New-museum magic
Samuel Slater
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
All hail the Samuel Slater Experience, an interactive museum in Webster, Mass., that spotlights the work of Samuel Slater (1768-1835), the English immigrant whose work in setting up manufacturing mills was a major element in the launch of the American Industrial Revolution. It also displays much of the history of Webster, an important early mill town. Slater may be best known for Slater Mill, on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, but he set up other mills, too, most notably in Webster, where he lived from 1812 and from which he ran his empire. (He also loved using child labor….)
It's a reminder of the tremendous dynamism and economic and technological creativity of New Englanders, right up to the present. This has helped keep the region one of the most prosperous places in the world.
One example seems particularly germane now as America tries to move away from our perilous reliance on global-warming fossil fuels sold by such vicious regimes as Russia and Saudi Arabia that we have funded far too long.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, based in Cambridge and Dever, Mass., is making progress in developing a safe form of nuclear energy that could ultimately replace all gas, oil, and coal now used to generate electricity, as well as the controlled fission nuclear plants that present spent-fuel-storage challenges.
Hit these links:
Then, there’s Cambridge-based Moderna, developer of what might well be the best COVID-19 vaccine.
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In other happy news, the stunning new Sailing Museum, in Newport, will open in May, in time for the City by the Sea’s main tourist season. It’s hard to think of a better place than Newport for such a museum. It’s not only associated with major local and international sailing races, from America’s Cup on, but with the full range of small-scale recreational sailing.
But there’s more! Construction is supposed to begin this summer on the National Coast Guard Museum, on the waterfront in New London, home of the Coast Guard Academy.