About this exhibit
Explore the legacy of American innovators from the 18th to 20th centuries who made America a manufacturing superpower. The exhibit includes hundreds of artifacts such as the Newcomen Engine, the Highland Park Engine, and even Edison’s Last Breath.
Highlights
Maudslay Production Lathe, circa 1800
The work of Henry Maudslay (1771-1831) is fundamental to the development of industrial precision. This is the oldest industrial capacity precision machine tool in the world. Capable of machining to an accuracy of several thousandths of an inch, it enabled Maudslay's company to manufacture tools and engines to unprecedented standards -- and set the stage for even higher levels of precision.
Highland Park Plant Engine- Generator, 1915-1916
Ford's Model T mass production system would not have been practical without electricity; by 1919 nine of these Ford-designed hybrid internal combustion/steam engines generated the power needed by the Highland Park plant's assembly lines and associated machinery. By 1926 the engines were rendered obsolete when electricity was fed from the power plant at Ford's River Rouge plant ten miles away.
Edison Dynamo Used on SS Columbia, 1880
For Thomas Edison, successful experimental results were but a prelude to continual improvements that would lead to commercial implementation. This dynamo is from the first lighting system he sold -- installed on a ship, four months after the December 1879 experimental demonstration. Its crude finish, at odds with the highly advanced technology it embodied, suggests Edison's impatient eagerness to move from experiment to market.
Newcomen Engine, circa 1750
This is the oldest known surviving steam engine in the world. Named for its inventor Thomas Newcomen, the engine converted chemical energy in the fuel into useful mechanical work. Its early history is not known, but it was used to pump water out of the Cannel mine in the Lancashire coalfields of England in about 1765. The engine was presented to Henry Ford in 1929.
Rotative Steam Engine, 1788
Test Tube, "Edison's Last Breath," 1931
This test tube was one of several that Charles Edison noticed standing open in a rack in the bedroom in which his father had just died in 1931. The attending physician was asked to seal the tubes, one of which Charles later sent on to Henry Ford who kept it with other Edison mementos at his home, Fair Lane.
More to Explore
Dymaxion House
The Dymaxion House was designed to be the strongest, lightest and most cost-effective housing ever built.
Presidential Vehicles
See some of the vehicles that transported 20th-century American presidents, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.