July 18, 2019

July 18, 2019

I recently watched one of the Great Courses on the Industrial Revolution. That course for me was a good intersection of history with technology. So I wanted to stop at the Birthplace of the American version. By accident it was recently added to the National Park System. We drove about an hour west to the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park.

We started at the north end of the valley and drove south. Our first stop was at River Bend Farm where we learned about the pre-industrial method of making cloth and clothing. Production was an extremely laborious process. Unless you were wealthy most people did the whole process individually (from fiber to weaving) meaning you rarely got a new set of clothes.

We then drove down the Blackstone Valley to Slater Mill. One of the first industries mechanized was textiles and the revolution started in England. It was an incremental revolution, mechanizing each step of textile production. First came Spinning of the fibers into thread.

America quickly followed or rather copied. An Englishman named Slater, snuck out of the country with valuable spinning technology. He joined forces with an American trying to duplicate the English process. Here in Pawtucket, RI they perfected the first American copy of the Cotton Spinning Machine. And the American Industrial Revolution was off to the races. In just a few years, there were water-driven spinning mills up and down the Blackstone River.

We took the guided tour of the site. First up was a machine shop making parts for the mill machinery. The shop is a jumble of leather belts driving drills and metal lathes. Next door is the original Slater Mill that now just contains a museum of the progression of textile automation. The engineer in me found it fascinating.

We then went across the street to the Blackstone Valley Corridor Visitor Center to watch their film on this history. Before leaving, we stopped at a Yarn Outlet so Aimee could fittingly buy some machine spun yarn.

We still have a few hours of daylight, so we return to the Boston area stopping at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. This is the home and office of America’s pioneering Landscape Architect. Born during the Romantic Era when communing with nature became vogue, he visited many landscaped gardens in Europe. He brought back a desire to soften our urban landscape and started famously with the design of Manhattan’s Central Park. He and his sons opened up a design firm and went on to landscape many of the famous green spaces in America.

After running through the on-site museum, we got a personal guided tour of his design office attached to his house. It turned out to be far more interesting than I would have predicted. One highlight was seeing the original blueprint process. Similar to early photography it was a tedious chemical procedure.

We drove back in slow Rush Hour again, stopping for dinner at a Legal Seafood branch by our hotel. Not surprisingly the New England Clam Chowder was delicious.