Hagley Museum

By Eliot Larsen and Quincy Larsen

Today we went to a place called the Hagley museum and the DuPont family property. There were many things that were about the 19th century (1800-1899) the main part of the “outdoor museum” was a gun powder factory located right on the edge of the Brandywine creek. The black powder was ground up in a room with three foot walls on the side and 6 foot walls on the back. If it exploded it would shoot out into the water and the roof would fly off of the top of the buildings into the creek. 

Water would turn the gears to produce power to then turn eight ton wheels to grind the different ingredients to make the black powder. The different ingredients are the black willow for charcoal, potassium nitrate “salt peter”, and sulfur. Those make the black powder. After they grind it up it is sent to get tested if it is a good batch. Only one gram of black powder was used for it to be tested.

The other way they make the black powder is with steam powered engines. The engines are fire powered and have a water chamber after the water chamber is the steam chamber that builds up pressure and can easily push a lot of weight with ease. we saw a lot of machines that look like they are churning butter with the spinning rotation. That makes it very easy to grind it into black powder especially if you are right next to a creek. 

.