Hacienda Buena Vista - Technology at The Hacienda

Technology At The Hacienda

Hacienda Buena Vista stood out from among the other haciendas in the region for the use of sophisticated machinery:

"The Scotch-type turbine on the pit's floor of the corn mill is a unique piece of hydraulic technology machinery, recognized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Although the turbine is not a classic 17th-century Baker's centrifugal or reaction turbine wheel it might be a transformed one, since this "Buena Vista Turbine" does not fit within the Baker's description. Nevertheless, the wheels have an element in common since their arms are very similar in so far as it refers to shape, position, and function. On the other hand, it is not a Scotch turbine either, being this a modification of the Baker turbine. Apparently, the Buena Vista turbine builder used the Scotch turbine principles to make the one in situ, adapting at the same time parts of the Baker's design with added improvements of its own. It is significant that in the mid-1840s—while the hacienda was being developed—the Scotch turbine was being patented in the United States after European designs (particularly the La Cour's centrifugal wheel). R. L. Johnson assessed the "Buena Vista Turbine" in the following way:

Only the three Scotch turbines—first patented in the 1840s—are known to exist in the United States.... This acute shortage of extant early hydromachinery is the principal reason why the technological history of the water motor remains obscure and relatively poorly documented…Recently, however, the discovery of a unique turbine located on a plantation at Ponce, near the south coast of Puerto Rico, promised to open a new window on the past…The turbine at Hacienda Buena Vista…is the only pre-Scotch type-known to exist and is the sole extant example of a pioneer and historically important machine that was invented at the close of the 17th century by Dr. Baker.... The Buena Vista turbine is, in effect, a missing link in the evolution of mechanical artifacts better known to the historians of technology.(The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 55–58)."