Rough and Tumble’s Christmas

Notified of their gifts earlier this year, the curator committee
of Rough and Tumble was amazed to find that they totaled thousands
of pieces. When an evaluation was placed on these one-of-a-kind
artifacts that figure was estimated to total nearly half a million
dollars.

Not everything has been moved, but hundreds of volunteer
man-hours have gone into bringing 60 steam engines, over 30 early
gas engines, numerous gas and carbide lamps, water and gas-powered
pumps, early household appliances, a collection of wood and
coal-burning stoves, turn-of-the-century office furniture, early
telephones and vehicles to Rough and Tumble.

The vehicles include six cars made before World War I. There is
a 1904 curved-dash Oldsmobile, a 1911 Ford touring car, a 1908
Sears Model H, a four-cylinder 1913 White, a 1910 Maxwell and a
1906 Stanley Steamer. Because Rough and Tumble does not currently
have a climate controlled building on its grounds, these six cars
are at present on display at the Antique Automobile Club of America
library building in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is open to the
public weekdays.

A rare 1924 Day Elder stake body truck was taken to Rough and
Tumble to await restoration. It had not received the ground-up
restoration the cars had had back in the 1950’s. The
restorations were very well done for their time, for the White
touring car bears a plaque stating that it and its then owner
completed a Gliddon tour from Long Island to California and back in
the early 1970’s.

The steam-powered engines range in size from a road rollerand a
steam-powered cement mixer! down to a handful of working models
which could fit on a shelf. William Willock was a man whose
philosophy matched that held at Rough and Tumble. He wanted his
mechanical artifacts to workand most of them had been restored to
working condition by Willock himself, including a mid-sized
stationary steam engine which he made by assembling a working one
from parts of many others.

There are two examples of steam-powered ‘walking beam’
engines. The largest one was built about 1850 and ran for 50
consecutive years in the service of a New Jersey utility company.
The engine was then donated to Stevens Institute where is was used
as a classroom model for a number of years before finally being
sold to a collector. In a ‘walking beam’ engine the piston
rod rocks up and down. The rod is connected to a crank which turns
a flywheel which in turn drives a pulley. When in use there is a
graceful, mesmerizing movement to a walking beam engine which makes
it a pleasure to watch.

A historic early gas engine was part of the Willock collection
to come to Rough and Tumble. This is an Otto Langen engine, one of
only three known to be still in existence, and the only one which
runs. There is a similar engine on exhibit at the Smithsonian in
Washington, D.C. but theirs is inoperable. This engine is the
granddaddy of all internal combustion engines those using a spark
ignition. Engine people will be interested to know that this model
which weighs close to half a ton was capable of producing about HP.
Built about 1870, before gasoline, the engine ran on coal oil. It
was used to pump water.

The Willock collection featured many early attempts by inventors
to make life easier or to move or power something better. An
interesting example of this is a floor model fan now sitting in the
corner of the meeting room at Rough and Tumble. A floor fan may not
be much to get excited about, yet this one precedes electricity. It
is kerosene-powered.

Rough and Tumble’s new gifts once filled more than two
buildings at the William Willock estate, and the immediate need to
find a place to safely store and display their newly acquired
artifacts has given the directors at Rough and Tumble some
sleepless nights. The buildings on Rough and Tumble’s grounds
were already full to overflowing. A modest cash gift from the
Willock estate has been put aside for eventual use in building a
suitable museum building for portions of the Willock bequest. In
the meantime, Rough and Tumble members are moving, tagging, and
admiring their newly acquired artifacts and planning on how they
can best display them when Rough and Tumble reopens its doors in
the spring of 1989.