Wheelhouse

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: Before the age of electricity, factores ran either on water power, wind power, thermal power, or animal power. Of the four, the last was the most common well into the industrial age. Animal power was the only one that did not need a wheelhouse and was, therefore, easily portable. A man might use his animals anywhere. 

Factory people know this as a wheelhouse, a place where spin is distributed through drive shaft and belts to multiple pieces of equipment. Before electric motors made spin easily portable, even small operations might need a complex wheelhouse to run multiple machines. Workers on a floor of machines would know, among other sounds and dangers, the constant whirr and jabber of many belts ready to snag loose clothing or hair. I’ve seen only four such wheelhouses since I began exploring old factories. This one is in one of the old Stanley factories. It is in a fragile state as the shafts of light through the roof suggest. Can you hear it spin - transferring the power of the turned wheel?