Transition

Transition. . , The Acme Wire Company built this building in 1904. it joined a jumble of buildings that had survived from the Armory years., The Acme Wire Company produced magnet wire: fine, soft copper wire, insulated with a varnish film. Magnet wire wound the coils that moved the messages (telegraph, telephone and radio) and the motors of the new age of electricity. The company thrived and outgrew the site. It moved to the junction of Putnam and Dixwell in 1914., The Sentinel Stove Company took over the site in 1914. It produced a 'modern' kitchen stove. Natural gas replaced the ancient fuels (coal and wood) that still cooked most American food. Gas could be regulated by a timer prompting the boast: Automatic. The company proclaimed industrial efficiency in the kitchen and liberation for women. Sentinel did not survive the disruption of world war one and competition., J. Allen Heany (1877-1946) took over the site in 1918. Heany was an energetic, self-trained inventor who won his first patent when he was 21. He came to Whitneyville to establish an invention-for-hire laboratory after the Menlo Park labs that Edison had opened in 1876. Heany filed dozens of patents for automotive, power production and radio components. In 1930, Heany concocted a temperature and abrasion resistant, distinctive pink, industrial ceramic that became a component for machines that served many industries. Heanium was produced on this site until 1979. It is still produced by Heany Industries in Scottsville, New York., Informal Archaeology , We still discover artifacts of the transition years. We unearth soapstone disks that stabilized the temperature of Sentinel ovens. Neighborhood children still retrieve Heanium components from the River's bed., It is not proper to remove fragments from an historic site without permission. Show the Museum's curator your discoveries. Permission is likely.