A Tribute to Big, Fat, and Slow

Does anyone remember when high tech was made of cast iron? Today’s world runs on computer chips made of silicon. The only silicon used a hundred years ago was for making really hard bronze. Iron was still a valued material, even more than steel for certain applications. Today’s technology worships the attributes of small, lightweight, fast and cheap. A hundred years ago the opposite philosophy reigned. In New Orleans ancient pumps keep the below-sea-level city dry by removing the in-seeping Mississippi River’s water. They have run for so long that modern engineers thought they must be about to fail. They were stopped and taken apart. There was no wear! They ran slow and they were big. They were well-lubricated and if maintained will probably never wear out. If New Orleans were to replace them with today’s technology, the new pumps would be high-speed computer-controlled machines that require a service contract and full-time maintenance crew and a fail-safe Internet connection for upgrades. The old ones would be removed and made into dog food cans, a terrible loss.

At the Muir Trail Ranch we are blessed with a piece of 1920s technology, our Pelton/General Electric hydroelectric plant. In 1959 it was refurbished and installed to produce a constant 63,000 watts of extremely reliable electric power. While modern electric generators rarely run at less than 3,600 or maybe 1,800 revolutions per minute, our old cast iron Pelton wheel lopes along at a leisurely 900 RPM. The generator it’s connected to is a huge cast iron General Electric behemoth that boasts big oil-lubricated bearings that haven’t consumed even a drop of oil in at least 30 years, and never even get warm, much less hot. The output of the generator is carried by big fat chunks of copper insulated by big fat chunks of shellac-coated linen in big fat pipes running in big fat concrete troughs into a big fat steel enclosure with big fat switches and other big fat stuff. It would take a Major Act Of God for any of this to fail.

We venerate 50 years of old technology’s solid, honest, ageless value!