Day 4: OMG. Detroit. Is. Awesome.

On recommendation from our friends Minyang and Liz, we first went to the Henry Ford. With such glowing reviews (and stellar ratings on Trip Advisor) we had high hopes.

It did not disappoint. I loved loved loved the driving America exhibit, which was incredibly well done. One of my favorite museums is the D-Day Museum in NOLA because it does a fabulous job of presenting a narrative structure using artifacts, rather than constructing an exhibit to highlight every artifact that they have. The Driving America exhibit had the same feel. Not just a collection of 'here is a thing, here is a paragraph about it'--they clearly put a lot of effort into curating it into a coherent story, and there were lots of interesting facts (like the fact that people made bigger holes in their gas tank to put leaded gas in since the leaded nozzles were bigger). I also learned that early cyclists and car enthusiasts were on the same side a century ago--both fighting for improved roads. 

But back to the narrative--one of the overarching themes I took away was the effort and experimentation required to come to a satisfactory solution to many of the problems that cars created. For example, how do you deal with parking? The parking meter was not invented in a vacuum--it was a response to real parking problems in cities, and it wasn't the first solution people tried. Similarly, the traffic light evolved--first from policemen providing instruction at each corner, then to a two-color signal, and finally to the familiar three-color signal. It struck me how similar cars were, as a disruptive technology changing the fabric of society and posing new challenges, to computers and the internet today, where we don't have all of the solutions for how to use technology properly, to make life easier, but that doesn't mean it won't. It just means that someone needs to come up with the right ideas and change societal attitudes. A great example of this was on the safety display; in the 1934, there were 34,240 driving-related fatalities. In 2010, there were 32,885, with roughly 15 times as many road miles driven. Car companies originally found that people just didn't care about safety features--they wouldn't pay more for them, or change their buying habits. It wasn't until Unsafe at Any Speed that societal attitudes shifted and the market favored improved safety in cars.

The Henry Ford also also has an exhibit on manufacturing in America; we didn't have time to go through it in detail, but if this picture doesn't make you want to visit the Henry Ford, then you are not an engineer:

Alex also spent some time in an exhibit on early flying heroes, learning about how flying as a spectator sport started due to out-of-work WWI pilots returning home and itching to fly more, and how barnstorming became popular until too many people died doing it and companies wanted to portray flying as a safe, commercial activity.  Henry Ford's involvement in developing commercial flight helped build people's confidence in the technology.

And, of course, we went to the Dymaxion house, Buckminster Fuller's revolutionary and futuristic cheap, portable, assembleable prefab circular home, with all kinds of technologies like gutters that brought the rain indoors to a grey water storage area, and shelving units built into the wall with an access window that rotated the shelf accessible at the push of a button.  The one in the museum is the only one that exists--Buckminster Fuller couldn't raise enough VC money to build actual houses, since he refused to change his design to suit investors.  One of his co-investors took the two prototype houses and mined them for parts to make a single house, which his family then lived in for twenty years.  The family had to make plenty of changes to make the house livable--they ended up using it as basically a playroom addition to their house, and the kids would go sledding down the roof in the winter--so the museum staff ended up doing years of restoration to return the house to its original state.  In many cases the only reference materials they had to go by were advertising posters depicting the house!  (The kitchen, for example, was never fully built in the prototype, and the sink is absurdly small.)

Below: The rotating shelf window and button.  Pushbuttons were very futuristic in the 40s.

Here are a few more photos from the Henry Ford. The car below is an adorable early electric.

The car below won a record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, 409 mph

A chair made out of horns because, hey, why not?

There's also the presidential limo that JFK was assassinated in. Here's a picture:

Our next stop was Henry Ford's playground, Greenfield Village. Greenfield Village is even more amazing than the Henry Ford. We could have spent days there, but our itinerary did not let us. Let's put it this way; it's Colonial Williamsburg but interesting. (Or, if you like Colonial Williamsburg, 10000x more interesting.) You walk around to all these buildings that Henry Ford had moved to his village and can see how they functioned inside, and talk with people who are dressed up in period attire and explain what the significance of their building is. We spent like 45 minutes in the gristmill talking with a gentleman who explained all sorts of fascinating things, mostly unrelated to gristmills, like how undulant fever is contracted from cows eating poisonous weeds and this incredible story about his grandmother burping a cow with a knitting needle through its side after the cow ate green apples. (Apparently cows can't burp themselves due to having multiple stomachs.) Our guide also turns out to have been a CAD programmer some years back and was very excited when I mentioned that I was a software engineer. He told us to check out the Jacquard Loom they had in the weaving shop; we said, excitedly, we already had! (Yes, they have a Jacquard Loom--isn't that cool?)

Below: the original computer programs

In the machine shop, I got to make a candlestick holder using a lathe. Probably the coolest part, other than seeing brass melt like butter, was that the lathe was designed to automatically transition between different drill bits when they were retracted from the brass. It was just like the smart tools in the Rouge, except 100 years older! The machine shop apparently still functions to make specific pieces on order to keep the village running. (Where else will you get parts for your 100 year old carousel?)  We also went to shops like the milliners' shop, with all kinds of fancy hats, and the jewelry shop, where we learned that human hair braided watch chains were somehow a sentimental (hideous, disgusting) fad.

Although we didn't get to spend much time in them, the Greenfield village also has the Wright brothers shop as well as Edison's Menlo Park lab. Like, really, the whole thing. Moved there. Including original equipment that had been scattered around the world. Ford had a *lot* of money.

Below: Edison's lab

Below: the Wright brothers' bike shop

The Greenfield village is incredibly huge--much bigger than the museum, which we also couldn't get through. As a result, at 5pm, we had to leave just after seeing Edison's lab and hearing about how he created three industries in three years (telephone, phonograph, lighting) starting at age 29.

Fortunately, 5pm left us plenty of daylight to visit the sadder parts of Detroit. 

Minyang recommended we stop by the abandoned train station, so we drove out there. It is a short but moving experience to see. You feel a bit like you're in North Korea with its hotel of doom in a state of half-completion and no resources or desire to finish it. It's also a little bit creepy how the train station is this huge structure set off from everything else around it, almost like it's in quarantine. 

Our next stop was Project Heidelberg, an art installation created from abandoned houses and the material inside them. It felt like something out of the lower ninth word in New Orleans which too was largely abandoned and left in ruins. 

Anyway, after spending a day and a half in Detroit, we were left wanting more--Alex and I hope to come back some time and finish exploring the Henry Ford, Greenfield Village, and perhaps learn more about the city itself and its history. 

I was shocked by how much affection I had for Detroit after visiting--I had come expecting to see a city in ruins, a sign of urban decay, with nothing to say for it, good only as the butt of jokes related to cheap housing. I came away realizing that Detroit must have been the Silicon Valley of mechanical engineering, a city with a proud past and incredible contributions to the marketplace of ideas as well as the marketplace of things.  For anyone with an engineering mind or a desire to understand and see the effect of new technology on society, Detroit (perhaps more specifically Dearborn) is an absolutely fabulous place to visit. I was also struck by its similarity to NOLA--both cities with rich cultural histories, near waterfronts and wetlands, suffering from massive population loss and high crime. I came away rooting for a revitalized Detroit and a profound sadness at its fall from glory.

After taking a final drive through downtown Detroit, we headed north to begin our journey through the UP. We stopped for the night in quaint Grayling, MI at what can only be described as a truck stop. Tomorrow, the UP!