Opening Remarks
June 21, 2006
Cathy E. Minehan
President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Thank you for joining us. Earlier today we celebrated the long-awaited completion of the plaza outside our building that is part of the new Rose Kennedy Greenway, bringing welcome parks and greenspace to our area. This evening we are celebrating the opening of the exhibit “These are Textiles? Innovations in modern fabric design, manufacture, and use.”

Why is the Fed hosting a modern textile exhibit? Nearly three years ago, we launched an exciting new teaching initiative called the New England Economic Adventure. The overarching mission of the Adventure is to introduce concepts of economic growth to middle and high school students. Using stories from New England’s history, we convey the lessons that education, innovation, and increased productivity create economic growth and raise living standards.

As these are complex concepts, the Adventure is designed to draw in students through numerous methods in order to foster an intuitive understanding of the ideas. (Economics is viewed by some as a dry subject – but we do try to make learning about it stimulating and fun.) The Adventure comprises four interdependent parts - a permanent exhibit called Material Life, an interactive theater experience, a web site, and the changing exhibits.

“These are Textiles?” is the fourth of our changing exhibits. From the very first planning stages, the changing exhibits were envisioned as excellent springboards for probing economic themes from new vantage points. They were also seen as a way to refresh the experience for our visitors, and to attract a wide range of audiences.

Today’s exhibit revisits a solidly New England theme, textiles, but as you glance around the gallery, you will see that very few objects look like they are made from either cotton or wool; indeed, many may not look like they are made from fabric at all. Or, the application might be surprising. One which resembles an embroidered doily is in fact a polyester surgical implant made with a CAD-CAM program and manufactured in the UK. The fleece blanket manufactured by one of the few operating mills left in New England, Malden Mills, embeds tiny conductive textile fibers allowing it to operate at low voltage, making it much safer. The firefighter’s suit can withstand temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees F.  While many of the objects here are made in New England, their component fabrics may come from other parts of the United States or the world.

It is hard to believe that manmade fibers have only been in existence for a little over 100 years. The search for a cheaper, better supply of silk resulted in what came to be called rayon, developed from “natural” wood pulp. The first truly synthetic fiber, nylon, wasn’t developed until the late 1930s, when it was first used in hosiery and then immediately shifted to parachute production in World War II.

We have to look further back for the beginnings of our textile manufacturing history - 200 years. The giant mills are a familiar sight to New Englanders, evoking a powerhouse past as well as the region’s continued adeptness in reinventing itself.

The mills began with daring. Since English law forbade exporting machinery, mechanical drawings, or models, Francis Cabot Lowell memorized drawings he was allowed to see while touring England in 1811. With the help of a skilled machinist, he recreated and improved upon the “heisted” power loom. His “big” vision of bringing all aspects of fabric manufacture under one roof, an approach that was new not only to the region but to the world, was made possible by enlisting the venture capitalists known as the Boston Associates. This combination of strategies put New England in the manufacturing forefront for decades until end of the 19th century, when the South moved into prominence.

The development of today’s textiles depend heavily on other themes we touch upon in the Adventure – education, technology, innovation, and the importance of institutions such as the military in the development of these new technologies. The search to make a “better” silk has come a long way. The creation of these high-performance fabrics draws upon numerous disciplines - materials sciences, engineering, computer sciences, physics, art, and economics are just a few.

Today’s high-performance textiles touch virtually all aspects of our lives. They challenge our conception of what a textile “is” and what its function might be. They are vital in aerospace, transportation, sports, and energy generation - and of growing importance in the construction, medical, and industrial fields. They are also working their way into civilian and military apparel to inform us about ourselves and our environment, and they are valued in the art world for their special qualities and beauty.

Several of the objects on loan to us were developed by graduates of MIT and the Media Lab. The Renewable Energy Department at U Mass Amherst lent us the fiberglass wind turbine blade from the 1980s that is one-tenth the size of the 120-foot blades pictured in the Danish Middlegrunden Wind Farm on the wall. Those blades are also made from fiberglass. Graduates from New York University use Italian-made fiber-optic material to make a skirt that lights up according to sound levels. The Army’s Natick Labs has generously lent us several items, too, including a Kevlar-core helicopter sling that can lift 15,000 pounds. A familiar theme for the Economic Adventure – bicycle manufacturing – has taken on a new look with the carbon fiber bike from Independent Fabrications. As for the instruments you will see, they are the result of a Boston Symphony cellist talking to a New England high-performance sailboat maker about carbon fiber.  

New England’s regional economy has always been resilient because of investments in education - human capital - and technology. The region has been characterized by people and institutions that have been quick to see the importance of new technologies and the specialized training needed. Because New England has invested in that technology and training, we have repeatedly reinvented our economy: from farming and mercantile trading, to the unprecedented scale and production of the textile mills and other manufacturing, and now to high finance, high-tech, and biotech.

This exhibit is meant to entice and show a bit of the familiar, topical, and unusual ways in which modern fabrics are being used. We hope you enjoy yourselves, and we thank you for coming.