Here is a continuation about our adventures this summer. From our workshop in Gerald MO at the Evergreen Institute, George and I got back in the '66 Volvo and headed towards Detroit. Because we were heading towards Eastern Michigan University to teach a wind workshop, I've posted this in the 'wind' section. It probably doesn't really belong here but so be it.
The drive to Detroit was interesting... one very odd thing happened. I've lived in CO for most of my life, since I was 3 (over 40 years now). My family is mostly from the Chicago area - but most of them (all but about 1, my cousin Julie) has left there now. I thought it was very odd that we should be driving through the Chicago area, hit a traffic jam... and wind up side by side with my cousin on the freeway... what are the odds of that???
So we visited with her at a gas station, and continued to Ypsilanti and checked into the very nice Marriott Hotel that EMU had us staying at. We made that trip in 10 hours and had 1 day to burn before the next workshop (come to find out, somehow EMU got us teaching a 6 day long, for credit, 500 level graduate course on wind energy which involved the usual stuff ~ a bit of theory, a lot of hands on).
So on our one day off I wanted to go see the Henry Ford Museum. It just so happened that on the day we went they were having a 'Make' Festival (something to do with Make Magazine) and there was a lot of odd stuff in the parking lot to look at. The machine pictured above looks as though it could make quite a lot of noise. It has a very powerful air compressor behind it....
So now you can see why this has very little to do with wind! The Henry Ford Museum is just incredible though... if anybody reading this has not been there, I suggest you take a 3 day vacation and check it out. The stuff there is incredible. Lots of old steam stuff for one.
There are some huge steam engines, lots of neat old machine tools... they pretty much cover just about everything that has anything to do with the industrial revolution. Lots of Edison stuff, Henry Ford stuff... really neat electric machines. Oddly enough, no mention or display at all having anything to do with Tesla or Westinghouse.... I wonder why?
This one makes my little steam generator look like a peanut.
Pictured above just goes to show that axial flux machines have been around for some time now.
There is an interesting axial flux machine with a toroidal armature. It's quite similar to how the Proven wind turbine's alternator works.
Above is another interesting radial flux machine.
They actually have the oldest still existing steam engine in the world there. I forget if this is the one... it's quite old though - mid 1700's, moved to the Henry Ford Museum brick by brick ~ part by part, from England.
There is the boiler for the oldest existing steam engine. It is a tough place to take pictures because some of the stuff is so large you just can't get far enough away with the camera to capture it.
Pictured above George is standing between the cylinders of the huge steam plant that used to power the Ford factory. If I recall, it produced about 250VDC, 200 amps (.5MW). Cool thing is, it's all still there in place, except for the boilers.
And of course there are lots of other interesting things in there including gobs of cars, bikes, locomotives, airplanes, guns, tools, farm equipment etc. I barely had time to see a fraction of it. Dying to go back.
Outside and nearby they have Greenfield Village. In short - it's an almost functioning village with a farm, machine shops, restaurants, lots of historic buidings (including Edisons Menlo Park laboratory), lots of traffic on the streets (all antique Fords), steam locomotives running around etc. Pictured above is what I thought was an interesting, and very very old boiler.
There is a functioning machine shop full of tools like that pictured above, all driven by overhead belts etc.
They moved the Wright brothers bike shop there, brick by brick... it includes their original machine shop where the first (I know that is controversial) airplane was manufactured.
These are the dynamos that lit up the first electric light bulbs in Edisons machine shop.
Pictured above is the ceiling of Thomas Edisons machine shop.
And some of the tools in there.
In Edisons Laboratory... some of the first 'edison batteries'. Interesting laboratory reallly - he had about every raw material to play with that the earth has to offer in bottles on the wall, including minerals, metals, plant samples, animal oils etc.
They actually have a functioning 'round house' there that works on/rebuilds locomotives and train cars. It employs 10 folks. When we were there they were rebuilding two locomotives and one caboose. Pictured above is a decent sized lathe (I'm guessing the chuck to be about 8 feet in diameter) with some drivers on it off a locomotive.
At any rate - enough abusing the board to show off that sort of thing. It's a tiny fraction of the pictures I got there and those were only a tiny fraction of all the cool stuff there to see! It would take at least 3 days to really go through that museum... I had about 5 hours. Hopefully my next post will be more on topic - about the course we taught at EMU!
