1Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.The power plant once had an adorable entry portal just for the “Pratt Cats,” labeled the “Feline Staff Entrance.” Milster was even given an eviction notice from his campus housing, which was later rescinded by the school.Emanuele Martelli 1*, Falah Alobaid 2 and Cristina Elsido 1 In 2016, it was reported that Milster, now in his eighties, had been reassigned to another area in the facilities department, allegedly over controversy over his care of the numerous stray cats that lived (and stayed warm) in the Engine Room. Milster said that working for a school allows him to stay true to himself: “You can be different and not be considered an oddball.” Milster also ran an annual New Year’s Eve steam whistle blow at Pratt - the last event took place as the world rang in 2015. A lot of people would say, ‘Why do you have old machinery?’ I have it and I like it because it’s reliable.” “It involves a lot of problem solving…A lot of the machinery I have to deal with is obsolete, insofar as spare parts. “Making parts is interesting, there’s a sense of fulfilment,” Milster said in a 2015 video interview. He was one of only four chief engineers in the history of Pratt Institute and saw himself as the keeper of the power plant’s secrets – know-how on antiquated technologies he has garnered over the course of nearly sixty years. Milster, a New York native, has been working at Pratt since 1958. In fact, the ASME report states that all of Pratt’s campus was “designed on the standard mill construction of the period so that, should the school fail financially, had a usable commercial property.” “In early life he was forced to learn what it meant to economize in everything,” as reported in Scientific American in an October 1888 article about the new Pratt Institute. This was core to Charles Pratt’s overall philosophy. You can read a detailed account of the changes in the ASME report, but suffice it to say, the building has continued to adapt and respond to the changing power demands of Pratt’s campus, always with the aim of being economical and efficient. Additional revisions to the power plant including new generators and expanded boiler rooms, were made in subsequent years, also due to the construction of new buildings. A few years earlier, The Library Building and the Household Science and Arts Building was constructed. The Ames Iron Work generators were installed in 1900 to add capacity to the expanding campus. The Custodis Chimney Company received the contract for a stack, 124 feet above grade, square at the base and octagonal from about one third its height up.” Logan and Company installed two 110-HP boilers and associated piping, while the Worthington Company supplied fire and boiler feed pumps. supplied a horizontal, 40- horsepower engine its belt drove the machine shop equipment. The report also states the various purveyors of equipment and technology when the steam engine power plant was built in 1887: the “Harris-Corliss Company of Providence, R. At some period near the turn of the Century the North-South wing had an extra floor added to it.” According to the report from the ASME, the original drawings for this building “called for an ‘L’ shaped building with a basement and two stories above grade, but an 1888 photo shows the North-South wing to have four stories and the East-West wing five stories above grade. Unlike the rest of Pratt’s campus, which was designed by the firm Lamb & Rich, the steam engine power plant was designed by William Windrim from Philadelphia.
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