Edison Labs Museum - The heavy and precision machine shops

[Valecnik]

More from the recently opened Edison Laboratory Museum in West Orange. Here we have a few pics of the heavy machine shop and precision machine shop frozen in time... Apparently Edison was fond of saying that he could make anything from a ladies watch to a locomotive in this facility

[Neophone]

Bruce,

Fantastic photos! The lab looks like it's just waiting for the employees to come back from lunch. Amazing.

Regards,
John

[JohnM]

I can smell the cutting oil and feel the hot metal shavings hitting my hands! Thanks!

[Shane]

Wow... that is absolutely amazing. Any chance of firing up a few machines and turning out a few freshly made Amberolas?

[estott]

My home town boasted a modest sized cabinetry shop set up very like this with belts and shafts. When two or more machines were running you couldn't hear anything but the noise.

[JohnM]

My home town boasted a modest sized cabinetry shop set up very like this with belts and shafts. When two or more machines were running you couldn't hear anything but the noise.

When any of you all come to visit us in Madison, Indiana, we'll take you to the Schroeder Saddletree Factory. It is a museum now and much of the steam and belt-driven machinery was restored with the assistance of the Smithsonian. Saddletrees (the wooden interior frames of saddles) and clothespins were once made there.

http://www.historicmadisoninc.com/saddletree_museum.htm

[bbphonoguy]

Beautiful photos! I visited the Edison Labs years and years ago, but all I remember is seeing a room or two.

The photos remind me (on a much larger scale) of a little abandoned factory in my home town (well, really just a hamlet) of Union Hill in upstate New York. It was a long, narrow single story building with a shaft running down the middle of the ceiling, a steam engine at one end, and lots of machinery on either side of a central aisle. It was no longer in use when I was growing up, and we would go inside to explore every once in a while. I have no idea what was manufactured there. It's since been demolished to make way for an access road.

[Henry]

This kind of line shaft and belting operation was standard in mills and factories in the era before small electric motors at the individual work stations replaced them. Here in Allentown there was a shop that was powered this way from a Corliss stationary steam engine fired by an anthracite-burning boiler. A leather belt at least 12" wide passed around the engine's enormous flywheel, passed through a slit in the wall of the engine room, and moved the line shaft in the adjacent shop. Unfortunately, on my one visit to the place in the early '70s the Corliss engine was down for repairs. The engineer told me that the owner had purchased the engine second-hand from a place in New Jersey; it must have been 75-100 years old at that point! I managed to get several photos but I never got back to see the thing in operation. It's now gone, of course. The time I visited was during the first so-called "Arab oil crisis" and the shop had been the subject of an article in our local newspaper; since the boiler burned anthracite, the crisis had no effect on *this* operation!

[phonophan79]

This kind of line shaft and belting operation was standard in mills and factories in the era before small electric motors at the individual work stations replaced them. A leather belt at least 12" wide passed around the engine's enormous flywheel, passed through a slit in the wall of the engine room, and moved the line shaft in the adjacent shop.

Yup! I posted a picture of this on my Edison Lab trip thread. Pretty wild how this one huge electric motor and belt made the entire room productive. The tour guide was explaining how loud it would be... and how if it stopped, they would have to come over and pull at it like a lawnmower.

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 33&start=0



Valecnik - Thanks for your pics... I like the elevator and coat / hat rack as well!

[Valecnik]

Phonophan79. Thanks for the tip. It was your posting that reminded me this was open and in the area I was staying. It was well worth the trip. Sounds like you actually got a guided tour? I got to use a machine for an audio tour. It was still okay but I would have preferred a knowledgeable tourguide.