July 14

The rebuilt and recreated Gold Medal flour mill

Friday evening found us at ST Paul RV Park where we could learn how the other half lives. Our rig was dwarfed by some of these motor homes and 5^th wheels.

Starting this weekend and going for about 10 days, the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul hold their annual Aquatennial. I never have found an explanation for the name. At any given time there are 2 or 3 activities you can partake of. Saturday we went Down to Minneapolis to visit two museums. A restoration of General Mills flour milling plant, and a museum of electronics and magnetism, called the Bakken.

A model of the mill as originally built made for the Worlds Fair

Mill City is a rebuilt Gold Medal flour mill from the early part of the 1900’s.A flour mill operates on the gravity principal. No longer grinding wheat between two round stones, mills use rollers today. An elevator brings the grain to the 2or 3 of the left side of the top row of cells you see in the cutaway model in front of Liz. The grain drops into the the the next row, below as it is ground between two rolls. The first grinding is very course, and as the grain reaches the bottom, it takes another elevator ride back to the top of the next set of cells, where it repeats the process. As it moves down and to the right, the wheat is ground finer and finer. 

Two of the roller mills originally used 

You can see in the picture below, the white chutes coming down from the floor above. The grain would be ground between two rolls powered by the belts on the side. The finished product goes through the floor to the next operation, below.

This mill was abandoned in the 60's and sat full of the machines, and everything else that had no value until 1991, when on a cold February day, a fire ripped through the plant. Most of the plant came down, but by the late 90's a group of Minneapolis civic leaders decided to  recreate this mill to showcase Minneapolis the "Mill City". Milling had become a industry, as the prairies to the west were broken, and the immigrants planted crops, mostly wheat. 

The arch bridge and the old Pillsbury mill

There were many large mills such as this one built in the area, notably Pillsbury, right across the Mississippi form Gold Medal. I think all succumbed to flames eventually, as milling flour creates great quantities of highly flammable dust. The city has created an excellent area where apartments and shops are sprouting up. There were hundreds of walkers and joggers on the arch pedestrian bridge, and lots of interesting shops on the other side. It was a better than expected morning.

The description of the Bakken attracted both Liz and I. I had known that the founder of Medtronic had donated many of the exhibits that gave this museum it’s start. Medtronic was a customer of mine at my old company. They were pioneers, along with Wilson Greatbatch, in Lithium batteries for pacemakers. The museum contains many electrical, and magnetic devices for diagnosing and treating illnesses. They were having a special day, because of the Aquatennial, with Ben Franklin in attendance explaining his theories of lightning, an other electrical phenomena. Liz used some letterpress from Ben's old print shop to print one of his sayings. The museum had a few exhibits demonstrating static charges such as the hair-raising one to the left.
They also had exhibits showing early EKG equipment, and many other diagnostic devices. Most of the very early devices were from Earl Bakken's personal collection. The pacemaker below is one of the collaborative models from the early days.  The round cylinders in this one are mercury batteries. They lasted a very short periods of time then the patient had to  undergo another operation to implant an new one. Wilson Greatbatch had a new technology to manufacture Lithium batteries for the pacemaker. Li batteries are very long lived, often outlasting the patient!! The founder of our company worked with Wilson, and developed expanded platinum, and nickle grids for the pacemaker. The company, Wilson Greatbatch Ltd , is still a customer today, although using different materials for pacer batteries. 
The museum was interesting, and very informative for me. I'm not sure Liz enjoyed it as much as I did, although most of the exhibits were fascinating for the many middle schoolers that were attending.