Past motion marvels can inspire future creations
Summer is vacation season, filled with road trips and relaxation, but also a bit of discovery and surprise. On a recent trip, I came across an outdoor historical exhibition at a park in Ashtabula, Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie.
The gigantic steel structure (pictured above) was the combination operator room and leg and bucket mechanism used in Hulett ore unloaders from the late 19th century until the end of the 20th century. These Hulett ore unloaders once dotted port cities throughout the industrial Great Lakes region. They were a time and laborsaving device invented by George Hulett in the late 1890s. It replaced various methods of unloading cargo holds of ships on the Great Lakes, including teams of men using shovels who would be lowered into the holds of freighters to unload iron ore, a job which took days to complete. With Hulett’s new invention, this was cut dramatically to about 8 to 10 hours to completely unload a ship.
I was lucky enough to see a Hulett ore unloader in action several times as they were in the process of being phased out in favor of the new self-unloading ore freighters becoming more common. Seeing them in action was, as the cliché goes, poetry in motion.
They’ve been likened to gigantic metallic dinosaurs, squeaking and squealing, plunging down into a ship’s cargo hold, scooping up 15 tons of reddish iron ore in one motion, hauling it back up and dumping it into railroad cars, then repeating the process until emptying the ship.
To observe these huge machines at work was to be awed by the power and beauty of their elegant motion. But seeing the static display didn’t convey any of that raw magic. One has to imagine what it would have looked and sounded like when these machines were in their prime.
This got me thinking about the power of these and other similar motion machines to inspire awe and wonder in people, particularly future generations of engineers. Being able to see these gigantic, larger than life, impressive motion machines doing their work gives rise to a certain sense of wonder at how they operate, and the thought that went into their design and construction.
That sense of wonder can be activated for young people today by seeing the scale of these machines. And while seeing photos and videos of the Huletts in particular, or even parts of the machines on display, can certainly be inspiring, there’s still no substitute for experiencing one live and in action.
That’s all the more reason why we should support eff orts to preserve more of such examples of engineering marvels and achievements of the past, in order to inspire future generations of engineers and scientists.
MILES BUDIMIR
SENIOR EDITOR
Filed Under: DIGITAL ISSUES • DESIGN WORLD