...Photo...Machine Shop...Bausch and Lomb...

...click photo for full size...

Wonder what floor they had. Would machines be set on wooden planks alone?
B + L, Days Gone By >> The Rochesterian

Mechanola said:

Wonder what floor they had. Would machines be set on wooden planks alone?
B + L, Days Gone By >> The Rochesterian

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Those light weight machines could have been on a second or third floor. The floor would have had heavy joists and 2 x 6 tongue and groove sub floor and a 3/4" hardwood finish floor so the floor would have been fairly rigid.

Interesting the use of "stand-downs" to bring the hanger planks lower in the room and closer to the machines.

Joe in NH

enginebill said:

Those light weight machines could have been on a second or third floor. The floor would have had heavy joists and 2 x 6 tongue and groove sub floor and a 3/4" hardwood finish floor so the floor would have been fairly rigid.

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I've walked, drilled through and cut floors in that building built in the late 1800s, and I'll assure you the floor is 2 layers of full 2x8 that floated down the Genesee River as logs, to be sawn. The heavy shops on ground level have a concrete floor with about 4" of "wood bricks" standing on end with virtually no gap between them.

That building is still standing, and still in use, currently as Welfare offices and a Charter School.

The first building between St Paul and the River along with the power house are demolished with only about a 50 foot section of 4 foot thick wall left for some reason known only to a politician.

Interesting fact about the old B&L buildings, there is a 6" cork frost fence going 5 feet down around the basement walls.

Pictures of the B&L buildings over the years: B + L, Days Gone By >> The Rochesterian

Rochester is interesting from an engineering standpoint. It was built around the High Falls of the Genesee River. Near the falls are many old buildings that used water power. You can see the tail races in the steep rock walls of the valley that dumped used water back into the river below the falls. The street that follows the valley below the falls is called Browns Race, which was an 1815 head race canal that distributed water to the buildings on the west side of the river near the falls. The race is still there and there is a museum and large waterwheel in an excavated wheel pit.

The High Falls is also connected with Sam Patch and Friday the 13th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Patch#Rochester

Larry

Notice the Cast Iron Bench Legs with Brackets for a Hanging Tool Chest

Note the cast iron bench legs with brackets for a hanging tool chest. (At least, I think it's a tool chest - what else would it be?)

You can see these running along the right side of the photo, and also the fellow in the center of the photo, wearing the striped shirt, is working at a lathe bolted to one of these tables.

It appears that these replace the ordinary cast legs of the lathes.

The design makes it easy to sweep beneath the cabinet.

John R.

Rochester was a city built by a river where flour was milled and shipped via the Erie Canal that spanned the river on an aqueduct. For about a mile in "downtown" mill races on both sides of the river poured flour mills, shoe factories and machine shops for decades. The river falls 248 feet over 3 sets of falls within the city. Electricity, first generated by the river began to change that in the 1920s, and manufacturing expanded away from the millraces.

Rochester moved ahead to be the birthplace of generations of optical equipment from Kodak and B&L both of which were too far from the falls to use water power. It's also the home of the invention of Gleason gear hobbers, Farrel presses, Cutler mail chutes, Pfaudler glass lined tanks, Heuther saws, General Railway Signal, Sterling Sirens Wollensak Optical, Telltrue thermometers, Symington ammunition plant Taylor Instruments and a hundred others.

Between coal and the river Rochester once generated sufficient electricity to power a third of NY State. Today Rochester can't generate sufficient power to supply the air conditioners of our vast welfare population. If industry returned next week, Rochester couldn't power it. The once industrial giant at the mouth of the Genesee river suicided beginning in 1970.

" Today Rochester can't generate sufficient power to supply the air conditioners of our vast welfare population."

Namely: republicans in congress these days.