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Model of an 1850s English Beam Engine, Mechanical model, 2008
Todd Cahill
Waltham, Massachusetts
Cast iron, bronze and steel
18 x 16 x 18 in.
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Todd Cahill is an artist, mechanical engineer, model builder, and interpreter of the history of technology. He makes exquisite working models of 19th century engines commonly in use during the Industrial Revolution, (in which Massachusetts figured prominently.) Examples of Cahill's working models include an 1838 Galloway Engine, an 1850s Beam Engine, and a Scottish Table Engine. The equipment he uses to produce his models covers the history of machine tool technology from an 1850s hand cranked metal planer to the more contemporary lathes and milling machines.Cahill is also a fine mechanical draftsman. For twelve years, Cahill 's studio was located in a small mill building along th eBlackstone River in Grafton. "Following the practiceof the early American industrialists to go where the energy was, I re-located a year ago to the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill in Waltham." A fitting move it was, as this is the site of the very first industrialized textile mill in the country to combine under one roof all the operations necessary to convert raw fiber into cloth.Cahill is a member of the New England Model Engineering Society. In fact, amongst New England model engineers and craftsmen, Todd Cahill has a unique reputation as an unexcelled builder of historically accurate working models, an artist, and as a repository and practitioner of traditional mechanicl arts. He is also recognized as an expert in the history of the evolution of steam power -- something of great relevance to the process industrialization in Massachusetts. His meticulously executed working models are informed by his knowledge of mechanical lore.
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