HISTORIC SOUND
Industrial Beaver County
Sounds of Industry
What's Here
The McCarl Industrial and Agricultural Museum is a great place to visit if you’re interested in machinery and local history. We have an extensive collection of industrial artifacts from the 18th and 20th century, and visitors can get up close to displays and see how things work. At certain times, we have live demonstrations of our working equipment.
Sounds from the McCarl Industrial & Agricultural Museum
Listen to Mystery Museum Exhibit One
Hint: This machine helps move water from one place to another.
Listen to Mystery Museum Exhibit Two
Hint: This machine was built by the Joseph Reid Gas Engine Company, Oil City, Pennsylvania.
Listen to Mystery Museum Exhibit Three
Hint: This machine from the Beaver Valley Alloy Company turned air into an industrial tool.
Listen to Mystery Museum Exhibit Four
Hint: The person running this machine makes and repairs things by hand that are made of iron and steel.
Industrial Sound Sampler
For Best Listening Use Headphones or Earbuds
Factories & Construction
Hum of industrial lighting. Exhaust fans. Metal sawing. Conveyor system. Crane and vehicles. Factory gates closing.
Farming & Agriculture
Morning farm pasture. Barnyard animals. Cutting hay by hand with a scythe. Horse-drawn wagons. Diesel farm tractor start up and shutdown. Steam tractor horn.
Water Power
River dam. Water powered feed mill. Water wheel turning and gearbox.
Carpenter
Hand sawing wood. Circular saw. Wood plane. Chisle work. Hammering. Wood lathe. Drilling. Staple gun. Wood dust vacuum.
Mason
Hand mixing concrete. Brick laying and stringing mortar with hand trowel. Cement truck unloading concrete into forms. Leveling wet cement slab using screeding trowel.
Blacksmith
Hand hammering on anvil. Coal and propane blast furnace. Punch machine. Metal grinder. Metal rim forming. Scrap metal falling.
Sounds from History's Kitchen
What was frontier life like in 1800s Beaver County?
The “Early American” YouTube channel provides us with recreated frontier experiences around America’s early frontier hearth and home. The 19th century recipes and methods of preparation are generally authentic–including the rather fascinating sounds and noises of frontier culinary life: a crackling fire, knives carving, slicing a cutting board, grinding stones, spice shaking, egg whisking, lard sizzling, and so many other interesting sounds.
Here EA provides us with high quality sounds and sights of “deep fried mashed potato balls from 1822 and a slow roasted duck from 1823. These are real recipes (or receipts as they used to be called) from those who came before us.”
Many EA’s videos are created using the ASMR technique (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), which captures sounds in high definition, stereoscopic detail. In many cases, ASMR recordings use binaural microphones that simulate the way in which humans hear sound through ears on the left and right side of the head–often producing the most fidelic human hearing experiences possible.
This exhibit and the Little Beaver Historical Society Podcast are productions of The Social Voice Project. We welcome factual corrections and meaningful clarifications regarding the content on this page.