SH Archive 1908 machine used in Gary W. Va. mine - what is it?

[Archive]

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Username: flameto
Date: 2018-08-13 10:31:32
Reaction Score: 9

I think the truth reflected in this machine and a lot of other past marvels, as well as the fact that our physically-unimpressive species is dominating this planet to the point of allegedly destroying it, is that we're a really smart species. In any given time you're going to have a certain number of "geniuses" who can imagine complex structures and mechanisms in their head and realize them into the world. In our time many of them write complex software programs, for instance. In other times, the mechanical arts were probably more emphasized. This also applies to the incredible clocks posted elsewhere.

People like to tinker and create, so when a complex society has some resources and is stable for long enough it's gonna produce some pretty incredible stuff.

What's weird is that all the incredibly sophisticated societies that seem to have existed in the past, just keep vanishing, and sometimes even deliberately covered up.

Some sort of reset seems to keep happening and the main suspects seem to be catastrophic geological change or impacts from space and/or malevolent human or non-human beings manipulating human events. Or it could just be a series of wars that destroy entire populations, followed by denials from the victors that the genocided peoples ever existed. Maybe that's what happened with the giants. Maybe sometimes biological or other incredible weapons are used that backfire and decimate the source civilization as well.

I think there's a common perception in America culture, (idk abt elsewhere), that there's a lot of dummies out there. And I can't deny that I indulge that view sometimes. But I think the reality in our time is that the American education system is designed in many ways, by intent or accident, to break people's spirit and weaken their abilities to think, create, communicate and generally function as a self-empowered adult within the world.

Now add in a 40+ hour workweek and a commute, TV news and entertainment, "work hard play hard" culture, the combination of religious/cultural sexual repression and its commercial exploitation, debt, bad food, weakened social bonds and the diminishment of public social spaces other than nightlife, the psychological and social disruptions caused by two world wars and a great depression, the end of extended families living in one area over multiple generations....uh... as I said, add all that in and you've got a weakened, anxious, atomized population who are vulnerable to all sorts of psychological tricks and have no sense of history other than that which is given to them.

But idk, just some thoughts I had abt this thread and the forum's topic in general.

 

[Archive]

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Username: BlackFlag
Date: 2018-08-30 06:07:35
Reaction Score: 5

Part on right looks like dual chain-saw type devices.... i see 2 levers, probably stop and go. Part extending off to the left looks like a conveyor belt. Those lines look like hydraulic lines..... Probably powered externally by hydraulics. I'd imagine a steam powered hydraulic gearbox.
Would be useless for drilling rock.... but could break up soft / loose material. Maybe used in a coal or salt mine to rake walls and ceilings?

Doesn't look particularly anachronistic to me. If you want anachronistic technology, lets talk about lime lights. How the f**k were people safely separating water into hydrogen and oxygen, at industrial scale, in the 19th century???

 

[Archive]

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Username: ScottFreeman
Date: 2019-04-09 21:31:22
Reaction Score: 1

I'm trying to figure out who built this machine and when it was actually done. Looks kinda too cool for 1908 IMHO. I'm probably looking it up all wrong but I can't find any info.

Official description, "Machine used in Gary W. Va. mine that digs the coal and loads it on the car. With it 3 men can do the work of 50 in the old way. Yet they use boys to drive and trap. "

View attachment 5477

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Does it look normal to you for 1908? How was it powered in your opinion?

As was said, I believe at least part is electric. Probably the conveyor/winch portion. It can be pulled from the front wheels leaving the center spinning flap contraption(?) unblocked as it would have been by a hitch. As opposed to the stranded wire going horizontally down the 'boom', the coiled wire hanging below it appears smooth/shiny with covered insulation. This, though, makes me wonder what the apparently perforated(?) cylinder between the front and back wheels is, usually it would be an intake filter or perhaps a muffler so...either/or/both?

Part on right looks like dual chain-saw type devices.... i see 2 levers, probably stop and go. Part extending off to the left looks like a conveyor belt. Those lines look like hydraulic lines..... Probably powered externally by hydraulics. I'd imagine a steam powered hydraulic gearbox.
Would be useless for drilling rock.... but could break up soft / loose material. Maybe used in a coal or salt mine to rake walls and ceilings?

Doesn't look particularly anachronistic to me. If you want anachronistic technology, lets talk about lime lights. How the f**k were people safely separating water into hydrogen and oxygen, at industrial scale, in the 19th century???

And, could be this too!

 

[Archive]

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Username: RecycledSoul
Date: 2019-04-09 21:44:42
Reaction Score: 1

I'm trying to figure out who built this machine and when it was actually done. Looks kinda too cool for 1908 IMHO. I'm probably looking it up all wrong but I can't find any info.

Official description, "Machine used in Gary W. Va. mine that digs the coal and loads it on the car. With it 3 men can do the work of 50 in the old way. Yet they use boys to drive and trap. "

View attachment 5477

* * * * *

Does it look normal to you for 1908? How was it powered in your opinion?

Not to detract from the post, but How would you like to come down that driveway from the house on the left above on a frosty morning? That is scary! Wow!

In that light, is it a real picture, or an “artist rendering”?

 

[Whitewave]

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Username: whitewave
Date: 2019-04-10 04:29:14
Reaction Score: 1

Could it be electrically powered? There are cords hanging down and a trolley-looking switch horizontal to it.

Wow! There is a surprising (and frustrating) dearth of information about this particular boring machine.I just spent an hour googling any number of combinations for boring machines in the 1900's and got the exact same word-for-word description of this machine. Nobody seems to know who manufactured it, when it came out, nada.

 

[Timeshifter]

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Username: Timeshifter
Date: 2019-04-10 10:40:37
Reaction Score: 1

This little thing looks so out of place in its time. I still wonder if we could locate at least an appointed designer of this machine.

I can find nothing online with regards to anything like this kind of machinery circa 1908, however waki did produce this image from the year, 1908

Donkeys and carts... Waki

I guess they could not figure out how to work this thing given its complexity?

However pneumatics/ hydraulics were well in use by now, so why all the gears, not rams and pistons...

 

[Archive]

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Username: jd755
Date: 2019-04-10 13:52:07
Reaction Score: 5

A dearth of information indeed. It's an Alamy stock photo so either you trust Alamy or you don't.

This is a switch box.

This is the rotary cutting heads (see post below) which oddly do not seem able to face any other way. I suspect an archimedes screw arrangement takes the cut coal to the conveyor belt of the machine, don't know though just suspect.

This is the drive that tilts the head up and down. It doesn't seem to be able to go from side to side.

This is the twin chain drives which keep the machine pressing into the coal and move it backwards and forwards.

Why gears and cogs?
Again I don't know but suspect because gears and cogs deliver a greater more reliable torque and are much more likely to carry on working in the coal dust environment for longer than the hydraulics of the day.

I wonder if the machine was trialled and never used.
The really odd thing is the two quality picture. The background is all 'very light grey' with the machine being much darker and not only that the machine is much sharper than the background.

And why oh why is the electrical plug hidden by the oily rag?

 

[Archive]

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Username: Red Bird
Date: 2019-04-10 14:44:50
Reaction Score: 1

Along the lines of DUMBS, I saw this map the other day. She overlayed David Paulides (Missing 411) map of people disappearing with the supposed map of DUMBS.
I listened to a Paulides interview and he also said it was common for these disappearances to be in areas called something like, Hells Canyon, Devils Point, etc. He tried to track down how these areas got these names, sometimes could, and they had a history of strange happenings.

 

[Archive]

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Username: ScottFreeman
Date: 2019-04-10 15:03:56
Reaction Score: 6

Along the lines of DUMBS, I saw this map the other day. She overlayed David Paulides (Missing 411) map of people disappearing with the supposed map of DUMBS.
I listened to a Paulides interview and he also said it was common for these disappearances to be in areas called something like, Hells Canyon, Devils Point, etc. He tried to track down how these areas got these names, sometimes could, and they had a history of strange happenings.

View attachment 20065

I'd like to see a map of DUMBs overlaid onto a pre-mud map of N. America and it's labelled cities to see if they've been looking for them.

 

[Archive]

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Username: jd755
Date: 2019-04-11 06:03:44
Reaction Score: 1

What an idiot. What I said were cutting heads are actually the driving cogs of the toothed chains in this picture which revolve around the width of the cutting head. Open to prevent the cut coal from clogging the mechanism as it would if they were conventional gears like those on the side.

This machine is basically a nodding donkey which can move its cutting head up and down and all broken coal falls to the ground where the mechanism which I said is a chain drive is actually another conveyor which forces the broken coal backwards under the machine to the angled scoop mid picture which is presumably where it rises through the machine to the longer conveyor heading backwards.
The motor driving this machine is on the far side which is why we get this side view. Same reason the plug is hidden?

And this upright 'metal bar' or angle iron or pipe well it looks to me to be a digital addition. Look how dead straight its sides are in this blow up. It is the only dead straight thing in this entire image.
As you may have guessed Alamy are not trustworthy, to me at least.

 

[KD Archive]

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Username: KorbenDallas
Date: 2020-03-03 11:29:31
Reaction Score: 1

We have way more forum members these days. May be our newer arrivals could figure out what the name of this machine was and who produced the contraption...