When you think of the Old West, science might not be the first thing that comes to mind.
You're probably more inclined to think of dugouts and survival, says Codi Hamilton, marketing coordinator at the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville.
And yet, early settlers made good use of scientific principles — in everything from dyeing wool to using weights and pulleys to building telegraphs.
The Heritage Center, which interprets history from 1820-1920, presents activities centered on a different theme each week throughout the summer season, and this week, continuing through Saturday, is "Science of the American West" week.
It's a chance for visitors to see how important science was in everyday activities in the West, says program assistant Luke Waldron. "We're so used to having everything done automatically that we forget how it was when everything had to be done by hand. And it's fun to see some of the early 'labor-saving' devices."
In connection with science week, the center and Utah State University's Discovery Alliance offered a series of science day camps for students from first through eighth grade.
Monday was camp day for first- and second-graders, and they started off with a lesson in printing.
Typewriters are a foreign concept to kids raised on computers, so the idea that everything once had to be copied by hand is almost unbelievable. We owe a lot to Johann Gutenberg, who invented movable type in the 1450s, says Keith Watkins, who operates a 1898 print shop at the center.
By then, even out in the West they had the 1858 Gordon-Platen self-inking printing press, one of the best ever made. "It was the lightest and easiest to use. They made others, but they were never quite as good." The Gordon-Platen, in fact, was made until 1966.
Watkins uses wooden type that came from the first print shop in Wyoming. He shows the youngsters how type must be set upside down and backward — or instead of America, you might get aciremA.
He explains how the capital letters were kept in the upper case and the non-capitals in the lower case — terms we still use for our letters. He talks about how the pioneers made their own ink out of linseed oil and lampblack — soot taken from chimneys.
He shows them how he uses glycerin on his hands, so he can grab and feed the paper into the press, which is operated with a foot treadle. Rose water and glycerin are what great-grandmother used on her hands to keep them soft and smooth. "You can always tell a printer," he says. "Their hands may be dirty and black, but they are soft."
Next the kids get a lesson in the science of early food preparation.
Butter used to be churned with a wooden paddle in a big, wooden churn, explains Jennie Larsen. But by 1917, women had a wonderful new invention: a jar with a simple, mechanical engine. All you had to do was turn the handle, she says, and in 20 minutes or so, you would have butter. And the same for ice cream.
Ha! says Ray Ferrin. There's a better way to make ice cream — with a gas-powered engine. Using such a contraption, Ferrin rigged up his own belt-driven ice cream maker. Look, no hands!
These early engines may seem loud and crude to us, he says, but they were very important on the farm before electricity came along. Just look at this 1917 grain elevator, powered by a John Deere horse-and-a-half, hit-and-miss engine. "It would take the loose grain from the reaper up the tube and into a spout in the granary slick as a whistle."
Electricity actually came to this farm around 1912-14, says Waldron. "They charged by the light bulb. When it burned out, you took it in and bought another." The 1917 farmhouse has one light bulb, which hung in the kitchen.
The Wiatts, who lived there, probably could have had an electric stove, says Cassie Miller, but they were more comfortable with cooking on the wood-burning one.
It's not that complicated, she explains. "The burners close to the fire are high, the middle ones are medium and the far ones are low. For the oven, you stick your hand in and count. If you can make it to 10 before it gets too hot, that's 350 degrees. If you only get to 6, that's 400."
The oven cooks on the bottom better than the top, so you had to shift things from top to bottom halfway through. You had to be constantly aware and watching, says Miller. But it was so much better than an open fire, who cared?
Frank Wiatt did sell a sow and six pigs to buy one of the first washing machines in the valley, says Waldron. It had an electric-powered wringer, which was a big step up from the hand-powered wringer, which was itself a big step up from the old washboard, adds Rosie Johnson.
That same evolution can be seen with wool — from hand-carding to a hand-cranked carding machine, and from spinning by hand to the spinning wheel.
But if mechanics helped in the production of cloth, so did chemistry.
"Would you like to wear clothes that were all the same color?" asks Joyce Skabelund. "Well, the pioneers didn't either." But for colors, they had to use plants, she tells the youngsters. "For yellow, for example, they used onion skins."
Before the wool will take the color, however, it has to be simmered for an hour in a mixture of alum and cream of tartar. "That chemical reaction is very important," says Skabelund. "It helps set the dye."
Physics come into play with the use of pulleys, note Ryan and Cindy Lee, who demonstrate how the distribution of weight means you need less force. And the more pulleys you use, the lighter it seems.
Simple machines such as pulleys, wedges, levers and planes were used on farms to lift bales of hay into the tops of barns, grind wheat into flour, cut and split logs, draw water from wells, plow fields and other things. "Pulleys are how we got the walls of the new ox barn up," says Ryan.
"The pioneers had to make do with what they had," says woodworker Patch Peterson. Hand saws, planes and simple mallets and gouges were used to shape and refine wood into all kinds of objects, from toys to trunks and soup spoons to fruit bowls.
Astronomy was used to navigate and to track time. Electromagnets were used in the first telegraphs.
In fact, everywhere you look you can find science in the old West, says Waldron. And he hopes that taking some time to stop and think about it will not only help people understand where many of the tools and processes we use today come from, but also help them appreciate what we have. "It's a great chance to experience firsthand a time before computers."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com