BF History Part 2:

I

n our last article we discussed some interesting facts about the Harrington Family leading up to the start up of the original foundry now called Benton Foundry.

Newton Harrington, who established the foundry, was the son of Jacob and Elizabeth Baker Harrington. He was born August 5, 1834. Newton married Melissa Dildine in 1856. When he returned from fighting in the Civil War, he worked a year in a foundry at Harveyville. He then returned to Sugarloaf and built a small foundry across the creek from our present location.

The foundry was 20×50 ft. and they originally made sled shoes and plows (known as the Harrington plow). In 1882 a sawmill was built in connection with the foundry with a capacity of producing 5,000 shingles per day. This place was commonly known as Pioneer Station, Cole Creek. The power was harnessed from a large dam on the J.B. Davis property and brought down to the foundry by a race which operated a large water wheel. The area around here, at that time, was a dense forest and they transported materials with ox teams and sleds. The 500 acres of property bought by Jacob Harrington extended down to the stone house located by Mill Race golf course.

Newton’s son, Herbert T. Harrington, succeeded him in business and built a foundry across the creek in our present location in the late 1800’s. At first there was one building which was a molding room in which the cupola for melting iron was located. The iron was carried and poured into the molds by a ladle with long handles on each side carried by two men. When the casting was cold, it was cleaned and polished ready for sale. The water needed for the foundry was secured from a large spring at the foot of the hill and was brought to the foundry by wooden logs with a hole in the center that were buried in the ground as pipe is today. These log pipes lasted about 50 years before they had to be replaced. The water in these logs was very cold, almost like ice water. Soon after the erection of the foundry, a wood shop was built where patterns were made and the wood work for the Harrington plow was done. Also, finished castings were kept in this building. Later there was a circular sawmill and a shingle mill added to the operation.

The power for this operation was a boiler room in the center of the foundry, sawmill and shingle room. The boiler was enclosed in brick with a large brick oven in the back which was used for steaming plow handles. They would shape the handles by putting them in a vice and shape them with a hand driving bar, then steam them and when they were properly heated, bend them over a mold and fasten them until dry which would take several days. The plow beam was shaved out by the same method but not steamed. The boiler was fired by slabs from the sawmill and the Harrington kids, especially the boys, would fire it up.

Jamison City was a booming logging town at this time. The Harrington Foundry made the sled shoes for the log sleds used on the mountain. They also made the brake shoes for the log trains to come down the several switch backs on the mountain. The foundry maintained patterns for all parts of the log train engines and made them as needed, which kept Herbert Harrington quite busy. Mr. Harrington was so busy he had to hire another molder beside his son, Roy and of course, they had to deliver most things they made.

When the copper rush was on at Fritz Hill, a group of men from Philadelphia brought a lot of ore in to test. Mr. Harrington made a small cupola and melted the ore and got a nice percentage of copper, but not enough to make it profitable. Herbert’s daughter remembered these Philadelphia men as “nasty men from the city” as they were invited to dinner with the Harringtons and made fun of the country girls.

The iron used in the foundry was brought in by people from all around the area in exchange for castings. It was separated; the hard iron from scrap iron, weighed and put in a car which was on a track and drawn upstairs by a wheel and rope which was operated by hand and put in the cupola for melting.

During this time, stone sleds were also used by the farmers, both the sleds and the shoes were made at the foundry. These flat sleds were used to take stones out of the fields. The farmers would pick up the stones, place them in the sled and haul them to the stone rows between the fields. Today you do not see this practice done. We must not leave out the buckwheat cake days in our foundry history. Everybody ate buckwheat cakes in the old days and the griddles were made by the Harrington Foundry. Another lost art is the repairing of shoes. In those days the man of the house fixed all of the shoes for the entire family and the lath and stand were made at the foundry. It was an iron stand with several sizes of laths to fit different shoes. They would slip the shoes over it and nail on the sole. Most every family owned a Harrington griddle and a lath and stand.

Our next article will bring us through the war effort in the 40’s to our foundry as it presently exists.

Congratulations to Ryan Keeler (above), Benton Foundry’s 1st shift Employee of the Quarter. Ryan is training in our Melt Department to fill the role of Assistant Manager. Ryan has been employed since 2020. Ryan lives in Benton, with his wife Miranda and their two children Brayden and Madelyn. He enjoys spending time with them, when he isn’t working.

Great Job!

Congratulations to David Straub (below), Benton Foundry’s 2nd shift Employee of the Quarter. David works in our Molding Department as a machine operator. He has been employed since 2010 and he has won this award in the past. David lives in Watsontown. He enjoys spending time with his granddaughters and relaxing with a couple of cold ones.

Great Job!

W

hy don’t woodpeckers get concussions? Reporting in Current Biology, a team of scientists has refuted the long assumed correct answer—that woodpecker skulls act like shock-absorbing helmets to protect the birds’ brains when they pound their beaks against tree trunks. In analyses of high-speed videos of black, pileated and great spotted woodpeckers, the researchers found that the birds do not absorb the shock of the impact with a tree. “Their heads basically function as stiff, solid hammers during pecking,” says lead author Sam Van Wassenbergh, a research professor at Belgium’s University of Antwerp. Building three-dimensional, biomechanical models of the birds, the scientists also concluded that shock absorbance by the skulls would severely hinder the birds’ pecking abilities. Though the acceleration of each peck exceeds the known threshold for causing concussions in humans, the birds’ smaller brains can withstand the jolts. “The absence of shock absorption does not mean their brains are in danger during the seemingly violent impacts,” Van Wassenbergh says. Even the strongest shocks from dozens of pecks the team analyzed appeared to be safe for woodpecker brains.

NWF.ORG/NW

Don’t rely on Automatic Emergency Braking

A

utomatic Emergency Braking (AEB) is now standard in almost all new vehicles, so it is critical that drivers understand its benefits and its limitations.

While AEB has proven over the years to successfully stem rearend crashes, which often result in injuries and property damage, recent AAA research reveals that the new technology, touted as lifesaving, is not effective in stopping or even minimizing the most serious crashes. In fact, when testing the technology to see if it can handle higher speeds and detect moving vehicles in its path at intersections – scenarios that contribute to a significant number of deadly crashes – the short answer was no.

The findings are disconcerting to longtime AAA member Glenn Brown. “When I hear ‘automatic emergency braking,’ I am expecting technology that prevents serious crashes,” Brown says. “Given the increase in speeding and bad driving behaviors in general, I would have hoped for a better outcome.”

The issue is that AEB systems use forward-facing cameras and other sensors to tell the car to apply the brakes when a crash is imminent. The AAA research found that AEB is, for the most part, ineffective in mitigating the two most common deadly crashes at intersections: T-bones and left turns in front of oncoming vehicles.

From 2016 to 2020, these two crash types accounted for almost 40 percent of all fatalities in crashes involving two passenger  vehicles during which the striking vehicle

AAA Newsroom

Among the findings are the following:

• At 30 miles per hour (mph), AEB prevented a rear-end collision for 17 of 20 test runs or 85 percent. For the test runs that resulted in a crash, the impact speed was reduced by 86 percent.
• But at 40 mph, AEB only prevented a rear-end crash in 6 of 20 test runs, or 30 percent. For test runs that resulted in a crash, the impact speed was reduced by 62 percent.
• In tests involving both the T-bone and left turn in front of an oncoming vehicle, crashes occurred 100 percent of the time. AEB failed to alert the driver, slow the vehicle’s speed and avoid the crash.

AAA strongly urges automakers and regulatory agencies to focus on system design and testing protocols to better address the types of crashes in which serious injuries and fatalities commonly occur.

“We need technology that offers effective protection, and we need it as soon as possible,” Brown adds.

In the meantime, drivers must recognize an AEB system’s limitations and remain focused and engaged when behind the wheel.

AAA.com/world

N

eed that cup of Joe to get going in the morning? Say “thank you” to the birds and the bees that team up on farms where coffee is grown. Conducting field work on 30 Costa Rican coffee farms, researchers discovered that coffee beans grow larger and more plentiful when birds and bees join forces—with the bees pollinating the plants and the birds protecting them from pests. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report that without the combined efforts of these winged helpers –many of which have migrated from thousands of miles anyway—the $24 billion coffee industry would suffer nearly a 25 percent decrease in crop yields. They say their findings suggest that ecosystem services can be appreciably more valuable together than separately. “Nature is an interacting system, full of important synergies,” says lead author Alejandra Martinez-Salinas, an ecologist at Costa Rica’s Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center.

NWF.ORG/NW