BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Agriculture Hall

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Agriculture Hall:

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Description of Pictures: Agriculture Hall
January 23, 1964 – September 4, 2006
Hand and horse-drawn tools to present-day mechanized equipment illustrate the changes in rural America since the 18th century. Together the scythes, hayforks, plows, harvesting machinery, and steam engines show the progression in agriculture from manpower to horsepower to steam power to the power of the internal combustion engine. In particular, this progression is illustrated by a 1918 Waterloo Boy tractor; a 1924 Huber steam tractor; and a 1943 International Harvester cotton harvester ("Old Red"), with the latter symbolizing the end of the old labor-intensive cotton culture.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIAHAH_050810_03.JPG: Huber Steam Tractor (1924): Late 19th-century U.S. agricultural expansion required mechanization, especially in wheat production. Before the gasoline engine, the steam tractor supplemented horse power: some 85,000 steam tractors were produced 1876-1931. The Huber was the first steam tractor that had a return-flue boiler, spring-mounted engine, cushioned gear, and all-spur compensating gear. One of the last steam tractors built by Huber Manufacturing Co., Marion, Ohio -- selling for about $2,400 -- this 19,740-pound model had 18 horsepower, could go 2 miles per hour.(an alternative model burned straw). The steering wheel, band-pulley reverse, clutch lever, and throttle are all on the same side.
2. SIAHAH_050810_17.JPG: Waterloo Boy Model N Tractor (1918). The Waterloo Boy -- one of the most successful tractors of its day, and an outstanding example of the early use of internal-combustion engine power in agriculture -- was the result of work begun in 1892 by John Froelich of Froelich, Iowa. In the same year, he built the first gasoline-engine tractor. The Waterloo Boy was first produced as the Model R in 1914. In 1918, the Waterloo [Iowa] Gasoline Engine Co. introduced the Model N. The new model featured: a 25-horsepower, 2-cylinder, kerosene-burning engine, two forward gears, and one reverse gear. The John Deere Co. acquired the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. in 1918 and produced Waterloo Boy tractors with improvements until 1923.
3. SIAHAH_050810_32.JPG: Portable Steam Engine (1869). This is the first steam engine made by the J.I. Case Co. It produced about 8 horsepower for driving threshers and sawmills by belt. The engine was moved into place by a team of horses, during which time the stack was folded back to bring the driver's seat into a position from which he could guide the horses and operate the rear-wheel brakes.
4. SIAHAH_050810_60.JPG: Borden's Vacuum Pan. In 1853, Gail Borden used this pan, borrowed from Shaker farmers, at New Lebanon, N.Y., to develop condensed milk. After his process of "producing concentrated milk in vacuo" was patented in 1856, condensed milk became an important part of the dairy industry. Dreamers and tinkerers like Gail Borden were among the thousands of people who invested their time, hopes, and money in invention. In 1829, Borden went to Texas to try his hand at farming. He soon moved on to establish a newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Register -- but during the revolution against Mexican General Santa Anna destroyed Borden's printing press. After Texas became a republic, Borden became Galveston's collector of customs and began his life as an inventor. His first idea was for a giant refrigerator into which the city's inhabitants could escape the summer's annual yellow fever plague. Next he built "locomotive" bath houses for swimmers and a "Terraqueous Machine" -- a kind of amphibious sailing vehicle. Borden then made meat biscuits, a dehydrated ration described as having "an unusual flavour... absolutely disgusting." The business drove him into bankruptcy. Returning from England in 1851, Borden envisioned canning milk for nursing mothers who were too seasick to feed their babies. He patented the process in 1856, and obtained financial backing from Jeremiah Milbank, a wealthy businessman and investor. The Civil War and the late 19th-century concern over healthful food turned that possibility into a bonanza. Gail Borden died in Texas on January 11, 1874. The inscription he had chosen for his tombstone was "I tried and failed, I tried again and succeeded."
5. SIAHAH_050810_75.JPG: Barbed Wire. Introduced in the 1870s, barbed-wire fencing -- along with the windmill and six-shooter -- opened the Great Plains to farmers and cattle raisers. Farm settlements in this vast region previously had been impractical because of the lack of rocks, trees, and other fencing materials. Inexpensive and easy to install, barbed-wire fencing helps farmers protect their crops, confines animals, and permits selective breeding. Today, such fencing stops animals without hurting them. Some stages of the evolution of barbed wire are shown.
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2005 photos: Equipment this year: I used four cameras -- two Fujifilm S7000 cameras (which were plagued by dust inside the lens), a new Fujifilm S5200 (nice but not great and I hated the proprietary xD memory chips), and a Canon PowerShot S1 IS (returned because it felt flimsy to me). I gave my Epson camera to my catsitter. Both of the S7000s were in for repairs over Christmas. Trips this year: Florida (for Lotusphere), a driving trip down south (seeing sites in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia), Williamsburg, and Chicago. Number of photos taken this year: 147,000.
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