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On October 25, the Samuel
Knight Chapter enjoyed a visit to the site of the
Joshua Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale, where the Iron Man
Museum
presents the history of that pioneer company as well as a
good sampling of
its products. Established in San Francisco in 1856, the
Joshua Hendy Iron
Works was best known for manufacturing a very wide range of
mining
equipment and machinery needed in the California mining
industry such
as stamp mills, ore feeders, and concentrators. Because of
its high quality
and excellence in design, Hendy equipment was sold
world-wide, and
many of us have seen the firm's advertisements in the old
journals. Some
of the most fascinating are the devices used in conjunction
with hydraulic
mining like the monitors used in hydraulic mining. The
hydraulic gravel
elevators or water lifters enabled gravel to be lifted to
substantial heights
just by means of a column of rapidly flowing water, and the
similarly-
designed water lifter enabled a confined column of water to
actually
dewater a river bottom, pump sump, or other site.
The fascinating history of the firm was presented to us by
several excellent
docents, some ofwhom had been with the successor company to Joshua
Hendy. The Iron Works were originally near the Embarcadero
in San
Francisco, but the 1906 earthquake destroyed the shops. As
a result of an
attractive offer from the new little town of Sunnyvale, the
Iron Works were
relocated to a site there, where over 32 acres of free land
on the Southern
Pacific railroad were given to the company. The Iron Man
Museum is in
one of the original Sunnyvale buildings. In addition to
displays of
machinery and artifacts from the Joshua Hendy operations, the museum
exhibits many photographs which enhance the other parts of
the collection.
In time, mining became a less important source of business
to Joshua
Hendy, although there were many construction projects which
used
Hendy hydraulic mining equipment and the company's large
valves and
gates were used in such massive projects as the
construction of Hoover
Dam. The Iron Works played an important role in both World
War I and
II. A specialty became marine propulsion engines and later,
rocket
launchers. In 1947, Westinghouse Electric Corporation
acquired the Joshua
Hendy Iron Works, and a variety of electric equipment was
produced,
although a large component of the site became involved in
defense
industry development. A part of the museum exhibits a
variety of nostalgic
Westinghouse products.
In 1978, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
honored the Iron
Works by designating it a National Historic Mechanical
Engineering
Landmark. Because of the defense industry affiliation of
the premises, our
visit to the Iron Man Museum required visitors to be U.S.
citizens,
probably one of the few times an SIA group has had to
present such
credentials!
After the visit to the museum, we had a look at a
five-stamp mill,
manufactured by Joshua Hendy in 1918. It had originally
served to crush
gold ore near Pine Grove in the Mother Lode, but thanks to
the Iron Man
Museum, E Clampus Vitus (Mountain Charlie Chapter), and the
Sunnyvale Historical Society, it was moved and restored,
and it quietly
resides now, imposingly, in Martin Murphy Historical Park,
just a block
from the Iron Works where it was originally constructed.
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