At the MIT Museum
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Our Director of Education, Stephen Guerriero, had a wonderful opportunity to share some time at the MIT Museum.
"What a privilege to be able to speak today at the MIT Museum, and to lead an interactive family workshop with two of the best collaborators I could have - Northeastern University co-op student Lain Orndorff and Massachusetts Bay Community College intern Nicholas Adams.
"As part of the MIT Museum's yearlong thematic look at the concept of time, I was able to share some of the history of the industrialization of the way we think about - and measure - time.
"From farms to factories - as the small scale agrarian economy envisioned by Jefferson gave way to the growth of the domestic mass-manufacturing industries championed by Hamilton, so did our concept of time. I spoke about the first Mill Girls of Waltham, and how the American Industrial Revolution scaled from right here on the banks of the Charles River and built later cities like Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester NH, and Biddeford ME - all on the Waltham-Lowell System of manufacturing. Francis Cabot Lowell's vision completely transformed the young United States.
"Meanwhile, Aaron Dennison and Royal Robbins built the first factory in the world that could do precision machining at scale - the Waltham Watch Company. Waltham Watches, like Abraham Lincoln's William Ellery model, made watches cheap, accurate, and accessible to the general public.
"At our family workshop, Lain demonstrated the inner workings of a Waltham pocket watch and disassembled and reassembled a watch movement right in front of us - a skill he taught himself in less than two weeks! Then, Nicholas helped participants make rubbings of their names using moveable type, much in the way Linotype machines deliver slugs of type that could be inked and pressed for daily newspapers. Nicholas designed, 3D printed, and refined all of the parts for this activity. I couldn't be more proud of both our Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation guys that helped plan and facilitate the workshop - with full room of families eager to learn and engage in the workshop. One 9-year old, visiting from London, just might be the next National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors, Inc. member!
"It was especially gratifying to see our two Museums come together in such a wonderful collaborative way - I'm so grateful to Carole Urbano for her help in coordinating our visit and the support in setting it up, and Kate Silverman Wilson for originally chatting last year about our submitted proposal. I know Bob Perry and Michael John Gorman have agreed more collaboration is great for all of us, and this is such a fun example of what's possible!"
