all the way to the Northwest Side of detroit where there is nothing but empty fields. They are secretly living here. In the 1930s after the in 1934 when the federal government is funding the building of these homes and packing the mortgages ,t lowInterest Rates developers are building homes for the federal government and selling them with people getting home loans backed by the federal government but the neighborhoods have to be homogeneous. When the federal government discovers that the neighborhood their funding the building of homes is adjacent to an africanamerican neighborhood, they stop the funding of the building of those homes and refused to back the mortgages of those homes. The developer said, what if i build a wall to separate my white Housing Development from where africanamericans live . The federal government said that is efficient. He builds a three foot wall that runs eight miles. Development,his which would be continue to be funded by the federal government. People would be able to get fha back loans because of the wall separating africanamericans. Africanamericans would not be able to take advantage of the low Interest Rate home loans under the housing act, which would be increased in 1937 and would be increased again in the ipo in the g. I. Bill. Africanamericans were not be able to take any part in this because they would consider they would continue this policy. Black neighborhoods become racially homogeneous. They become allblack because whites have been taking advantage and getting home loans. The Home Owners Loan Corporation has created a map of where loans can be given out. The maps are colorcoded. The green area means, yes. You are going to get the loans. The red area, which is where we get the term redlining from, the loans are prohibited. Almost all of the africanamerican neighborhoods are in the red. They are unable to take advantage of one of the largest homebuilding eras. You have africanamericans and whites working together at ford and gm. They are making income wise, equal wage. The way to have gotten home loans will grow in wealth because they own property. Africanamericans who worked at ford making same money will be blocked from getting home loans. 20 years later, there will be a wealth gap. What do africanamericans have 20 years later after the loans are given out . They have receipts from the brewster project, which was also created under the same housing act. Africanamericans can take advantage of moving into early funding Housing Projects. Whites can do that were get a home loan. Most whites take advantage of the home loan portion rather than moving into a Housing Project. Today, we associate Housing Projects with africanamericans. Part of the reason why is because of this housing policy, which will not be overthrown until 1968 in the fair Housing Project the fair housing act. Became known, people in the neighborhood along with artists got together and created this art project. At the alfonso wells memorial park, it is the largest section of the wall that is exposed without going through a persons backyard. In this section, they did this art project. Some of the murals are about history. Some of them are fun pictures. Some of them are about the wall itself. All of this together is telling historyin turning this to a place that people will come to and look at. Beautiful. , it is on the other hand, tells this horrible history. Store our cities tour staff recently traveled to detroit, michigan. To learn more, visit cspan. Org cities tour. Youre watching American History tv. All weekend and every weekend in cspan3. John cspan3. 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