25DispatchesFine Motor Skills
Photographs by Christopher Payne
Th e workers at the Ward Leonard factory in Th omaston,
Connecticut, build motors for heavy industrial and mili-
tary use. Unlike most other motors manufactured these
days—those found in household appliances such as washing
machines and dryers, for example—Ward Leonard’s are
fabricated and assembled by hand, in accordance with a
painstaking process. Th at process involves inserting copper
coils into metal slots fi tted with insulating paper, wrapping
the ends of the coils in tape, and dipping the whole thing
in resin. It is still the best way to ensure that the fi nished
motors are able to withstand the decades of wear they will
face on Navy ships, oil rigs, locomotives, freight elevators,
and the like. Some motors take two workers a full week
to complete.
In November, the photographer Christopher Payne
spent two days documenting the factory workers’ eff orts.
American manufacturing is something of a pre occupation
for Payne; in 2016, he published Making Steinway, “a
deconstruction of the piano’s unseen constituent parts and
a glimpse into the skilled labor required to make them,”
and he is working on a forthcoming book that will collect
his photographs of factories around the country. Drawing
inspiration from the work of Alfred T. Palmer, the lead
photographer for the Offi ce of War Information during
World War II, Payne says he aims to capture workers in
a heroic light.
At Ward Leonard, Payne was taken with the contrast
between the apparent disarray of the cascading coils and the
orderly structure to which they would ultimately conform.
“It seems chaotic,” Payne says, “but it’s really not—all
those little wires and coils have a very specifi c function
and a very specifi c place.”
— Amy Weiss-MeyerTh e stator generates the magnetic fi eld of the motor. Th e ends of its
copper coils are wrapped in tape for insulation and protection.