Author Archive for Debbie Rudder

Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop and problem gambling

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People around the world are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth on 7 February. Australia’s librarians have named 2012 as National Year of Reading, so we can celebrate the bicentenary with extra enthusiasm.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mr and Mrs Handcock and Martha Lennard, 1921.

This plaque features an appropriately vivid but depressing scene in the shop imagined by Dickens as the home of Little Nell and her grandfather. Along with the bucket-loads of Dickens-branded merchandise available today, it is testament to the popularity of his tragicomic novel The Old Curiosity Shop, which has been in print continuously since 1841.

The earthenware transfer-printed hand-tinted plaque was made by William Adams and Sons of Tunstall, England, between 1896 and 1921. In the 1930s or 1940s Waddingtons made a set of playing cards that ironically bore an illustration of the shop, the girl, and her grandfather, who was addicted to gambling on card games. Today’s fans might prefer to buy a t-shirt or bumper sticker asking ‘What would Little Nell do?’

In considering why Dickens’s stories are of interest to Australians today, we can point to his rich array of characters and situations. We can make parallels between the episodic and dramatic nature of his novels and the current popularity of TV serials that share this approach. Or we can reflect on Dickens as a commentator on issues that are still relevant today.

The issue at the core of The Old Curiosity Shop is problem gambling, which amplifies Nell’s poverty and leads to her travels, tribulations, starvation and death. The same issue is important in Australia today, both socially and politically, but the current focus is on poker machines rather than cards. Gambling addicts still borrow and steal to feed their habit, families still lose their homes because of the losses incurred, but poker machines are promoted as fun for players, providers of jobs and a means of raising funds for community projects.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mrs Shirley Nutt, 2008.

Of course, many players readily control their outlays, but problem gamblers provide an unhealthy share of the profits made by clubs, pubs and State governments. The best solution might be to restrict payouts. I wager not many of today’s gamblers would be tempted to pour streams of cash into this early poker machine just to win a few cigars.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Bold multicolour graphics, coloured symbols on the spinning reels, and the prospect of a cash payout made this 1930s machine more inviting. Although poker machines were illegal in Australia at the time, their use in NSW clubs was tolerated. Today, poker machines are big business in several States, and the lure of huge jackpots makes dazzling video poker machines even more seductive.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

In 1956 poker machines were legalised in NSW. This 1950s poker machine, made in Sydney, appears to have paid a maximum of 10 shillings on a bet of sixpence. The player could pull the handle and anticipate the thrill of seeing twenty sixpences clattering into the chrome tray. Above the tray, the lined and curved chrome fascia mimics the cars of its day. Some players imagined they were in the driver’s seat, able to improve their odds by pulling the handle of the ‘one-armed bandit’ in a special way.

The symbols on this machine’s reels are playing cards – which takes us back to Nell’s grandfather, the ruinous risks he took in the hope of winning at cards, and his zealous certainty that the odds would soon turn in his favour. Charles Dickens was indeed a master storyteller, and his stories still speak forcefully to us today.

A battery that you can ‘refuel’ instantly: the vanadium flow battery

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This post is part of an ongoing series of energy storage posts by intern Brett Szmajda.

Walking into the Castle Hill stores of the Powerhouse Museum is like walking into the prop warehouse of a Hollywood movie studio. You enter through a nondescript door in a modest, unassuming looking set of buildings, and when you turn around you encounter a cornucopia of steam engines, Mardi Gras floats, flywheels the size of a Mini Cooper, and exotic old X-ray machines that could be used for set dressing in a Frankenstein remake. The air is crisp and clean from the climate control system; the objects are neatly ordered and tagged, on stacks as high as a giraffe. We round a corner, and we come across an object that looks as if a drawer full of hanging files got intimate with the plumbing section at Bunnings.

“Take a look at this.” says Debbie.
“What is it?” I say.
“It’s one of the most promising battery technologies of the last 20 years,” she begins.

The vanadium flow battery.

The vanadium flow battery is a brilliant archetype of the trials and triumphs that accompany research and development. Throughout the development, led by Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, research momentum was maintained by the phenomenal theoretical promise of the battery. Imagine a fully electric car that you could ‘recharge’ in a matter of minutes. Imagine a battery that would let small businesses and power companies store cheap energy generated at night, and use that power during the day, when energy is expensive.

A typical rechargeable battery contains two electrodes of differing material, immersed in a liquid electrolyte; chemical reactions occur between the differing metals of the electrodes, mediated by the electrolyte. But in a flow battery, like the vanadium battery, the principal chemical reactions instead occur between two liquid electrolytes. These electrolytes are pumped past one another (hence the name flow battery) in separate chambers that are separated by a thin membrane. As the two electrolytes flow past one another, they exchange ions (charged molecules) across the membrane, and this generates current.

Close-up of the exterior of the vanadium battery cells, where the electrolytes interact with each other.

To understand the difficulty in designing a flow battery, consider how your lungs extract oxygen from the air, and remove waste carbon dioxide from your body. Inhaling causes thin-walled sacs in your lungs (called alveoli) to inflate. Alveoli are surrounded by clusters of blood vessels; oxygen diffuses across the thin alveolar membrane, into the blood. Simultaneously, carbon dioxide diffuses from your blood into your lungs, to be exhaled. It’s critically important that the blood and air are kept in separate compartments (failure to do so would of course be fatal), and only selected molecules — oxygen and carbon dioxide — are allowed to pass through. Analogously, the challenge of designing a flow battery is making a membrane that will allow current to flow between the different electrolytes, but that doesn’t let the two electrolytes mix. The vanadium battery wasn’t the first flow battery, but it was the first to use the same metal in both electrolyte solutions, thus neatly eliminating the problem of electrolytes mixing across the membrane.

Golfcart powered by vanadium battery, used as a prototype during battery development.

The unique strengths of the vanadium battery are a short recharge time and the ability to store charge efficiently for long periods. The vanadium battery can be quickly recharged at high voltages; or — perhaps most attractively — it can be instantly recharged by replacing the electrolyte with fresh, charged electrolyte. Second, by pumping the electrolytes out of the ‘cells’ (where the reactions take place) and into storage vats, the vanadium battery can sit for many hours, with no self-discharge. These two attributes suggested potential commercial applications. For the consumer, there could be electric cars that you refilled with vanadium ‘fuel’ instead of gasoline; and for the business customer, the vanadium battery could be used as energy storage for the electric grid, allowing arbitrage (charge batteries when electricity is cheap, use battery power when electricity is expensive) and providing stability during intermittent drops in power supply.

Vanadium batteries have found a home providing energy storage for power stations, with several stations world-wide trialling the technology. Unfortunately, the harsh light of reality intruded on the dream of vanadium-fuelled cars — vanadium batteries are expensive to manufacture, have problems operating at low temperatures, and no battery to date has an energy density (that is, power per unit weight) that can compete with the fantastic energy density of petrol. But research continues: scientists have recently boasted numerous improvements to the energy density and temperature tolerance of vanadium batteries. Don’t give up on the dreams of the vanadium car.

A hot topic: Solar Thermal Power

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This post is part of an ongoing series of energy storage posts by intern Brett Szmajda.

When I say ‘solar power’, most people conjure up images of the thin, iridescent blue panels that make a patchwork quilt out of the roofs of suburban houses. But photovoltaic solar power — converting the sun’s rays directly to electricity — is a youngster in the field of solar energy. Its great, great grandfather is solar thermal power; and with the looming threat of climate change, heat from the sun could be a significant part of Australia’s renewable energy transformation.

Solar Heater by Lawence Hargrave

The principle behind solar thermal power should be familiar to anyone who has ignited dry leaves with a magnifying glass. Solar thermal power utilises the heat from the sun’s rays to do useful work. This object from the collection, invented by Lawrence Hargrave, illustrates the Australian inventor’s early attempts to heat water using the sun’s heat. Sunlight is focused by the conical dish onto the central pipe, which is closed at one end so it can hold a small volume of water. As best as we can tell, this was a hobby or proof-of-concept by Hargrave, who was also making small steam engines. However, around the same time as Hargrave was toying with solar, inventors on the other side of the world were patenting larger solar water heaters that could heat water for a household.

Utility companies have taken these basic small-scale ideas and supercharged them, creating solar thermal power stations to yoke the sun’s heat and turn it into electricity. (There are many alternative designs; most involve a lot of mirrors). For example, ‘power tower’ solar thermal power plants use several hundred mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on a central tower containing a column of water; this causes the water to boil, producing steam that drives a turbo-generator.

A 'power tower' solar thermal station. Image by Flickr user afloresm, reproduced under Creative Commons licence.

The big problem for solar thermal power generation is that sunlight isn’t constant — a solar thermal plant must contend with clouds, inclement weather, and of course, nightfall. The Solar Tres power plant (a ‘power tower’ design) in Andalusia, Spain has overcome this using a novel form of energy storage: molten salt. Instead of heating water directly, sunlight is concentrated onto a column containing a mix of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate. The heat from the molten salt boils water and turns a turbine, as usual. The advantage of this additional step is that the molten salt can store the accumulated heat (for the electronics junkies in the audience, it’s almost like a ‘heat capacitor’). So when the sun goes behind the clouds or night falls, the heat from the molten salt continues to boil water, turning the turbine and keeping the power flowing. The simple addition of molten salt to the system allows 15 hours of heat storage, meaning that Solar Tres can run around the clock.

Solar thermal plants have been rolled out in a number of locations world-wide, but the uptake in Australia has been limited to two small plants: a 1.5 MW demonstration solar thermal plant has been added to the coal-fired Liddell Power station, and CSIRO has a 0.5 MW solar thermal power station in Mayfield. The biggest recent development was in June 2011, when a 250 MW solar thermal/gas hybrid plant (Solar Dawn) was given 464 million dollars of government funding as part of the Australian Government’s Solar Flagships program. Solar power is a natural fit to the Australian climate, so I’d expect some considerable growth in this sector. Until then, we’re left to wonder why Germany has invested more in solar infrastructure than Australia, when the majority of Australia has more sunshine hours per day than the German average.

Flash of insight led to brilliant Australian invention

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Atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Powerhouse Museum Collection.


Dr Alan Walsh had an ‘aha’ moment while gardening in 1954. Straight away, he phoned a friend and said: ‘we’ve been measuring the wrong bloody thing!’ A CSIRO chemist, he wasn’t referring to delphiniums (blue) or geraniums (red). He was thinking about atoms that emit characteristic colours when heated in a flame – elements such as strontium (red) and selenium (blue).

At that time, the concentration of certain atoms in a sample was determined by measuring the amount of light the sample EMITS when heated in a flame. He realised it would be better to measure how much light of a particular colour (wavelength) the sample ABSORBS. He thought his ‘atomic absorption’ method would be more accurate than the emission method.

Now Walsh had been thinking about this problem off and on for years. In his ‘aha’ moment he realised it was possible to get around the major stumbling block: the need to filter out the emitted light so it didn’t swamp the measuring device.

Walsh soon set up an experiment to test his ideas. It worked brilliantly. With the help of other scientists and technicians, he designed a new type of lamp containing the element to be measured. His technique did prove to be more accurate than the old method – and it was more sensitive, and useful for many more elements. His work led to the creation of a local industry making atomic absorption spectrophotometers (AAS). It also led to scientific and practical advances in many fields as CSIRO scientists developed new techniques and labs around the world purchased the instruments.

One of these instruments was offered to the Museum a few years ago by Tim and Kylie Bennett from Alstonville in northern NSW. They were planning to upgrade to a new AAS for their analytical service lab, and the donation of their old one was very welcome. They told us its original owner was the University of New England, where it had been used for studying domestic ruminant physiology.

Now that more information is available online, it appears highly likely that the ruminants studied were sheep and the instrument was used to show (among other things) that they need copper and zinc in their diet to grow good quality wool. A nice connection to our wool and textile collections!

More information is also available about the work of the Bennetts’ company, Soiltec. As its name suggests, it was involved in analysing agricultural soils, but it also analysed plant material. This work was largely aimed at helping farmers grow crops without adding unnecessary quantities of fertiliser to the soil. A nice connection to our sustainability theme!

Making connections is a vital role for museums. These include connections between objects and ideas; connections between disparate objects; connections between objects and images; and, most importantly, connections between objects, ideas and people. I hope my chemistry-themed blog posts for the International Year of Chemistry have made some interesting connections for you.

How do you bottle the wind?

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Image: Powerhouse Museum

“The final perfection of the storage battery, which I believe has been accomplished, will in my opinion bring about a multitude of changes and improvements in our business and social economy.”
— Thomas Edison
North American Review, 1902

The Clean Energy Act recently passed into law. This carbon pricing legislation heralds a broad transformation in the electricity industry in Australia: increased investment in renewable energy will prompt a revision of our energy infrastructure, and a key focus of this restructuring will involve adding energy storage to the electrical grid.

Energy storage is exactly as the name implies: you take energy, usually electricity, and convert it to another form to save it for later use. The electronics industry has been revolutionised by innovations in energy storage: iPhones, portable GPS, and ultra-slim laptops would not exist without batteries that efficiently convert electricity into chemical energy, and back again. You might expect that the electrical grid, which brings power to homes and industry, has been similarly transformed by these innovations in energy storage. The reality is a very different matter. Bill Gates wonderfully summarised this in a 2010 talk: if we connected all the batteries in the world, including all batteries from the consumer electronic devices I mentioned above, this monumental collection of batteries would be able to store — wait for it — ten minutes of the world’s energy demands.

Given the ubiquity of batteries in our everyday lives, it may seem odd that we do so little grid-scale energy storage. The reason for this is historical: the technology for generating energy outpaced the technology for storing it efficiently. As a result, today’s electricity grid is the ultimate ‘just in time’ system: electricity supply is generated to match demand, as perfectly as possible, as demand varies across each day and season. To facilitate this, some power stations (coal or nuclear) generate continuously 365 days a year, while others switch on and off as demand fluctuates (natural gas or hydroelectric power stations). 

As we transition to renewable forms of power generation — e.g. solar and wind — the design of our electricity grid hits a roadblock, because most renewable power plants are intermittent generators. The sun doesn’t shine all the time, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time; and the times when these renewable plants are generating lots of electricity might not correspond to times when we, the electricity-consuming public, are demanding more power. As a result, renewable power plants can’t be on all the time (and compete with coal power) and can’t be switched on and off at will (and compete with demand-following power plants like natural gas). This limits the market uptake of renewable power technologies, and makes the energy they generate more expensive than energy from other sources.

The answer to both these problems? Energy storage. First and most obviously, storing energy when it is in surplus lets renewable power plants deliver power to consumers when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. With energy storage, renewable power plants can compete with continuously operating power stations like coal power plants. Secondly, integrating energy storage into renewable power stations allows the owners of these plants to engage in arbitrage: producing energy when a station can generate it most cheaply, and selling it at a premium when customers demand it. With energy storage, renewable power plants can also compete effectively with demand-following plants like natural gas power plants.

Improving competitiveness in both these ways will mean that renewable power plants are a more attractive investment, and it will drive down the cost of the energy they produce. This is a good thing for both the environment and your wallet.

There are many more benefits to grid-scale energy storage, but I hope I’ve sold you on at least two reasons why storing electricity is a good idea. (Those interested in other applications of grid-scale energy storage should see Appendix C of this 2002 Sandia report — be forewarned that it’s a little dry and technical). In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing a number of blog posts about various forms of energy storage that we might see commercialised within the next ten years. Batteries are just the starting point: ultracapacitors, flywheels, molten metal, compressed air, and even hydrogen are all forms of grid-scale energy storage that are being considered by utility companies worldwide. Bottling the wind will soon be something that we rely on every day.

This piece was written by Brett Szmajda, intern at the Powerhouse Museum.

How many stories can one object tell?

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Powerhouse Collection. Gift of Mr C A Saxby, 1970.

When I decided to feature our rare Whittle aircraft engine in a recent blog post, I entered the term ‘Whittle’ in our database. Data on the engine appeared, along with a photo. Another object also popped up, with little data and no image. Intrigued, I had to check out this ‘early experimental Whittle turbine blade with fir tree base’.

I’d seen turbine blades before, but none as small as this, just three inches (75 mm) long and one inch (25 mm) wide. I didn’t have a clue about the fir tree base, but I did know it couldn’t be made of timber! And I wanted to know more about the donor, Mr C A Saxby, and whether the Whittle attribution was true; if it was, the object could connect us directly with an important and contentious research program, Frank Whittle’s development of the jet engine during World War II.

Powerhouse Collection. Gift of Mr C A Saxby, 1970.

Whittle’s autobiography (Jet: the story of a pioneer) explained that the fir tree base was developed by his team to overcome the problem of wobbly blades. A turbine has a large number of blades attached to a fast-spinning rotor, and vibration at the attachment points reduces both efficiency and lifespan. Whittle’s earliest experiments used the established ‘bulb root’ design, a cylindrical base that fits in a matching slot; in cross-section, this resembles a plant bulb in a round hole. The fir tree base, which has a series of steps that lock the blade into the rotor more effectively, is the standard design today.

But who was Mr Saxby, and how did he come to have the blade? Exam results in Trove gave me his Christian names, Colin Ambrose. A 1935 article turned up a grainy photo of him; the caption placed Saxby as one of a select group to graduate from Sydney University that year with honours in electrical and mechanical engineering.

So Saxby was a bright young engineering graduate at the time Whittle began his research. Did he travel to England and work with Whittle? One of our archivists searched for correspondence related to the object – and scotched that theory. The real story was that Saxby was the Acting Advisory and Inspecting Engineer to the NSW Government and was sent to England to tour various engineering works soon after the war ended. When he was at the Vickers works, an employee offered him the turbine blade. As Vickers made jet engines during the war, with advice from Whittle, it is highly likely that the story of the blade is true.

Curators must be sceptical about provenance because apocryphal stories can develop around objects, often linking them to famous people or events. However, provenance is not the only story. One object can tell many stories, and in this case they include: a problem to be solved; engineers striving to find a solution; the technology this contributed to; use of that technology in warfare and later in civilian aviation; technology transfer from Whittle to Vickers; and the story of Colin Saxby, his contribution to engineering in NSW, and his decision to donate this interesting souvenir to the Museum, to inspire future generations.

Brian Schmidt wins the Nobel Prize

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It’s an exciting time for astronomy in Australia, with the recent announcement that Professor Brian Schmidt is to receive the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics and the strong possibility that the nation could be selected next year as the site for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Both optical astronomy (Schmidt’s area of expertise) and radio astronomy (the domain of the SKA) have flourished here since World War 2. Australia is thoroughly embedded in the amazing international effort to observe, measure and understand the universe.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mt Stromlo Observatory, 1989.

While most of the Powerhouse Museum’s astronomy collection relates to the history of our own Sydney Observatory, we have a few items used at Mt Stromlo, where Schmidt carried out his prize-winning observations. Professor Ben Gascoigne built this polarimeter at Mt Stromlo in 1963 to detect magnetic fields in distant dust clouds. The instrument, currently on display at Sydney Observatory, was designed to be bolted onto a telescope, gather the light scattered by dust particles, and detect the alignment of particles that indicates the presence of a magnetic field.

Now Brian Schmidt was born and studied in the USA but carried out key work in Australia. The aura of winning a Nobel Prize is such that we are happy to claim him as one of ours, while also making the same claim about Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, who was born and studied here but migrated to the USA, where she did the work that won her the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Both Schmidt and Blackburn hold dual citizenship, so they can be claimed legitimately by both nations. Importantly, these scientists can be seen as valuable role models for the youth of both countries, which is why the Museum is interested in telling their stories – as well as the stories of less stellar scientists such as the talented Ben Gascoigne, whose other claim to fame was as the husband of artist Rosalie Gascoigne (both of whom were born in New Zealand but chose to live in Australia).

Building a better rechargeable battery

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This blog was written by intern Brett Szmajda, who is researching the vital topic of energy storage.

I’m sure that many of you have heard of the Toyota Prius, the Tesla Roadster or the Chevy Volt. Hybrid and fully electric cars are making a big splash at the moment, promising quieter travel with fewer tailpipe emissions. In time, and with improvements in battery technology, it’s conceivable that electric cars might replace gasoline-powered cars.

Would you be surprised if I told you that the battle between electric and gasoline-powered vehicles is over 100 years old?

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

In the early 20th century, gasoline-powered cars and electric cars coexisted. There were even steam cars. Gasoline cars had greater range and could be ‘recharged’ instantly with a jerry-can of petrol, picked up from the general store. But they were loud, smelly, and difficult – even dangerous – to start: the only way to start them was by manually winding a heavy crank shaft, and if the car backfired the crank shaft could break your arm! By comparison, electric cars offered quiet operation and easier start up, with roughly the same limitations that they have today: once you were out of power, you faced a long wait while the car batteries recharged. The pros and cons on each side were roughly balanced, and because of this an interesting innovation race took off.

One big name, fighting for the electric car, was Thomas Edison. Electric cars, back then, ran off rechargeable lead-acid batteries that were essentially the great-great grandfather of the auxiliary lead-acid batteries in today’s cars. Edison thought he could do better, and that brings me to today’s object.

Pictured above is a B-2 nickel-iron (or ‘Edison’) battery. The sectioning of the battery gives us a nice look at its internal workings and lets us see how it compares with later ‘dry cell’ batteries like the Columbia ignitor. B-2 is simply a model number used by Edison to distinguish batteries used for different purposes, much like today’s batteries are AA, AAA, C, D, and so on. This particular model was not used for electric cars (that responsibility fell to its big brother, the A cell); instead, the B-2 was typically reserved ‘for ignition, and other light work’. Other uses for Edison batteries included telegraphy, and running lamps and signals in mines, trains, and ships. Large nickel-iron batteries were even deployed in submarines in World War I.

One of its most desirable features was that the Edison battery was nigh-on indestructable; workers at Edison’s factory performed wear testing by repeatedly throwing the battery out a third-floor window. It was also rugged electrically; the cells could withstand being left uncharged for decades, before working just-like-new after a fresh charge and electrolyte top-up.

Edison batteries were used to run another item in the Powerhouse collection: the Detroit Electric car (see right). In fact, Edison himself owned one. The Detroit electric boasted a range of about 130 km (if driven conservatively) and a top speed of around 50 km/h. There was a surge of popularity for such cars again during World War I, when the price of petrol rose sharply. A public charging point was even installed at Palmer Street in the Sydney CBD, allowing you to recharge your electric vehicle for a modest fee. (I find this revelation quite funny, as a century later, we’re having debates about ‘range anxiety’ on electric cars and how to recharge your electric car while on vacation).

So whatever happened to the nickel-iron battery? Why do we have a lead-acid battery under the hood of our car nowadays? It was probably a combination of things. The electric starter motor was invented in 1911, eliminating one of the biggest drawbacks of petrol cars. Part of it might be the limitations of the Edison battery: it cost more to manufacture than a lead-acid battery; it was greatly inefficient at low temperatures, rendering it almost useless in winter; and it performed poorly in situations where a high discharge or high recharge rate was required. I’d also speculate that the market also played a role: petrol car manufacturers likely had business agreements with certain battery companies. Because of its wide range of other uses, the Edison battery was produced for over half a century, with production only stopping after Edison Storage Battery Co. was acquired by Exide Batteries.

So if you happen to be digging around in the grandparents’ tool shed and find an old Edison battery, you can tell your friends that you’ve found a part of one of the first electric cars. Hell, if you feel like fun, replace the electrolyte, and try (carefully!) giving it a charge. It’ll probably still work.

Technology and 9/11: aircraft vs skyscrapers

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Gift of representatives of the NYPD and FDNY to the Premier of NSW the Hon Bob Carr MP, presented to the Powerhouse Museum, 2002.

Sunday 11 September is the tenth anniversary of that horrendous and highly symbolic event, the ramming of two aircraft into skyscrapers in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington DC. This portion of a girder cut from one of the World Trade Center buildings, distorted and blackened by fire, serves as a poignant, physical reminder of the event.

The relic was brought to Australia by a group of New York fire fighters and police officers who took part in the rescue and clean-up. They visited Sydney in February 2002 as guests of the NSW government and donated this object to the Premier in honour of the ten Australians who died alongside 3000 others that day. Its value as a museum object is symbolic, commemorating not just those ten but all who died, including those on board a fourth plane that did not reach its target, and all who took part in the rescue and recovery operation.

The hijackers aimed to create carnage, havoc and fear. Symbolism determined their choice of targets: the centre of world capitalism and the nerve centre of US defence. Symbolism also determined their choice of weapon: three airliners carrying large quantities of jet fuel, perhaps sourced from the Middle East’s massive oilfields.

The two skyscrapers were symbols of American technological leadership and economic success, soaring above the land and casting shadows on the water. They were made of steel, concrete and glass, all materials known and used since ancient times. They were clad with aluminium, a material that only became widely available in the twentieth century – thanks to Charles Martin Hall, the American who devised a process to separate it cheaply from its ores.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Coles Myer Pty Ltd, 1997

Skyscrapers embody a good deal of engineering know-how. A key technology is the elevator with safety brake, invented in 1853 by another American, Elisha Otis. The Otis style governor above spent its working life in a shed perched on top of a Sydney retail building, ready to activate a brake if the lift it was connected to started falling too fast. Buildings could not be built more than a few storeys tall before the advent of the safety lift.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Scott Czarnecki, 2004.

The electric lift motor is another key enabling technology for multi-storey buildings. This lift motor with integrated winch spent its working life in a shed at the top of another Sydney retail building, reliably starting at full load whenever someone pushed a button and unerringly stopping the lift level with the required floor. It was made in England around 1915, but the firm that made it was eventually taken over by Otis Elevator, the world’s largest lift company.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mr and Mrs E.A. and V.I. Crome, 1984

The first successful powered flight was achieved by two Americans, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, in 1903. Many other researchers had been trying to develop flying machines, including Australia’s own Lawrence Hargrave, whose box kite (below) probably contributed to the design of the Wright flyer’s wings. Hargrave also investigated animal movement and experimented with model ornithopters, making several different engines and a turbine to power them. Having put so much of his time and energy into pursuing the dream of flight, he expressed the hope that aircraft would not be used as war machines.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Lawrence Hargrave, 1915.

Of course, it was not long before planes were used in warfare. They grew bigger, stronger and faster, but there was a limit to how fast reciprocating engines could spin propellers. In the 1930s and 40s in England, Frank Whittle was the first to develop gas turbine engines, which could move planes much faster than piston engines. Engineers in Germany and America also developed turbine engines. The engine below was made by Whittle’s company, Power Jets Ltd, in 1943.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of the Ministry of Supply, United Kingdom, 1951.

The American-made turbo-engine aeroplanes hijacked on 9/11 were not sinister war machines bristling with gun turrets and bombs, but sleek civilian craft similar to the Boeing 767 depicted by the model below. Their fuselage and wings were clad, like the twin towers of the World Trade Center, with that modern, lightweight, corrosion-resistant product of American ingenuity, aluminium.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Just as we rarely think about the technology that enables skyscrapers to exist, we rarely worry about the civilian planes whizzing around our skies. Bringing the two together on that day in 2001 was a shocking act that changed the world, opening new fault lines and accentuating old enmities. Ten years later, the fault lines have stretched around the world and destroyed or disrupted thousands more lives. And while technology has made our lives more interesting, healthy and comfortable, it is certainly a two-edged sword in the hands of those with enmity in their hearts.

History week: science delivers our daily bread

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Powerhouse Museum Collection.

It’s International Year of Chemistry and History Week, which this year has food as its theme: a perfect time to meet Frederick Bickel Guthrie, the chemist on this medal. Guthrie worked with a better-known Australian scientist, William Farrer, to develop strains of wheat that were resistant to both drought and rust, a fungus that damages grain and reduces yields. Rust is causing problems in the wheat industry again today.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This sample of rusted wheat was collected in 1890. Farrer’s Federation wheat variety helped the wheat industry revive in the following decade. This is why he featured on our first $2 banknote alongside drawings of wheat stalks.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Farrer systematically crossed wheat varieties and selected for desirable qualities, but he only grew small plots of each type. In a world-leading research program, Guthrie made a miniature roller mill to produce flour from the small quantities of grain that Farrer produced. He carefully analysed the flour’s gluten, bran and pollard content, noted its strength and colour, baked tiny loaves of bread from it, and advised Farrer which varieties were most nutritious and gave the best quality bread.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Here are the wheat stalks that artist Gordon Andrews used as models for his banknote drawing. They are in very good condition, stored in our archives along with his sketches. The fact that wheat can be stored for long periods helps make it a valuable commodity and a staple crop in many countries.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Wheat also featured from 1938 to 1966 on our pre-decimal currency, on the threepence coin. Like the $2 note, it is a testament to the value of this crop to our daily lives and national economy.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Guthrie popped up again when I decided to research the use of instruments like this chondrometer, made by Henry Simon in England. Despite the fancy name, it’s simply a device for measuring a small volume of grain (in the conical vessel) and weighing it by hanging the little bucket from the steelyard, whose base screws into a hole in the top surface of the box: a neat, portable unit for checking the density of a sample taken from a wheat crop. Density is a guide to wheat quality and determines the space required to store and transport the crop.

I was surprised to discover that this instrument is so crucial to wheat economics that in 1918 the NSW government set up a ‘chondrometer investigation committee’. I wondered if Guthrie was a member of this body – and one contemporary news item confirmed that he was. The committee considered the available chondrometers and approved a model that combined various features of those on the market.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Donated by Tooth and Company Ltd under the Australian Government's Tax Incentives for the Arts Scheme, 1986.

Back in the basement, I discovered a NSW standard chondrometer, with the name of Sydney maker AL Franklin faintly visible on the steelyard. This instrument complies with the main recommendation of the committee: to cover a smaller range of densities, from 32 to 75 pounds per bushel (compared to 13 to 70 on the Simon chondrometer and 0 to 80 on others) and thus give more precise measurements.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Our collection includes objects that represent every facet of the wheat industry and the everyday use of wheat products, from ploughs to harvesters, from a wheat wagon to grinding mills, from flour bags to toasters. This 1880s model shows all the processes that take place in an automated flour mill. I was intrigued by the final step: the ‘silk dressing machine’ above the bags. It turns out that silk is still the best material for dressing (sifting) flour. One more search was in order: do we happen to have any dressing silk in our collection? The answer is yes: two swatch books with silk of varying mesh sizes! The moire effect makes them a bit tricky to photograph, so here is a small sample of one of them.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of David Sheedy, 1991