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Ed Battison's Collection on the American Pickers

adammil1

Titanium
Joined
Mar 12, 2001
Location
New Haven, CT
Just a heads up for anyone who may be interested. The American Pickers were in Vermont and they came across a lot of Ed Battison's personal collection. It was pretty neat to see all the stuff he dragged home and to think that that was all secondary to the Museum of Precision that he founded. It looked like Ed found a good caretaker too to look after his stuff when he was gone as he had a friend who seems to have inherited and looked after most of his collection after he was gone.

It looks like this is the episode Watch Picker's Dozen Full Episode - American Pickers | HISTORY Season 20 Episode 3 if anyone wants to watch. A little light overall on machine tools but still pretty neat to see.
 
I am not enabled to view that link, apparently, and I despise that television show, but I have been in Battison's house, as well as his barns, and he is or was a great story.
 
Yeah, I saw that one and was thinking those guys walked right by so much great stuff. Never mind what they didn't show or you couldn't see.
 
I was able to view the episode because of the help of a member here, thanks!. Truly great to see parts of the collection. But OMG the shows hosts made it painful. Plus it was frustrating to see the camera panning by all the stuff I wanted to see as they fool around with a frickin oil can. A cool oil can yes, but there were a bunch of machine tools I really wanted to check out!

I've spent a fair amount of time driving around Vermont and I swear I have driven by his place, does anyone know where it is?
 
Of course I--and others here--know where it is. I don't know if we should say in this forum though. If you private message me I will tell.

I was in his town this past Sunday.
 
Yeah, I saw that one and was thinking those guys walked right by so much great stuff. Never mind what they didn't show or you couldn't see.

American Pickers is one of those shows that the wife likes watching so it is on the DVR and a regular but it is amazing on a lot of the episodes how much great stuff the guys walk by and or never show you. They are pretty automotive/motorcycle centric and don't know much about the real neat antique machinery. They had one episode out in Washington state where the guy built himself a steam wonderland and you should have seen how much they panned by. I wish they would have slowed down the camera quite a bit in those shots.

Come to think of it they have been to some great machine shops over the years and come across a lot of guys who have machine tools.. They had a guy who is one of the premier collectors of bicycles in the country and had quite the impressive home machine shop that his collection was scattered about. Anyone know more about that guy?

CNCfireman thanks for the article you posted, it looks like Ed was working towards making another museum in addition to the precision museum, as the article took me to this website;
Edwin Battison
 
Ed was, it was named something like the “Franklin Museum of Fire and Ice”, I took him to dinner one night and he spent 4 hours describing it to me and to be honest when we were done I didn’t have a clue! For those that don’t know I have been around and worked with museums my entire life! I’m in the museum business and I’m sitting here designing one as I write this. And I couldn’t get straight was Ed was trying to do!

I once took a road trip with him in one of his VW micro bus pick up truck things. Wow, what a time.
 
Ed's museum was named "The Franklin Museum of Nature and the Human spirit". He was a big fan of Benjamin Franklin hence the name. He wanted to show a connection between the human desire to improve life and doing so through innovation. He and I had several talks about this while walking (maybe tripping) through his buildings. They were full of wonderful treasures from our manufacturing past. He knew what was historically significant and did what he could to collect and save those items specifically. There was some duplication between his personal collection and the American Precision Museum (which was very close by).

I hope his complete collection can be properly displayed somewhere in the future.
 
People like that are,on the whole,plonkers. Enamel ceiling shades,and angle poise lights off machines they like,and the clocking in machine. And the legs off the machines! Still these days I suppose it is a necessary evil to have such characters in in order to get publicity.
 








 
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