Figure 1 – Gristmill at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 is an image that I took last weekend of the Old Grist Mill at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn this past weekend in Sudbury, MA.  The Wayside Inn Grist Mill was commissioned by Henry Ford and designed by renowned hydraulic engineer J.B. Campbell. The Mill ground its first grain on Thanksgiving Day 1929. In 1952, the Pepperidge Farm began operating the Mill, which it continued to do until 1967.  It’s image remains the logo of the company.  The mill remains in operation today grinding grain for the Wayside Inn.

So much for history.  I am ambivalent about whether my photograph really works.  I wish, first of all, that there was water flowing over the paddle wheel.  I was also initially ambivalent about whether it should be a color or black and white photograph.  But then I realized that what I like best about the picture is that it looks like a black and white image which has been hand-painted adding very vivid red and also some green.

A second element that I am pleased with are the struts that seem to attach the wheel to the wall.  It seems a strange point to notice. But my eyes continue to be drawn to them and I think this is because they seem to ground the waterwheel’s mechanism to reality – that is to the need to obey physical law.  The image is of a real functional machine, not an artifice of the designer’s mind.