Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation — Upcoming Lectures & Talks

Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, 154 Moody St · Waltham · charlesrivermuseum.org

8 upcoming lectures and talks from Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All lectures in Greater Boston →

Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm

Film Screening & Mill Talk: Destination Watertown - the Armenians of Hood Rubber

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Roger K. Hagopian screens his documentary on the Hood Rubber Company, which opened in Watertown in 1896 and drew Armenian laborers who had fled the Hamidian massacres and, later, the 1915 Genocide. Former workers and descendants of the Hood family recall piecework and chemical exposure alongside the neighborhood "sneaker test"; the factory, closed in 1969, gave rise to Watertown's Armenian community. Hagopian, whose father survived the Genocide, discusses the film.

Details

Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: The Longest, Hardest Race - Henry Ford & the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Moskowitz tells a riveting, fast-paced story of the first true coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history. This is a colorful tale of corporate ambition and subterfuge braided through a gripping account of the gritty drivers who braved hostile terrain, mechanical failure, and, shockingly, sabotage, while chasing victory.

Details

Wed Nov 11 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: A Paper Nation: America's First Information Revolution

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Alex Wright gives an illustrated talk drawn from his new book Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper, which follows the five-hundredfold growth in American newspapers between the Revolutionary War and the turn of the twentieth century and the consolidation by media barons that followed. Wright, who has led digital projects at The New York Times and Google News, also wrote Cataloging the World.

Details

Wed Nov 18 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in Historic 3D Stereophotographs

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Mutter, Professor of Pathology Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, co-founder, Photoarchive3D. The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition was the first great international World's Fair held in the United States, celebrating 100 years of independence. Held May through November 1876, it presented to the world a unified, post-Civil War, ascendant nation whose adaptive industrial and growing commercial base became the envy of others.

Details

Wed Dec 2 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: The Disposable Workforce: Why, How Much, and Consequences For Workers and For Employers

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Paul Osterman discusses his new book Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment (Harvard University Press), which draws on a national survey and interviews to argue that 35 percent of the adult workforce is "disposable from the perspective of employers," with costs to worker well-being and firm performance. Osterman is Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Management at MIT Sloan; his earlier books include Good Jobs America.

Details

Sat Dec 12 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: Why Were There No Black Machine Operatives in 19th Century New England Textile Mills?

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Jacqueline Jones, Professor of History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin, asks why antebellum New England textile mills hired only white workers when Southern mills ran on enslaved operatives, and locates the answer in Boston's potential white allies, including abolitionists and labor activists, who never pressed for Black workers' access to wage labor. Her No Right to an Honest Living won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Details

Wed Jan 13 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: Contested Currents: Rivers and the Remaking of New England

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

Zachary Bennett discusses his book Contested Currents, which argues that New England’s early history centres on its rivers rather than its land or sea. Colonists found damming or overfishing a river “a more effective method of dispossessing Indians than predatory land deals,” and early industrialists used the same tactics on white farmers. Bennett, who teaches at Norwich University, connects that history to today’s dam removals on the Charles.

Details

Wed Jan 20 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: Building Route 128, the history of the road we love to hate

· · 154 Moody St · · ·

David's talk, Building Route 128 is the history of the road we love to hate. Why is it where it is? Why did it take so long to build it? And why, of why, does it always seemed to be clogged with traffic?

Details