[Thursday] Massie visit

[Chris Prata]

It was really nice to hear him narrate and his recollection was very good. I managed to get just a few pics of the visit, here is Mr Massie with his tall lovely Dutch wife at the Massie transmitter!

They also left some Dutch pastries for us to enjoy next Thursday with our coffee.

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From: Thursday <thursday-bounces at newsm.org> on behalf of David Caldwell via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2019 5:00 PM
To: Thursday Group <thursday at newsm.org>
Subject: [Thursday] Massie visit

Walter W. Massie, grandson of the founder of the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company, and his wife came to visit the museum last Thursday afternoon, toured through the buildings, and spent extra time in the station and in the Wireless back room where we have the workbench from the company. He first met Bob and Nancy in 1966, and was last at the museum about 15 years ago. In addition to the workbench, many of the artifacts on the second floor of the Massie Station came to the museum through his family.

He had written down some reminiscences of his grandfather and we talked through them with him. He's a retired civil engineer, born shortly after his grandfather died in 1941, and has been living in Holland since 1970; his wife is Dutch.

Three especially interesting bits.
First, the device on the table upstairs in the station with eight solenoids linked to a cam shaft--which we had speculated was used by the company in some way--was something his grandfather made to power the Meccano toys of his kids!

Second, the huge pump handle key in our live display on the second floor was a style that Massie Wireless made for stations in Alaska, so the key could be operated with big mittens on. It's not the style that would have been originally used in PJ.

And last, he recognized the switchboard in the NW corner of the Steam Building. It's labelled as having come originally from a small hydroelectric plant on an estate in Portsmouth RI, which matched his memory, but according to him it had gone first to his father who was trying to generate electricity along a stream at the family farm in Wrentham and then to our museum. He thought he recognized the small black GE generator that's sitting near the American Ball engine, and thought that it or one very much like it had also come from the Portsmouth estate.

Dave
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