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as a cartoon figure providing the
<br />information in this section with
<br />Visitor Experience conversation "callouts." (check
<br />Designers should consider using Willie Wirehand copyright issues)
<br />This exhibit section has two major goals: to highlight the story of electricity in Sherburne
<br />County and to highlight the work of rural women. It should be a mix of panel text and photos
<br />that introduce the broad storyline. The Barnier demonstrations will provide hands-on
<br />opportunities to learn more about electricity in a fun way. The compressed kitchen
<br />environment will provide an opportunity to show how rural women's work changed and use
<br />the oral histories as a primary source.
<br />Develop five original art illustrations about how electricity is created using 1.) windmill and
<br />battery; hydroelectric; coal or natural gas plant; nuclear plant, RDF plant. Examples of
<br />colorful illustrations are available in Karen Arms, Environmental Science, Austin: Holt,
<br />Rinehart, and Winston, 281 (fossil fuels); 284, (nuclear); 292 (hydroelectric).
<br />Leon Barnier's hand -crank generator with bulb, visitors crank generator to create electricity
<br />to light bulb; someone has to be doing this or managing a process that does it all the time to
<br />create electricity, and that is what the electrical cooperative does.
<br />Leon Barnier's co-op IQ test. "We used to make the Sherburne County fair and the Anoka
<br />County fair.... I had ten questions on there and, then, I had a selector switch with a pilot
<br />light to indicate which question was up. Then there were two push buttons for each question.
<br />If you had the wrong question, you got the buzzer and if you got the other [right], you got the
<br />bell.... It was one of the best teaching mechanisms I had ever seen.... I had a couple light
<br />bulbs on top with blinkers in them, you know...." (see Rural Electrification Oral History
<br />Project, Leon Barrier, narrator, Marilyn Brinkman, interviewer, 1997, p. 12)"
<br />Leon Barnier's "Wiring Analyzer" "Back in the days when we were checking on size of
<br />service, this thing was set up, on, like a console. I had a whole bunch of switches on there,
<br />each one representing an appliance load of different sizes. I had water heaters, and barn
<br />cleaners, and toasters, and irons, and ranges, the whole bit. The trick to this, of course, was
<br />that I had the whole thing so that we were reading in milliamps, not ampere.... [S]o that the
<br />indication was in milliamps.... Then, on the other dial, the voltage dial, I'd have the
<br />different service sizes, 16-amp service, 100-amp service, 200-amp service. You'd start out,
<br />of course, at full voltage and as they'd put that stuff on, why it would come down because the
<br />resistance was just like it would be in real life, except that it was a thousand times less.... In
<br />addition to that, I had another dial then that would show, and the lines that would show, the
<br />different size wire. You could put your appliances —the ones you thought you'd be using all
<br />the time or at the same time —on there and as your voltage dropped, you could turn this other
<br />dial and see what size service wire you would need to carry that to bring the voltage back
<br />up." (12-13) This demonstration should be adapted to be applicable to contemporary
<br />situations by adding loads to specific circuits. A contest can be developed where people can
<br />load as much onto a circuit as possible. As each item is loaded onto a circuit, a bell sounds.
<br />Once the load is exceeded, a horn will honk.
<br />Sherburne County Historical Society Heritage Center Interpretive Plan, April 21, 2005, page 81
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