Bob Wilhelm’s Q&A

Anyone who has toured Marshall Brothers paper mill (two tours left in 2023 – October 28^th & November 18^th), is aware of the variety of dangerous machinery installed in the 1890s mill which made paper into the 21^st century. Additionally, as papermaking is a water-based process, wet, uneven, concrete flooring provided ample opportunity for slippery conditions. Machines with flailing knives, rotary cylindrical boilers operating at 25 pounds per square inch steam pressure (267 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures) and large moving belts and gears added to the opportunities for worker injury.

In 1890, when the former Auburn Factory was converted to a paper mill by Israel and Elwood Marshall, only 9 states required some level of factory safety inspection. Delaware did not require boiler inspections until 1919. DuPont, the state’s biggest employer for much of the 20^th century, began its safety program in 1811 and by 1927 had an injury rate of 3.4 major injuries per million hours worked. This record, and compatible records of other large Delaware employers, eliminated the need for Delaware employers to have to comply with state safety regulations. Delaware businesses had a free hand in defining workplace safety requirements until OSHA was enacted.

Congress enacted the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act on April 28, 1971 after President Nixon’s December 1970s signing. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created by the Act to ensure America’s work practices and environments were safe for all employees, contractors, and visitors, Not only was OSHA tasked with defining a safe workplace through regulations and policy, the organization had the power to levy fines where failure to comply could be documented either through unannounced inspection or investigation after a reportable injury occurred.

Recently the NVF corporate records have been parsed for the company’s safety performance. We know, for example, in 1982 NVF Yorklyn recorded 27 safety incidents for 348,855 hours worked for fiber operations and recorded 11 safety incidents for 153,671 hours worked for papermaking operations. The research indicates these numbers were not uncommon, in fact 1982’s data was statistically average for injury data reported to OSHA during the 1980s and into the 1990s at NVF Yorklyn.

The data show multiple examples of lacerations, bruises, strains, and sprains. Think back to how you have injured yourself when a slipping knife has not been the cause of a laceration, tripping over an object has not resulted in a fall, to the more unique accidents that have caused you injury. How many of those unique accidents do you think may not have been unique, but occurred at NVF Yorklyn? For our Answer we will describe some of the recordable accidents at NVF Yorklyn

Answer
As one reads through decades of recordable safety incidents occurring on an annual basis at Yorklyn, not using proper safety equipment such as eyewear, gloves, footwear, and even simple clothing were frequently cited as contributing to dozens of annual injuries. While failure to use safety equipment contributed to many injuries, working conditions and employee willingness to follow safety guidelines accounted for quite a few injuries. Perhaps most noteworthy were the uneven walking surfaces throughout the facilities creating numerous opportunities for trips, falls, and sprains Improper lifting and moving often resulted in back and groin injuries. Properly maintaining equipment was often cited when handrails or other safety devices failed to perform as intended due to not having been tested or maintained.

Employees using hammers had the hammer ricochet off what was being struck and strike the employee at various locations. There are numerous examples of employees working with either the paper sheet or the fibre sheet and getting their fingers and arms caught between the rollers or other machine parts. Employees were injured using thread-up tooling they concocted for various uses around machinery or the employee became injured pulling and cutting paper/fiber from a machine where the material had tightly wrapped within the machinery. There are incident reports documenting removed guard(s) and had the guard(s) been in use, the incident would not have happened or the injury might have been significantly less.

There was one death recorded at NVF Yorklyn when an employee operating a fork truck at high speed (with a failed braking system) swerved to miss other employees and crashed into a building support column bringing part of an upper floor down upon the fork truck that did not have a safety cage for the operator. In another incident an employee lost 143 workdays while mowing grass with a tractor after they collided with a 55-gallon steel drum that was visible for some distance. The employee was thrown from the tractor and had the old-fashioned reel mower being towed behind the tractor run over them resulting in broken legs and pelvis, lacerations, and serious internal injuries.

As visitors enter room of Stanley automobiles from the lobby area in the Marshall Steam Museum, they encounter a display of artifacts which helped define the era of the late 1800s and early 1900s. On display are Edison phonographs, a first-generation commercial AM radio, a Kellogg wooden-box, hand-crank telephone, clips of Marshall home movies, a model Stanley steam car, a penny-farthing, a still-operational steam-powered popcorn maker, and other artifacts. If you ask a visitor, “What inventor comes to mind when seeing this collection of memorabilia?” usually Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) comes to mind. One wonders if Israel Marshall (1850-1911) wasn’t partly inspired by reading about Edison’s inventions as the two men lived during the same portion of the industrial revolution. Edison’s first patent was issued in 1869 (Electric Vote Recorder) and Marshall’s first patent application occurred in 1886 (Water-proof Building-paper; awarded 1887).

Many individuals view the importance of the Edison phonograph as being a primary income source which Edison tapped to generate the cash stream necessary to fund his many experiments necessary in the commercialization of the electric lamp. By 1877 as Edison worked on the phonograph, mankind understood the fundamentals of sound and how it moved through the air, water, and walls. In the 1840s, Christian Doppler had mathematically explained why sound from train whistles shifts pitch as it passes the listener. The first visualizations of sound waves occurred in the later 1700s when Ernst Chladni visualized sound with what become known as Chladni patterns (pictured at left). Chladni patterns are created on thin resonance plates by sprinkling a fine sand uniformly across the resonance plate’s surface and then allowing the plate to vibrate in harmony with any sound the plate receives. The Phonautograph, patented in 1857, is the earliest device known to have recorded sound and simultaneously produce a visual pattern of the sound thus preserving the sound’s waveform for future study.

Edison’s tin-sheet phonograph (pictured right) not only recorded sound, but the device preserved the sound for faithful play back as well as manipulation. This accomplishment led to Edison becoming known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park”. The ability to faithfully reproduce recorded sound is the obvious aspect of the phonograph that people think about when they remember the invention of the phonograph. However, there is one other aspect of the phonograph that astounded mankind once it was realized. What is this other aspect of the phonograph’s development that may consider more important than the faithful reproduction of sound? We’ll also tell you in the answer what a Bittakophone is.

Answer
Until 1877 and Edison’s perfection of the phonograph, it had only been possible to capture or preserve the world around us. The photographic process, begun in the early 1800s, captured rudimentary images of objects (from the light they reflected) as they existed during the brief time window the photographic material was exposed to light. The phonautograph, developed in the mid-1800s, allowed for the visualization of sound waves. Edison’s development of the phonograph in 1877 brought the ability to faithfully reproduce something recorded earlier along with the ability to time-shift what had been recorded.

Consider a simple musical metronome producing a discernable ‘click’ at a very precise interval to set the beat of music being played by an artist. Recorded using an Edison phonograph, when played back, the time space between the clicks was an accurate reproduction of what had occurred when the recording was taken. Like a photograph, the recording of the clicks is an accurate future reference of the sound captured which may be heard at some future date or dates provided the recording does not become damaged in the interim.

However, by varying the speed that the recording was played back, time-shifting of the recorded material occurs which was a totally new concept to be explored. Played back at twice the recorded speed, the clicks occur at a frequency of half the time interval they were recorded. Played back slower than the recorded speed, the clicks occur at twice the time interval they were recorded. With this change in playback speed, the frequencies of the recorded sound also shifted depending on the playback speed. This ability was soon recognized as mankind could ‘create’ the Doppler Effect and use it to advantage.

Edison worked for Western Union prior to his invention of the phonograph and the ability to record the dots and dashes of a telegraph message for retransmission later was one of the ideas he worked on. Being able to record a message, and then play it back faithfully at a much higher speed, effectively compressing the time it took to transmit the message, would allow more information to be passed along a telegraph wire than was possible with current technology and most importantly, do so without changing the information being transmitted. In another application, the faster or slower playback could change the very nature of the recorded material when it was played back! The Edison phonograph had unexpectedly unleased more profound ramifications for the use of Edison’s recording technology.

When a person dies their voice and manner of speaking are lost. Now, through Edison’s invention, the tonal aspects of an individual’s speech and that individual’s speech pattern are preserved for the future. In the 21^st century we can be inspired by words Roosevelt or Kennedy spoke in the 20^th century. Visitors to the Marshall Steam Museum hear Tom Marshall passionately talking about the Stanley steam cars he loved so much and sought to preserve for future generations.

Additionally, Edison’s phonograph allowed for a continuous clip of sound to be recorded and then be time-shifted in playback to be listened to multiple times. That playback could be compressed or expanded. It wasn’t until 1895 that the Lumière brothers would invent the Cinématographe (left) for capturing continuous segments of imagery for time-shifted playback at any time in the future. Edison, in 1910, combined aspects of his phonograph and the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe to invent the kinetoscope – a device allowing viewers to experience moving imagery with synchronized sound.

Today, our mobile devices capture light and sound together, faithfully store what was captured, and allow for its replaying multiple times in the future. We often modify earlier-recorded material to shift the colors of recorded light and manipulate the tonal aspects of sound upon playback in the 21^st century and think nothing about doing such. In 1877, the fact that mankind now could even make such changes was mind-blowing as sound became the first medium to be so manipulated. Today, everything that is transmitted to and from our mobile devices is time-shifted in multiple ways.

Edison’s first sketches of his ‘talking machine’ used the word “phonograph” as a potential name. During the device’s development Edison came up with more than 50 alternative names in an attempt find the perfect name. Under consideration were such names as; ‘Anitphone’ meaning back-talker; ‘Kosmophone’ meaning universal sounder; ‘Auto-Electrograph’ meaning electric pen; ‘Atmosphone’ meaning fog sounder or vapor-speaker; and ‘Bittakophone’ meaning parrot speaker.

The Marshall Steam Museum tells the story of the American motor carriage from its birth at the start of the 20^th century, through adolescence in the 19-teens, to adulthood of the early 1920s. The proxy to share this exciting story is the Stanley Motor Carriage Company (1902-1924). Their Stanley steam cars were the top selling brand at the start of the 1900s and contributed much to this unique era of American motoring history.

With any technological advance, multiple individuals form companies to offer their version and vision of the budding technology. In the mid-1870s various individuals manufactured telephones while others established networks for the operation of those telephones In the mid-1880s multiple makers of incandescent lamps became established while others established electric generation plants and electrical distribution networks. Similar occurred with the motor carriage the start of the 20^th century as three technologies, steam, electric, and internal combustion, all fought to become the preferred choice to power the personal vehicle.

Electric vehicles remained the most registered motor vehicle technology until 1919 when internal combustion powered vehicles out-registered electric vehicles in the U.S. The Stanley twins’ first steam car design was sold under the Locomobile Company of America name in 1899. Additionally the Mobile Company of America sold the Stanley design beginning in 1899. By the end of 1903, Locomobile embraced the manufacture of internal combustion powered luxury automobiles and sold their steam car business to Stanley Motor Carriage Company.

At the dawn of the automotive age, what might be a reasonable estimate of how many manufacturers started to make an internal combustion motorcarriage? For bonus points, how many of those manufacturers lasted from say 1904 through 1910? Are any of those manufacturer’s names still used on cars produced today?

Answer
In 1895 George B. Selden was granted patent 549,160 for a “Road Engine.” As a patent lawyer Selden wrote the patent with many all-encompassing phrases that loosely described a personal “road engine powered by a liquid hydrocarbon engine of the compression type” Statements such as “a convenient number of cylinders”, “connected to either steering or trailing axles”, and listing numerous advantages of his design over steam-powered carriages further allowed the patent to describe an endless array of automobile technologies based on the internal combustion engine. Selden sold the patent to the Electric Vehicle Company who quickly enforced the patent by suing anyone manufacturing for sale or owning an internal combustion motor powered vehicle where royalty payments had not been paid for use of Selden’s patent.

The Manufacturer’s Mutual Association was formed to challenge Selden’s patent but soon became aligned with Electric Vehicle Company. Renaming the association as the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, the organization published an annual listing of fully licensed manufacturers who paid royalties to Electric Vehicle Company for each internal combustion vehicle they manufactured. The Association’s directory, published between 1904 and 1922, listed the manufacturers and models those manufacturers produced as a means for buyers to purchase vehicles without having to worry if the vehicle infringed the Selden patent.

Henry Ford refused to pay the royalty and waged an 8-year fight against the patent in court eventually winning in January 1911 on appeal. Interestingly Selden’s patent expired in 1912 so the win was very short lived. For the years the patent was in force, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers catalog of licensed manufacturers contained the following as part of the Preface:

Each manufacturer or importer conducts his business entirely independent of the other, and, of course, in open competition, but the recognition by the companies represented herein of the basic patent No. 549,160, granted to George B. Selden, November 5th, 1895, on gasoline automobiles (which controls broadly all gasoline automobiles which are accepted as commercially practicable), is a guarantee that a purchase through the several companies herein represented, or through their agents, secures to the purchaser freedom from the annoyance and expense of litigation because of infringement of this patent.

In the Association’s Handbook of the Automobile issued between 1904 and 1911, no less than 116 organizations attempted to manufacture automobiles for a time period of a year or longer, as documented by their paying royalties to the Association. Only 19 companies (highlighted in dark green) lasted the entire 8 years including Locomobile Company of America (blue highlight). Only Buick and Cadillac lasted the 8-year period of interest and are found on automobiles manufactured today. Of course, Ford remains today as well, but Ford was never a member of the Association and never paid royalties as evidenced by the legal battle.

On June 7^th, 500 feet from Auburn Heights mansion, partway up the hill above the public parking area, the view seen in this image was captured. That evening, smoke from the Canadian forest fires reached a peak particulate density in the air in northern Delaware as well as Chester County PA. The experience reminded us of images we had seen of cities in the U.S., including Wilmington, during the height of the industrial revolution. Similar conditions often occurred on a regular basis when cheap coal was consumed in trainload volumes not only for industrial energy but to heat city homes.

Interestingly, Garrett’s snuff business experienced a peak in sales in the latter 1800s because the interiors of water powered mills, and later steam powered mills, often displayed a haze in the air not unlike what we see in the image. The haze within the mills came from milling operations and not forest fires. How did the textile and grist mills of the industrial revolution lead to a rise in the use of smokeless tobacco products such as snuff?

Answer
A grist mill passes wheat, corn, oats, or other grains between a circular stationary or bed stone as a rotating or runner stone a short distance above the bed stone rotates about 120 revolutions per minute. The faces of the two stones are cut with grooves and the rotating stone nearly touches the bed stone allowing the grain to be ground using a shearing action resulting in flour and middlings leaving the millstones. Additional machinery in a mill separates the flour from the middlings and then each component was further separated and packaged. Oliver Evans of Newport, DE, in the 1780s, patented (3^rd patent issued by the newly formed U.S. Patent Office) a fully automated process which transformed grain dumped into hoppers from wagons at one side of Evan’s mill into grades of flour packed in wooden casks at the other end of Evan’s mill located in Faulkland DE.

The actual millstone grinding of a grain, along with the various separation steps of the finishing process generated a fine dust which found its way out of the machinery and into the air. Mills with multiple grinding stones generated more flour dust which filled the air and collected on flat surfaces. As a water powered mill, and even for later steam powered mills, the power from the water wheel or steam engine required to operate the mill equipment was transmitted by shafts, wooden and iron gearing, and leather belting all of which required bearings wherever a rotating shaft received support (Washburn Mill line shafts pictured in 1978). A bearing assembly that had lost its tallow lubrication in the 1800s heated rapidly. Likewise, iron gearing, if not continuously lubricated with tallow, might create sparks. Both heat and sparks often ignited the flour dust in the air and accumulating on flat surfaces near the bearing to cause a fire and touch off an explosion.

In Minneapolis, MN the Washburn Mill (Mill A in 1978 pictured) on the shores of the Mississippi began processing flour in 1874 using a rotary millstone process not unlike what Oliver Evans invented. The collection of mills soon became the world’s largest milling operation producing 350,000 pounds of flour daily. The mills, capable of producing more than half of the city’s total milled products, were of large size and each contained air heavily laden with milling dusts while the mill was in operation. In 1878, the C mill capable of milling more than 50 boxcars of wheat daily, created a flour dust atmosphere inside the mill that was described as possibly matching the smoke haze around Auburn Heights on June 7, 2023. Heat or a spark ignited the dust laden air of Mill C and the subsequent explosion resulted in the loss of 18 lives. The explosion leveled the 6-feet thick mill walls to loose stones thrown about a large area and brought down adjacent buildings for more than a city block. Structures within a mile of the mill received cracked walls some of which crumbled to the ground within hours, displaced roofs, and shattered windows.

William Lea, grandson of Wilmington miller Thomas Lea (who owned Auburn Factory from 1813 until 1826 which eventually became Marshall Brothers Paper Mill), experienced a devastating fire at their grist mill on Brandywine Creek (see article at end) in 1894. In 1874 Taylor’s Woolen Mill in Stanton was destroyed by a dust fire putting 100 people out of work. The Dean Woolen Mill in Newark in 1887 was also destroyed by a wool dust fire. Even one of the Garrett Snuff Mills was consumed by fire in 1878 due to tobacco dust catching fire (see article on the rebuild nearing completion). When the Marshall brothers bought Clark’s Auburn Factory in 1890, it had been gutted a few years earlier by a woolen dust fire. In the 1800s countless mills were destroyed and lives lost before mill owners fully understood the many ways airborne plant and mineral dusts could become explosive under the proper conditions.

Dusts of any material are combustible if a sufficient ignition source is introduced. Bearings in old mills could become overheated and ignite layers of accumulated dust laying near them. Any spark in flour dust laden air within a mill might cause an early water powered mill fire and explosion. It was quickly realized that the need to light smoking materials in a dust-laden mill could also become an ignition source and thus smoking was not permitted inside a mill regardless of what product was being produced. As a result, the burning of tobacco products was forbidden within mills. The result created a demand for smokeless tobacco products such as snuff and chewing tobaccos. In order to satisfy a nicotine craving, people turned heavily to snuff. A pinch of snuff placed on the “anatomical or human snuff box” of the hand (red circle in the hand image) and then inhaled in to the nose provided the nicotine directly to the sinus cavity for absorption into the bloodstream.

As a result of the loss of life and the damage to the city, the mill’s owner, Cadwallader C. Washburn rebuilt the Minneapolis mills and in 1879 introduced the nation’s first automatic, all-roller, gradual reduction, flour milling process. More efficient, the process used large polished steel rolls to crush grain instead of rotary grinding to shear the grain, and the addition of dust separators throughout the process nearly eliminated the dust explosion problem which providing ‘gold medal winning’ flours at lower production costs. Eventually the Washburn milling complex became the home of General Mills in 1928. The process was so clean and efficient that the Sharpless family retrofitted their Ashland Mill with roller technology in the early 1880s as did the Lea family on the Brandywine.