By the mid-1930s, the Flakall Corporation was trying to build up a customer base for its machine, a version of the feed grinder initially designed and built by Clair Mathews. But, as it turned out, the machine would end up being more useful for snack food manufacturers than farmers.
Science & Technology
OBJECT HISTORY: Yerkes Telescope
The 40-inch refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, contains the world’s largest refracting lenses. Built in 1895, the telescope contains two lenses, one made of crown glass, and one made of flint glass. The lenses are each 40 inches in diameter, weigh 500 pounds, and have a 62-foot focal length. The telescope and observatory…
OBJECT HISTORY: X-Ray Shoe Fitting Machine
Intended to help customers get the perfect pair of shoes, X-Ray shoe fitting machines like this one from Sturgeon Bay were popular in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Wisconsin’s Ancient History in the Kickapoo Valley
If you look closely, the landscapes around us tell stories about the past. Sometimes in the curve of a road, a line of trees, or stretch of prairie careful observers can find evidence of the …
OBJECT HISTORY: Esterly Broadcast Seeder
George Esterly, a southern Wisconsin farmer and inventor, helped revolutionize farming practices across the nation with the creation of the Broadcast Seeder.
The Evolution of a Swiss Barn
The expansion of Wisconsin’s dairy industry in the 20th century not only altered the economy of the state, but it also influenced the structure of the very barns that housed the bovine champions of the …
OBJECT HISTORY: Le Maire Sundial
The Le Maire Sundial is a rare example of a mid-18th century French sundial (cadran solaire) compass (boussole). It was found near Green Bay in 1902 by a local antiquities collector, Frank Duchateau. The sundial is broken, missing its glass compass cover as well as the back of its gnomon holder. Located on the front surface,…
OBJECT HISTORY: Employers Mutual Audiometer
This Maico Audiometer was one of many devices used by health and safety consultants of the Employers Mutual Liability Insurance Company of Wisconsin throughout the mid-to-late 1960s. Employers Mutual was the very first workers compensation insurance company in the United States. The company was founded in Wausau, Wisconsin, in 1911 shortly after the nation’s first workers compensation law was…
The Swiss Roots of America’s “Dairyland”
When the wheat crop failures of the late nineteenth century jeopardized the incomes of many of Wisconsin’s immigrant farmers, the region’s Swiss population transitioned to a trade that they knew from the Old World: dairying …
The Record Production Process
Paramount Record’s parent company, the United Phonographic Corporation, decided to begin recording and pressing records to include with their phonograph cabinets in the early 1920s. Paramount initially recorded in studios throughout the United States. They …