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October 26, 2009

Industrial tour

I got home after a typical drive on the Merritt Parkway. It  was a fabulous weekend, I enjoyed my industrial tour immensely, and I would do it again at the drop of a hat.  This time I would be prepared for the length of the tour and bring a snack!

Really amazing, one forgets that New England isn't all maple syrup and colorful leaves and quaint little villages with white churches.  It has a hard and long history, with factories, child labor, long hours, craftsmen who knew how to make and fix machines, and the sort of first computer or forerunner of the computer with a binary code - anyone know without looking?

And I bet not a lot of people know that working with cotton is a really dirty job and that people got as sick from it as someone working in a mine, instead of black lung they ended up with white lung.
And we saw Eli Whitney's invention and could even try it out.


This is Teddy and Linda's house in CT



the Slater Mill, this is the building the museum houses the different machines



The Blackstone River with the dam, a steady power source


one of the thead machines a child would have worked on


Teddy and Miss Vickie


Teddy in the in the machinists room


one of the machines which made braid for shoe laces



Teddy next to the Slater Mill

More tomorrow!

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