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Wisconsin has a longstanding reputation for making huge, one-of-a-kind industrial machinery. Home to a concentration of skilled craft workers, Wisconsin has produced such "really big stuff" as turbines for massive dams, steam engines for ships, huge gears and drive trains, paper-making machinery, mammoth mining draglines and giant boilers and cranes. This program will survey the history of making giant stuff, as well as travel to West Allis to find out how workers at Allis-Chalmers went about building giant equipment like the turbines for the Hoover Dam. At Bucyrus International in South Milwaukee, workers still create giant steam shovels and mining draglines piece by piece. Former workers explain what it was like to work on the really big stuff. Meet a man who collects huge machinery as a way to preserve Wisconsin's industrial history.
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