Wisconsin Journal Number 20 14 February 1998 It looks like an early spring for Wisconsin. The skating outdooor rinks have closed for the season, and warmer temperatures and rain forecast for the coming week mean what snow remains will soon be gone. Our explorations have been close to home, however. A couple weeks ago I took the kids to see the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, down near the capitol. It contains artifacts and dioramas from the various wars that Wisconsinites had fought in, starting with the Civil and Spanish- American wars, progressing up to Vietnam and the Gulf War. Sarah was most interested in movies of old USO shows, seeing performers such as Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and Judy Garland when they were young. Luke asked a lot of questions about bazookas, mortars and firearms, such as what is the difference between a heavy, light and sub- machine gun. (See below.*) Sarah was also interested in a pilots survival kit from Vietnam, as she is studying survival in a couple classes at school. I learned about V-Mail, which was where personal letters during WWII were microfilmed before sending, which cut down on tons of paper being transported. I also learned that when the battleship Wisconsin was activated for the Gulf War, it sometimes fired shells that were 54 years old. Last Sunday the family took a day trip to Rockford, Illinois. The highlight of the trip was the Time Museum. This museum is right off I-90, a little south of the Illinois/Wisconsin border, and I highly recommend it to anyone passing by. (It is on the lower level of the Clock Tower motel complex.) It features time-keeping devices of all kinds, including a tower clock that dates to before clocks had dials. (It was used in a monastery, and chimed for services and prayers.) The kids liked the reproduction of a Chinese water clock, which was driven by something similar to a mill wheel, but with a ratchet that let it rotate a notch as each water bucket was filled. The museum features the most complicated mechanical astronomical clock in the world, finished in 1964, I think. In addition to telling various kinds of astronomical time and moon phases, it incorporates an orrery that goes all the way out to Pluto. (The arm for Pluto rotates every 246 years, I believe.) It also has a model of the earth that indicates the precession of its axes, which is about a 20,000-year cycle. We watched for quite a while, but couldn't see it move. Lots of sundials, astrolabs and nocturnals. The first two are for telling the time from the sun, the last tells the time by the position of stars at night. I like the sundial that had a dozen small gammons around the main one, all pointing the same direction, but with scales for different cities around the globe. An early alarm clock worked by triggering a flintlock, whose charge lit a horizontal candle that then pivoted upright. An early attempt at a watch used a minature pendulum to regulate the escapement (rather than a balance wheel). The works of the watch had to be mounted on gimbals so the pendulum always hung down. Another clock had a ball bearing in a zig-zag race to serve as an escapement. Apparently it didn't keep very good time, but people were fascinated by the little ball. There were many chronometers (ships' clocks) on display. Development of a reliable chronomoter was a goal of the British Admirality for many decades, so that ships could find their longtitude at sea. An elaborate early model attempted to compensate for a ship's rolling by having two counter-swinging pendulums. It also had a complicated bit featuring rods of two metals, which I took for a temperature compensating device. It may even have had a means to compensate for changes in gravity at different latitudes. Most of the chronometers used balance wheels instead of pendula. The back corner showed examples of ever more accurate timepieces, starting with precision pendulum clocks (some with mercury-filled bobs to compensate for the arm lengthening as it got warmer), going through tuning-fork- and quartz- driven watches and working up to atomic and hydrogen-maser clocks. There were actually examples of the latter two, though they weren't operating. We happened to be in the museum at noon, and some of the clocks were actually running, so we got to hear them chime. The staff also manually set off some of the more elaborate clocks with figures that moved on the hour. One they set off was an astronomical clock with the twelve apostles, who filed by Jesus one at a time. Each turned to face Jesus, except Judas, who faced away. Also, when Peter came by, a bird crowed three times. Lots of gimmick clocks and watches: a birdcage clock with the face on the bottom, a clock that holds your watch at night and winds and sets it, a clock fashioned as a fan with one blade folding out each hour, a watch with a little bird that could pop up, chirp and flap its wings, ring watches and a watch in the shape of a coffin. There were also some clockwork automata, such as a German one of a man eating sausage and drinking bear, and a walking elephant whose tail appeared to be the pedulum. We got to see some of these operate in a video tape presentation. Two particularly interesting displays: An early prototype electric watch. It had wires running out of the back, and I gather the idea was to see if an electric motor could be used to wind the mainspring. (Or maybe you just needed to keep it attached to a very long extension cord.) The other was of early Japanese clocks. Apparently Japanese time was based on some kind of uncompensated sundial. So the "hours" of the day started at different times and had different durations throughout the year. Hence the clocks had moveable markers for the hours that had to be repositioned about every two weeks. >From the Time Museum we drove into downtown Rockford, to see the Burpee Museum of Natural History. It's located in two old Victorian Mansions, but one was closed while a new wing was being constructed. The newest exhibits seemed to date from the early 70s, and many looked to be 50 years old. Shelves full of minerals, and lots of glass and wood cases holding stuffed animals and birds. I learned that the "Tully Monster" is the state fossil of Illinois, and is unusual because it was a soft-bodied creature, and most fossils are of shells or bony parts. The next weekend, Sarah wanted to go to the main library downtown, so I left her there for a while, and headed over to the state historical museum to check out another floor, on the history of settlement and the economy in Wisconsin. Outside settlement took place somewhat later than in nearby states. The were only 100 non-Indian residents in what is now Wisconsin in 1815, plus US troops stationed here during the War of 1812. By 1829 that had only grown to 4253, with most of the new settlers being lead miners in the southwest corner of the state. Near Lakes Superior and Michigan, and along some of the rivers, there were British and Frenchmen who were involved in the fur trade and had taken Indian wives. Green Bay and Prarie du Chien had a culture that was a European/Indian amalgam in the early 1800's, though it faded out by the 1830's. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, it became possible to ship goods from Wisconsin to New York City. However, the first improved land route in the state was the Military Road, which extended from Green Bay to Prarie du Chien. Built between 1832 and 1835, it connected Forts Howard, Winnebago and Crawford, which the Army used as bases in their forays against the Indians. By the mid-1840s, plank roads existed from farm towns to some of the main ports, like Milwaukee, but contruction of those gave way to the railroads in the 1850s. With the railroads came lots of new settlers. Milwaukee grew from around 1700 people in 1840 to over 45,000 in 1860, with over half of its residents being foreign born. The largest numbers of immigrants in this period came from Germany and Norway, with significant numbers from Poland and Sweden as well. I was surprised that there aren't more German restaurants in Madison (I know of one), but I saw from a map at the museum that most of the Germans settled around Milwaukee and Wausau, and it was mainly Norwegians around here. Different national groups maintained their own languages and cultures at first, each having its own churches, schools, newspapers and social organizations. There were some efforts by the Protestant Yankees from New York and New England, who were the most predominant group of settlers, to enforce "conformity" (read English). For example, a law passed in 1889 mandated all instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and American history be in English, even in private and parochial schools, but it was repealed in 1891. In the end, it was the onset of mass production in the 1900s that "Americanized" these groups. Cheap, standardized products meant the end of lots of cultural distinctions. The the first big agricultural crop was wheat, which had its peak between 1840 and 1870. However, the soil couldn't sustain wheat yields, and farmers started switching over to livestock feeds, such as hay, corn and oats, or else to tobacco. The lumber industry mushroomed in the 1840s and 50s, but dwindled by 1900, after most of the great pine forests were logged. Eau Claire, La Crosse and Oshkosh all grew into big lumber centers, having good locations on rivers. The logs could be floated down to them, the rivers drove the mills, then the cut lumber could be rafted down the Mississipi to St. Louis or out to Lake Michigan to head for Chicago, Michigan and elsewhere. There were some efforts to entice people to farm the cutover, but they were largely abandoned by the the 1920s, when restoration projects started up. I don't think there is much lumber milling in the state any more, but pulping and papermaking are still going strong. Papermaking got going in the 1870s and 80s, and continued after 1900 first with imported wood and then with second-growth timber. (Actually, there were paper mills around Milwaukee earlier, but they made rag paper.) There's a good chance you wipe your nose on a former Wisconsin tree. Diary farming started in a serious way around 1870, and had grown into the 4th largest industry by 1900 with the help of the U of W and the Dairymans' Association. Several major dairy innovations came out of the U. I've written about the Babcock test for butterfat before. Prof. Steenbock figured out you could fortify milk with vitamin D using ultraviolet lights. Dr. Link linked bleeding disease in cows with spoiled clover hay. He isolated the substance warfarin as the cause, which is used today as both a blood thinner for humans and a poison for rats. Wisconsin had several major wagon works, the last of which shut down or switched over to power vehicles by 1919. Case made their first gas tractor here in 1912 and still makes farm machinery. The first Rambler was made in Wisconsin in 1902. Rambler was bought by Nash in 1916, and merged with Hudson of Michigan to form American Motors in 1954. In 1923 GM opened their Janesville plant, which is still in operation (making pickup trucks, I think). A lot of heavy industry developed around Racine, Kenosha and Milwaukee. Other Wisconsin manufacturing companies you might have heard of: Evinrude outboard motors, Harley Davidson motorcycles, West Bend aluminum cookware, Duncan yo-yos, Parker Pen, Oskosh B'gosh clothing, Jockey underwear, Hamilton Beach appliances, Presto cookware, Kohler plumbing fixtures, Johnson Controls (makers of DieHard batteries), Uniroyal tires, Oster blenders, Mercury outboard motors, Briggs and Stratten engines, Golden children's books, Speed Queen appliances, Tombstone pizza, and Kimberly Clark Paper (makers of Kleenex). I think there's also some tobacco company based here, but I haven't figured out which one yet. (I've mentioned Rayovac, Oscar Mayer and Mirro before.) All for now, Dave *A heavy machine gun is fired on the ground and requires multiple men to transport. A light machine gun can be carried by a single soldier, but is still fired from the ground. A submachine gun can be carried by a single soldier, and fired while being carried.