Museum of Science and Technology of Catalonia

[Sonic EscapeParticipant @sonicescape38234]

Saturday I went to a very nice museum in Terrassa near Barcelona. This was one of the leading city in the industrial revolution in Spain and it is full of preserved brick chimney towers from the old textile factories. One textile factory was transformed into a museum. These are a few pictures I made there.

The building itself is an fine example of Catalan dome architecture technique. You can see those flat domes in many old buildings here and the first time I wondered how safe they are.

The bricks celling is supported by 300 cast iron posts

Some of the exhibits are in working condition and they start if you push a pedal:

This is the programmable clock that controlled the sirens for the start and stop of the working day:

“Workers were not permitted to speak with others”. How much things changed. Now the companies are trying to make employees talk to each other more 🙂

There are a lot of textile machines. Many have and modern emergency stop button. So I assume they are started on some events

 

All machines were powered from multiple parallel shafts that were running on the celling. For example this centrifugal dryer. Under the cover there is an rubber cone. I guess cast iron was cheap back then. Everything is massive.

Those big wheels on the celling were connecting all shafts together:

I suppose things like this happened:

What could be the purpose of this machine? Why wound together multiple threads? Is not like it makes a rope. And it looks like a laborious thing to setup.

The old electric motors are so cool:

I would love to have a small one!

Two two poles of this one are made from bronze?!

Maybe I could make a simple one like this?

More machines and the very nice celling:

A small world:

Another one:

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Looks a wonderful place !

… thanks for sharing the photos.

MichaelG.

[halfnutParticipant @halfnut]

Beautiful machinery. Good to see it preserved.

[Chris CrewParticipant @chriscrew66644]

Will take a look the next time I take the TGV to Barcelona, via Beziers for the Canal du Midi aquaducts and the Garabit viaduct on the line to Neussargues. The Musee des Artes et Metiers in Paris is a good one too.

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