The Buttongun

A sharp turn in the coatings department twists the steel out of sight.

The left wall is stacked high with wooden crates holding spools. Tags hang on machines describing the last batch of silk the mill ever produced.

At noon, the lower skylights around the shops glow yellow-green, thanks to the flora blooming on the roof above.

Looking up to the second floor of the Nitrating House, where cotton would be soaked in nitric acid. These brought cotton into the building.

This skyway, built to help seal off two parts of the complex during an out of control fire, was probably too rotten to burn by the time I saw it.

A mid-line polishing booth. It was fun to see the thousands of lasers and other sensors that guided the robotic arms and tools around the bodies as they passed. Note the red/green stop/go lights in the distance.

Kate for scale. Powder that passed the floatation level was flowed over sluice tables, another mass-based way of separating gold. I’ve never seen so many of these in one place. Though it was a hardrock mine, it worked more like a placer mine.

The giant cog is missing on this machine, which turned a sugar slurry intro crystals. Green-blue stained glass makes the rusty machine glow in aquamarine.

One of my favorite visual feature of grain elevators, especially big ones, is how they repeat.