Forum Network

Join the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation for a talk with Luciano Bueno who explores how bold entrepreneurship is redefining the cotton industry through the lens of future-forward production.

From lab-grown breakthroughs to cutting-edge technologies, he shares how next-generation ventures are transforming the way we make things—faster, cleaner, and smarter. This isn’t just about cotton; it’s a glimpse into the industrial revolutions of tomorrow. Luciano will dive into the challenges, the untapped opportunities, and how entrepreneurial vision can lead to massive impacts.

250 years ago, the revolution that would lead to our country’s independence was in its early stages. The Continental Army was facing a major problem, gunpowder shortages. Join the Charles River Musuem for an exploration of how the production of saltpeter, the principal ingredient of this explosive material, changed the course of history.

This talk will explore the different ways saltpeter was manufactured by Americans, the wide variety of instructions that guided their efforts, and the motivations-both lofty and materialist-that drove them forward.

Presented by David Hsiung.

Hear a fascinating discussion on the past, present, and future of a ubiquitous fabric – denim. The Charles River Museum is at the site of Francis Cabot Lowell’s first cotton textile mill, and it was cotton manufacturing that powered the Industrial Revolution. Now, jeans are the iconic American fashion staple that almost all of us own. Fashion history professor, curator, and author Emma McClendon will engage in an interactive discussion about where she sees the future of jeans as a fashion item, utilitarian garment, and manufactured product. She has a special interest in the sustainability of denim production, and the ways in which jeans have become not just clothing, but a way of expressing individuality and identity. This is sure to be a thought-provoking conversation around an article of clothing that, at any given moment, literally half of the planet’s population is wearing.

Kittie Knox was a young biracial cyclist in the 1890s who fought against race-based limitations in America’s post-Reconstruction reaction against Black advancement. During her cycling career (1893 – 1899), she became a well-known century (100-mile) rider, protested the League of American Wheelmen’s color bar in 1895, and refused to conform to conventions about fast riding and wearing a long skirt while cycling. For decades after her untimely death, Knox’s groundbreaking story was virtually unknown outside of the world of cycling.

Scholar and writer Larry Finison has worked to bring her remarkable life back to a wider audience and speaks about Kittie Knox in the context of the late 19th century cycling craze.

Climate change, global disruption, and labor scarcity are forcing us to rethink the underlying principles of industrial society. How can a new generation reanimate the best ideas of our industrial forbearers and begin to build a realistic and human-centered future? Join us at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation for a conversation with David Mindell who envisions a new form of industrialism that draws upon the first principles of the Industrial Revolution that date back to the 18th Century in his recent book 'The New Lunar Society'.

While discussing new industrialism, he will tell the story of the Lunar Society, a group of engineers, scientists, and industrialists who came together to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to industrial processes. The Lunar Society included pioneers like James Watt, Benjamin Franklin, and Josiah Wedgwood whose conversations both ignited the Industrial Revolution and shaped the founding of the United States.

“Listen my children and you shall hear of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”

This talk will explore Revere’s patriotic technological service to his country, starting before his famous ride and ending long afterwards. Paul Revere pioneered new manufacturing techniques in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon making, and copperwork.

As the first American to roll copper into sheets for the young United States Navy, Revere’s innovative practices helped lead his young nation into the industrial age.

When Francis Cabot Lowell revolutionized industrial manufacturing, he could never have imagined that industrialization at scale would change everything about the way we work, live, and even eat. Join us for an eye-opening talk from NYU Professor Amy Bentley as she traces the development of the modern American diet as it became another sector of the mass manufacturing commercial economy. Food could be processed, packaged, and sold faster, more efficiently, and in huge quantities – but there were serious unintended consequences. Her case study – baby food.

By the 1950s, commercial baby food had become emblematic of all things modern in postwar America. Little jars of baby food were thought to resolve a multitude of problems in the domestic sphere, but these baby food products laden with sugar, salt, and starch also became a gateway to the industrialized diet that blossomed during this period.

Today, baby food continues to be shaped by medical, commercial, and parenting trends. Baby food producers now contend with health and nutrition problems as well as the rise of alternative food movements. All of this matters because it’s during infancy that palates become acclimated to tastes and textures, including those of highly processed, minimally nutritious, and calorie-dense industrial food products.

Join the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation for a captivating Mill Talk on the history of Levi Strauss, the man behind one of the most enduring names in American fashion, and the brand he built. Tracey Panek, Historian and Director of Archives at Levi Strauss & Co., will explore how a Bavarian immigrant in the 19th century built a brand that revolutionized workwear and became a global icon in fashion, culture, and everyday utilitarian clothing.

This talk is especially fitting at the Charles River Museum, the site of Francis Cabot Lowell’s first cotton textile mill, where America’s industrial revolution transformed fabric production and laid the foundation for the mass manufacturing of textiles—including the denim that would later become synonymous with Levi’s. Discover how industrial ingenuity, from early denim to Strauss’s patented riveted jeans, shaped the way we produce and wear clothing today – and how it continues to shape fashion worldwide.

Join The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation for the kickoff of their special exhibition, 'Rediscovering Waltham’s Harpsichord History', which will examine the story of Frank and Diane Hubbard, founders and operators of Hubbard Harpsichords manufacturers of instruments and kits for almost 50 years.

Through their work, Greater Boston became a center of the revivial of the harpsichord as an instrument and Early Music as a genre. Mark Kroll has written the definitive book on chronicling this important period of music history and collected dozens of firsthand accounts of the principal players, workers, and artisans associated with the ‘Big Three’ harpsichord shops in Greater Boston – Hubbard in Waltham, William Dowd and Eric Herz, both in Cambridge.

Kroll will give a talk that sets the context in which the Hubbards’ shop at the Lyman Estate carriage house expanded to the old Cotton Picker Building of the Boston Manufacturing Factory site on Moody Street. Hubbard Harpsichords pioneered the use of DIY kits that became popular in the 1960s and 70s, many of which were built in this mill complex.

This Mill Talk marks the grand opening of Rediscovering Waltham’s Harpsichord History, a special exhibition on the artisanship, industry, and art of designing and building harpsichords, exemplified by those of the Hubbard shop. This three-month exhibition will include a full harpsichord, wood-bending frames, tools and materials of the trade, and imagery from the Hubbard shop that centers the workers who created instruments and kits for decades on site. Over the course of its installation, the program will include music, informational talks, panel discussions, and other special events to bring this almost-forgotten part of Waltham’s and Greater Boston’s music history back to the forefront.

In 1816, Francis Cabot Lowell was in Washington DC lobbying Congress to pass the first protectionist tariff in American history. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the burgeoning cotton textile industry he had fought so hard to build was imperiled by the cheap dumping of British imports. By building a coalition between Northern industrialists and Southern plantation owners, Lowell was successful in arguing that tariffs would ensure that American domestic manufacturing should be protected, and that the federal government’s trade policy had a duty to so.

Now, tariffs are back in the political conversation, and the efforts around the Tariff of 1816 and its consequences are as relevant as ever. Join us as we engage in a dynamic conversation connecting the past, present, and future of tariffs and trade policy and their effects. Economist Bryan Snyder and historian Larry Peskin will draw lessons from American history to inform our understanding of economic policy today.