Melvin Smith Haley Interviewing his father P. T. Haley (1976)

 

 Melvin Smith Haley (b.1918)  is interviewing his 96-year-old father, P.T. Haley (b. 1880)  in this 1976 tape recording.  They are in Eden, NC at the time, in the elder Haley's home.

 

They are primarily discussing the elder Haley's recollections of witnessing experiments in Spray, NC c.1892,  pertaining to calcium carbide, which when immersed in water produces acetylene gas.

Mr. Haley was approximately 12 years old at the time, and swimming in a canal with a friend near the Willson Aluminum Company in Spray North Carolina.  The Union Carbide Company grew from work begun in 1891 at the Willson Aluminum Company by Major James Morehead and Canadian inventor Thomas Willson.

Listen to this 1976 interview here.