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THE WHEEL MONKEY
National Train Day (generally celebrated the 1st or 2nd weekend of May, depending on organization) was begun in 2008 by Amtrak to celebrate not only their start of operations in May 1971 but what all railroads have contributed to the growth of the United States. Amtrak ended their official celebration practice eight years later in 2016, although the recognition continues unofficially.
As rail accidents had been on the increase throughout the 1960s, President Nixon signed into law the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970. This act extended the Department of Transportation’s role in fostering the safe operation of railroads by assigning a defined safety role for the Federal Railroad Administration more comparable to the safety roles performed by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Coast Guard.
As a result, items like those pictured below were defined with the workers using them often called “wheel monkeys.” What are/were the items below used for in the railroad industry?
Answer
Investigations revealed that many railroad incidents and accidents were the result of poorly maintained railroad wheels and track structure. As a result, stricter regulations were put in place in 1970 for all railroads to follow regarding the routine maintenance of railroad wheels and track structures including the contours of rails and wheels. The three gauges pictured above were developed to determine an acceptable vs failing condition for in-service wheel defects routinely observed. The FRA developed a set of minimum requirements any wheel in service had to meet and the gauges above, along with others, allowed quick determination if a wheel complied with minimally acceptable wear and use criteria or had to be removed from service as defective.
As a result of the Act, railroad incidents involving track and car wheels dropped considerably. Today, many of these measurements are done electronically using cameras, ultrasonic, and magnetic resonance testing techniques as cars pass through freight yards. While it may still be possible to hear a railroad car moving past with a wheel thumping like a hammer on a kettle drum (due to having had the wheel slid and a flat spot developing) when one is stopped at a railroad crossing, the car is either being relocated for wheel replacement or about to be flagged as no longer serviceable in need of wheel replacement when it reaches the next interchange yard.
The YouTube video below details how the gauges above are used to make a quick confirmation that a railroad wheel is defective and must be removed for maintenance. A wheel out of compliance may be placed on a wheel lathe at a railroad shop and recontoured to passing status several times before it becomes scrap and must be returned to a foundry for melting back into other steel products.
BOGEY
Trap shooting is the oldest shotgun sport in America having evolved from the shooting of live pigeons in England during the late 1700s. By the middle 1800s, pigeon shooting clubs had sprung up across America and the capture of live pigeons could not keep up with demand. Various alternates for the live birds were tried including glass balls filled with pigeon feathers as is on display in Auburn Heights mansion. In 1880 George Ligowsky of Cincinnati, OH invented the clay target, known as the “clay pigeon.” The first U.S. National Championship was held in New Orleans, LA, in 1885. In 1921 T. Clarence Marshall established the Yorklyn Gun Club, which lasted until 1950.
Pigeons were caught in wooden boxes called “traps” and is from which the name for the sport originates. While “trappers” were the individuals that caught the live pigeons, the term was carried over to the sport to become the name given the individual that released Ligowsky’s clay pigeons into the air. The spring-loaded device that originally flung a clay pigeon into the air would be cocked and loaded by the trapper. A strong tug on a cord by the trapper released the clay pigeon into the air and is the basis for the term “pull” said by a shooter when he’s ready for a clay pigeon to be released.
In trap shooting a clay pigeon is released into a flightpath somewhat parallel to the shotgun’s barrel whereas with skeet shooting the target is released to fly perpendicular to the shotgun’s barrel. The term “bogey” refers to a clay pigeon that is released at an extreme angle (up to 22.5-degrees) to the line between the shooter and trap house.Answer
Another use of the term “bogey” is a defined standard of performance to be met. The term was often encountered when purchasing audions, also known as vacuum or electron tubes at the start of the 1900s. On display in the Marshall Steam Museum is a very early Westinghouse shortwave radio. Inside the radio are three electron tubes. The three tubes as well as the other electronic components had optimum or bogey values defined which insured the optimum performance of the radio.
The vacuum tubes in the radio had limited life (generally only a couple years). As radio performance degraded, Clarence would have to replace the vacuum tubes. While numerous companies such as RCA, Philips, and Western Electric made replacement tubes, spending more money for “bogey tubes” ensured optimum performance for the radio. Bogey tubes are those tubes were all required critical specifications were within the specified tolerance for the given performance value.
The two large power tubes in the image below normally should not display a blue glow. The only color should be the orange of the heated filaments similar to the smaller tubes at left. The blue glow is plasma discharge occurring with air molecules inside the glass envelope indicating the tube is becoming “gassy” by losing its vacuum. The tube’s performance will degrade as additional leakage occurs until failure. The orange glow produced by the incandescent filament is similar to a light bulb’s operation and the filament eventually burns up as more oxygen enters the glass envelope.
In the early days of electronics manufacturing, seven levels quality control were sometimes used to define how a manufactured component could be used. The highest quality level, a bogey component such as a bogey tube, was assigned quality control levels 1 through 4. These would be sold as the premium, highest quality components and commanded the highest prices. Level 1 tubes, with performance levels exactly meeting specification with little variance, would be destined for internal company use as well as military products. Level 2 components would go into company products with level 3 units sold to other companies for use in their products. Level 4, was just within specification, were often sold as retail product in America and to foreign companies. Level 5 and 6 would have one or more quality control parameters out of specification but still perform reasonably well. These off-specification units would be sold to foreign markets for use by equipment makers and experimenters and hobbyists. Level 7 had most specification parameters out of range and end up being sold to recyclers.
YORKLYN FAKE NEWS
Fake News, also referred to as yellow journalism in the past, is the publishing or sharing of misleading information, presented in a news format, with the purpose of causing damage or harm to a business, person, government, or similar. According to scholars, the last time levels of fake news usage reached epidemic levels similar to what we experience today was in the 1890s. In 1894 Frederick Burr Opper penned a cartoon highlighting reporters anxious to spread fake news to their readership.
Displayed are two articles found in the Evening Journal and one in The Sun in 1900 and 1901. All three articles involve Israel Marshall and are obviously fake news reporting. The Marshall family were of Quaker belief making a reference to becoming a large manufacturer of a tobacco product dubious. While not banned, alcohol and tobacco products were generally avoided by the Marshalls.
The Marshall’s expertise was in making industrial rag paper and their three paper mills were operating near maximum capacity. If anything, they might have considered a fourth papermaking plant and not competing with their neighbor, the Garrett family, who produced 1.5 million pounds of smokeless tobacco products annually by 1900.
While ink can be indelible, papers generally were not a century ago. In the late 1800s, ‘indelible pencils’, also known as ‘copying pencils’, were the means used for copying documents. An individual composed a document using an indelible pencil containing a water-soluble dye mixed with the graphite. When the document was complete, a piece of moist tissue paper, placed on the document and pressed with a warm iron, transferred the dye from the graphite writing to the tissue paper providing a copy that could be read through the tissue paper when placed against a window pane.
Why might these fake news articles have appeared in local newspapers?
Answer
The ‘new mill’ referenced is no doubt the Insulite Mill that was constructed in 1899-1900 diagonally across from the Marshall Brothers Mill on Benge Road. While what follows is speculative, it is based on known facts of the time.
Israel and Elwood Marshall supplied the vulcanized fibre manufacturing market industrial rag paper for several decades prior to 1900. The Marshall companies of T.S. Marshall & Son (Marshalls Bridge, PA), Marshall Brothers (Yorklyn, DE), and Marshall & Mitchell (Wooddale, DE) were premier suppliers of vulcanizing paper to more than a half dozen firms in Wilmington, Newport, Stanton, and Newark.
Israel would have visited vulcanized fibre organizations numerous times to understood how each made their vulcanized fibre when he was called upon to develop a custom paper for a particular firm. Records reference Marshall papers returned for failure to vulcanizing properly which Israel might have investigated with a trip to the vulcanized fibre company. This access provided Israel a unique perspective and insight into the best (and not so good) ways of converting Marshall rag paper into fibre using zinc chloride as well as the many problems that plagued the labor-intensive manufacturing processes.
From Israel’s fibre company visits we can logically deduce that by the late 1890s Israel would have started to develop concepts relating to an automated vulcanized fibre manufacturing process using Marshall cotton rag paper as the primary raw material. The issue for Israel would have been how to physically prototype his automated fiber-making process without alerting his paper customers that he was doing so! Fortunately for Israel there were several means to do this at his disposal.
In 1898 Israel and Elwood had started the Fibre Specialty Company in Kennett Square to make the Hercules line of vulcanized fibre cases, trunks, suitcases, and similar products. Marshall rag paper went to one of the vulcanized fibre companies for conversion into fiber sheet which Fibre Specialty then purchased for the construction of their manufactured products. There are general ledger entries indicating Marshall Brothers specialty papers went directly to Fibre Specialty for conversion into finished products.
Israel’s 1887 patent for the ‘Manufacture of Water-Proof Building-Paper’ (Patent 356,367) which may have been made at the Homestead Mill during the 1880s. This patent describes a replacement product for tar paper that was saturated with resin, tallow, lard, or similar. Sold through the Marshall paper store in Wilmington under the name of Pioneer Building Paper, it was advertised for its lack of odor unlike the coal-tar based papers it competed with. The Marshalls also advertised their paper for carpet underlayment among other uses as the included ads from the period indicate. The patent describes a manufacturing process very much mimicking vulcanized fibre production.
To manufacture finished goods such as cases and trunks and create specialty paper products, a supplier of manufacturing equipment must have been required. Wilmington Malleable Iron Company manufactured presses, punches, and steam bending machines suitable for working vulcanized fibre and other materials. While we don’t know if Israel and Elwood purchased machinery from William H. Bayley, president to Wilmington Malleable Iron Company, the possibility seems likely. Note that the reference to T.S. Marshall (Thomas Smedley Marshall – Israel & Elwood’s father) was probably T.E. Marshall (Thomas Elwood Marshall, Israel’s younger brother) as T.S Marshall had passed away in 1887.
In addition, American Tobacco Company, recent new owner of the Garrett Snuff Mills, was erecting another snuff mill adjacent to the former Garrett Snuff Mill #2. Constructed to replace the Garrett’s Philadelphia store where smokeless tobacco products were manually packed, the new mill utilized modern automated packing equipment. While the actual Garrett equipment supplier is unknown, packing equipment was another product produced by the Wilmington Malleable Iron Company. The newspaper article relating to erecting a large snuff mill definitely qualifies as fake news either by honest error on the part of the writer or on the part of those providing the information so as not to tip off competitors as to actual plans.
The Marshalls may have wished to expand the production of Pioneer Building Paper which was first made at their Homestead Paper Mill at Marshalls Bridge, PA. The Insulite Mill construction was started in 1899 and completed in 1900. On the first floor, Pusey & Jones equipment used by some of the local vulcanized fibre companies, was installed. While it is difficult to know for sure, it is entirely possible for Pioneer Building Paper to have been manufactured on the ground floor of the new Yorklyn mill using fiber-making equipment.
It is interesting to note that in 1901 the Marshall’s received a trademark for ‘Insulite’, a paper for electrical insulating use. We know from Marshall Brothers general ledger entries that Israel produced cotton rag papers containing asbestos, mica, and other minerals mixed with the pulp at Yorklyn! The asbestos and mica impregnated rag papers, made in the Marshall Brothers Mill, while not suitable for vulcanizing, might have been treated in the Insulite Mill with similar coating materials used in making Pioneer Building Paper. Various resins and lacquers found use in the electrical industry a century ago to bind materials together, especially electrical insulating materials. The Marshalls sold their Insulite paper for 20-cents per pound. The manufacture of ‘Insulite’ at Yorklyn might explain the newspaper articles describing indelible papers in that the reporter confused ‘insulite’ with ‘indelible’.
On the second floor of the Insulite Mill, Israel prototyped his eventually patented Endless Fibre Machine. While the first floor might have been making Insulite paper or even vulcanized fibre using equipment and processes in common use at the time, on the second floor, Israel and a couple of trusted employees, worked undisturbed on development of the endless fibre machine! We know that at the end of 1904 the Marshalls incorporated National Fibre & Insulation and began construction of the #1 Fibre Mill. Tom Marshall has written that equipment from the Insulite Mill was relocated to the #1 Fibre Mill after the building was reconstructed a second time in 1905 as a result of a tornado destroying the still under construction mill building (shown above from the Clarence Marshall Collection at Hagley Digital Archive).
MAZDA CANDLES
Answer
While many credit Edison as having “invented” the electric lamp, this is inaccurate. Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated illumination using electricity in 1809 but the glowing filament burned out within minutes. Joseph Swan experimented with various incandescent light ideas starting in 1850 but his major weakness was the lack of a perfect vacuum inside the glass envelop and his bulbs self-extinguished in a few hours.
Edison’s most significant contribution was the development of a long-burning filament material when placed in a near-perfect vacuum ensuring a bulb burned for hundreds of hours. Edison and his partners then designed the equipment and distribution infrastructure to generate electricity with water or steam power and to distribute that direct current power on a commercial scale. Edison’s electrical manufacturing operations provided wire, switches, sockets, and wiring hardware for use in residences and small businesses where his improved electric lamp could be used.
Ironically Edison’s earliest bulbs used a cotton sewing fiber strengthened by zinc chloride immersion prior to carbonization into a lamp filament. If cotton and zinc chloride sound familiar, it is because cotton rag paper immersed in zinc chloride become vulcanized fibre! Edison perfected a means to remove all of the air within the glass envelope which with his cotton, and later bamboo filaments, allowed the commercialization of electric lamps. Edison used carbonized sewing threads until 1880, after which he transitioned to Bristol board (a form of carbonized paper) resulting in lamps burning for 600 hours.
Electric lamps on vehicles started in 1898 with the Columbia Electric Car made by the Electric Vehicle Company in Hartford, CT. The main problem limiting adoption of carbon filament bulbs earlier than the 1910s was the fragile carbon filament. Heated to a near molten incandescence, filaments easily shattered when bounced about on rough dirt roads of the era. More reliable kerosene, carbide, and acetylene gas lighting systems remained the standard for automotive lighting until after 1912.
Cadillac introduced the electric starter motor requiring a generator and battery in 1912. As manufacturers had perfected more ruggedized carbon filament lamps to withstand the harsh impacts of normal driving, electric lighting quickly replaced the burning of petroleum products for automotive lighting represented by the 1913 Model 76 in the Marshall Collection. By the 1920s, auto manufacturers offered carbon-filament based electric lighting systems as standard equipment.
The C marking on the lamps indicate ‘candlepower’. The first lighting instruments were candles burning animal fats (tallow), beeswax, and similar materials. The British first established ‘candlepower’ as a unit of measure for illumination in 1860. One candlepower was defined as equivalent to the light output of a spermaceti candle made from the material found in the head cavity of sperm whales. When the kerosene lamp was designed, manufacturers needed a means to indicate how luminous the lamp was as compared to the candles in use at the time. Thus, it made sense to use of candlepower to indicate how many candles a given kerosene lamp might replace while providing an equivalent luminous intensity.
The classic railroad lantern with a flat wick (3/4”) produces about 10 candlepower (roughly a 7-watt nightlight bulb equivalent) of illumination. A round wick table lamp similar to a Rayo kerosene lamp generates approximately 80 candlepower (60-watt electric light bulb) of illumination while an Aladdin lamp with a gauze mantle that incandesces produces roughly 300 candlepower (250-watt electric light bulb). The use of ‘wattage’ with respect to light bulbs references the amount of power consumed and not the light intensity produced by the bulb.
Today the standard unit of measure replacing ‘candlepower’ is ‘candela’ both of which represent light intensity as perceived by the human eye. For scientific work both foot-candles (U.S. imperial system) and lux (European metric system) are defined as the amount of visible light that falls upon a flat plane or surface. A single foot-candle is equivalent to the amount of light that falls on a surface that is one foot away from a standard candle’s flame, and a lux is the amount of light that falls on a surface one meter away from a standard candle’s flame. For conversion, 1 foot-candle is the equivalent of 10.764 lux.
The lamp marked ‘32&31C’ indicates the bulb is a dual-filament headlight bulb producing 21 candlepower (15-watt electric light bulb equivalent) at low beam and 32 candlepower (25-watt electric light bulb equivalent) at high beam setting. The two smallest bulbs (parking, tail, or license plate lights) are 3-candlepower while the intermediate size bulb brake lamp bulb) is 15-candlepower.
AUBURN HEIGHTS PLUGGED IN
Over the 18 years that Tom Marshall wrote historical articles for the Weekly News, he would mention that his grandfather, Israel Marshall, built Auburn Heights with “modern” electric lights powered by a D.C. generator located in Marshall Brothers Paper Mill. Auburn Heights remained D.C. (direct current) powered until the estate was supplied A.C. power from Delaware Power & Light Company (predecessor to today’s Delmarva Power) in the 1930s.
While we’ve been inside Auburn Heights many times, it wasn’t until recently that we noticed something unique in how the mansion’s electrification was done. The mansion still retains many of the early-1900s push-button light switches with bright brass wall plates and original ceiling chandeliers and light fixtures. While scarce, one finds several two-blade (no ground) duplex electrical receptacles in most of the rooms. Only rooms such as the kitchen and study, which have seen remodeling, have more modern electrical fixtures and the occasional 3-blade grounded receptacle.
When Israel and his family moved into Auburn Heights in late 1897, the house would not have had electrical receptacles installed as they had not yet been invented! How did electrical appliances such as a fan or toaster get ‘plugged in’ during the first decade or two at Auburn Heights?
Answer
For a recent holiday event, we chose not to use the ceiling fixtures at Auburn Heights because most have modern, cold-white LED lamps installed that do not fit the period of the house with respect to color (electric lamps in the original fixtures would have emitted a yellowish spectrum candle-flame color typical of the glowing carbon lamp filaments of the era). To properly light the areas people would occupy, it was necessary to move some of the rarely used table and floor lamps to alternate locations as they mostly had proper incandescent bulbs remaining in them.
In moving the lamp fixtures, we noticed that many two-blade electrical receptacles are installed in the baseboards! We also recalled that portable appliances such as table and floor lamps, fans, irons, and heaters weren’t invented until the mid to later 1890s. While the British had invented electrical plugs and receptacles in the late 1880s, it wouldn’t be until 1904 that American Harvey Hubbell patented the first detachable electric plug (right) and receptacle for use on American electrical systems. Thus, with Auburn Heights constructed in 1897, it is unlikely electrical receptacles were installed during construction.
Edison patented his design for the first commercial electric lamp in 1880. By the mid- and late 1880s the electrification of America had begun. America’s electrification utilized simple, almost primitive, electrical components. Electrical watthour meters weren’t invented until the later 1880s and didn’t see use until the turn of the century so power initially entered a home through only a fused disconnect (electricity use was billed by the total ‘candlepower’ of electric lamps a homeowner had). From the disconnect which included a fuse, various circuits powered lighting fixtures were controlled from a pushbutton switch on a nearby wall. While Auburn Heights’ wiring is installed in the walls, many homes of the era retrofitted with electrical power had the wiring routed on the walls!
The Marshalls, known to take advantage of the latest technologies, might have purchased or were gifted appliances such as electric fans or table & floor lamps. Such devices were most likely supplied with an “Edison Base Plug” as shown above. These plugs were equivalent to the base of an Edison electric lamp but with the wiring to the appliance instead of a glass envelope to contain a glowing carbon filament. A “plug” of the era was designed such that it could be screwed into an electric lamp socket in place of the bulb (or with an adapter that accepted a plug and lamp) without causing twisting of the wire!
Sometime in the early 1900s, appliances would have been available with Harvey Hubbell’s earliest patented plug which is similar to today’s plug and receptacle except that the two blades are coplanar as seen in the first image. Hubbell also offered several Edison to Hubbell adapters as shown in the images below.
Within a few years Hubbell redesigned and patented a new plug configuration. Hubbell changed the coplanar blade design to a parallel blade design and implemented several improvements. This is the plug configuration we use today. During the 19-teens, appliances generally came with either Hubbell’s coplanar or parallel plug configuration. This created the need for receptacles capable of accepting either configuration of plug (see images below).
When Israel eventually did add dedicated receptacles to the mansion, one can wonder what he might have had added and when. More than likely the addition of electrical receptacles occurred in the 1930s when the house was changed over from the mills’ D.C. power to DP&L’s A.C. power. The easiest way to add receptacles is at the baseboards where fishing wires down into the basement was easiest and there is a secure piece of baseboard lumber for fastening the receptacle’s electrical box. We note baseboard receptacles at a number of locations within the mansion. As the parallel blade plug had become standard, the mansion may have had combination coplanar and parallel plane receptacles installed (similar to the right image above) reflecting the fact that existing appliances of the early 20th century still in use in the mansion relied upon coplanar plugs.
