How the Samuel Knight Chapter Came to be Founded, and
Why We Propose Acting as a Sales Force for Knight Foundry

by Andy Fahrenwald, Chapter President

The Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology
emerged from an effort to bring attention to a seriously neglected area of
industrial study and technology history: the role of the skilled artisan and
worker. A quite diverse group of people (brought together initially three
years ago by a common concern for the preservation of Knight Foundry in
Sutter Creek, California) has reached the conclusion that, from a variety of
standpoints, we are as a nation facing the tragic loss of much of our
industrial knowledge base.

The most immediate historic cause of this crisis is that many highly
sophisticated skills, from steam locomotive operation to typesetting,
ceased to be practiced in the 1950s. This was due in part to the "deskilling"
of many jobs as a result of factory automation and the growing application
of electronic technologies. As a result, the workers who had mastered
those skills are now quite elderly. And beyond the immanent loss of what
we regard as invaluable national treasures, the role of the skilled worker
has been largely neglected by the history of technology, labor history and
industrial archaeology alike.

We formed the Industrial Living History Consortium to begin to study
means of addressing this problem. The initial results are summarized in
the Consortium Overview document (which is available upon request).
Our mission can be summarized as the creation a generalized standard
methodology of skills preservation. In the course of this work we were
naturally in touch with the SIA. After correspondence and discussion with
SIA leadership about the most appropriate way to work with the SIA, it
was proposed that the Consortium form a Chapter which many had felt
was needed on the West Coast, particularly after the successful annual SIA
Annual Conference in Sacramento last year.

Since forming the Chapter, we have found that indeed many of our local
SIA members share our concern and passion for historic skills and we have
had a wonderful burst of new energy into the project.

To return to Knight Foundry. It may seem odd (and perhaps even
inappropriate)that we give top priority to launching a Chapter task force
dedicated to getting new business for the Foundry - a commercial
enterprise, after all. A quick review of the preservation effort will serve to
justify this.

Knight was established 124 years ago as a full service iron works for the
California mining industry. Samuel Knight, our chapter namesake, was a
prolific designer and inventor, most well known for developing the Knight
wheel, aturbine similar to the Pelton wheel, exploiting the extensive high
pressure water infrastructure established for placer mining throughout the
Gold Country. Sam Knight exclusively utilized his "water motors" in his
foundry and machine shop and, because Knight was so well set up for
large scale custom machinery manufacture, it managed to survive the
ensuing 120 years virtually untouched by 20th Century technology or
production practices, water motor powered down to this very day.

Samuel Knight Chapter SIA Newsletter

May 9, 1997

Page 9