Steam

The Georgetown Steam Plant, a surprisingly complete and operable steam power plant after a career of nearly seventy-five years, was built in the early 1900s when Seattle's inexpensive hydroelectric power attracted manufacturers. Much of the power produced at this plant operated the streetcars. It marks the beginning of the end of the reciprocating steam engine's domination in the growing field of electrical energy generation for lighting and power.

This dynamo, connected directly to a high-speed steam engine, was one of six that produced direct current at Thomas A. Edison's electric power station at 257 Pearl Street in New York City. The Pearl Street Station was the prototype for central station power generation. Edison set out in 1878 to provide an electrical distribution system to bring lighting into the home: His first filament lamp lit on October 21, 1879. With the help of Frances Upton and C.L. Clarke, Edison built his engine-driven dynamo for the 1881 Paris Electrical Exposition.

Operated by the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), now known as Exelon Corp., Eddystone Station Unit #1 is a 325 MW pulverized-coal-fired plant that pushed the technology of steam-electric generating plants. When built in 1960, engineers sought to make a more efficient plant using higher temperatures and pressures and larger machines. Previous experience at Philo 6 (Zanesville, Ohio, 1957) had demonstrated supercritical steam plants would work, so engineers pushed beyond that frontier to even larger machines and efficiencies.

This is one of three nearly identical pumping stations that drained the Haarlemmermeer (Haarlem Lake), 1849- 52, then continued to maintain the polder's water table for more than 80 years. The Haarlemmermeer area covers 45,000 acres (about 70 square miles) in a triangular region between the cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Leiden.

The introduction of steam-powered forging hammers by French and British engineers of the 1830s led to the building of this impressive hammer at Creusot that delivered blows to shape and strengthen iron and steel objects before forging. It was for years the most powerful steam hammer in the world. Yet in 1878 a writer observed that "this formidable mass is capable of ... corking a bottle without breakage." With a striking capacity of 100 tons and a stroke of 5 meters, it worked massive iron and steel shafts, piston rods, and other forgings for fifty-four years, until its retirement in 1930.

The articulated wheel-base steam locomotive represents the final phase of steam locomotive development in size and power. The cab-in-front feature was widely used by the Southern Pacific Railroad beginning in 1909 to alleviate smoke and heat problems for locomotive personnel en route through tunnels and snow sheds. This locomotive, built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, operated between 1944 and 1956 before being displaced by a diesel-electric locomotive.

The largest mine hoist in the world, it serves the two incline skipways of Shaft No. 2, almost 9,300 feet long. The overhead winding drum has a diameter of 30 feet, of which the cylindrical center section is 10 feet long. The two 10-foot long end sections taper down to a 15-foot diameter. Wire hoisting ropes (almost 27 tons) could be wound onto a small end of the cylindrical drum as the other rope unwound from the cylindrical section.