Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recognizes recycling technology

What do artifacts from the original Broadway production of “Hair,” letters and photos associated with a second-class passenger on the RMS Titanic, jerseys from sports figures Carl Nasib and Shohei Ohtani, closed captioning devices and documentation and a section from the “Prolerizer” automobile shredder have in common? They all recently have been acquired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and reflect key moments in American history and culture.

The new acquisitions were donated between 2023 and July 2024, according to the museum.

“These newly acquired artifacts highlight the museum’s ongoing commitment to preserving and showcasing the fascinating breadth of culture and diverse history of the United States, which elevates our mission,” says Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s Elizabeth MacMillan director. “We continually seek to expand our collection, ensuring it remains reflective of the nation’s rich cultural, social and technological evolution that shapes our shared experience.”

The museum calls its Prolerizer addition a “significant piece of industrial history,” referring to the machine, which was patented in 1961, as “a watershed invention that revolutionized recycling.”

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Ben Proler (1894–1970) started a family business in the 1920s, and with the help of his sons, Izzy, Sam, Hymie and Jackie, transformed that local scrap dealership in Houston into Proler Steel, a publicly held global company.

With its ability to shred an automobile or other large durable consumer products in minutes, the Prolerizer transformed recycling in the U.S. and around the world.

“Prior to this, automobile recycling was a labor-intensive process involving hand-held torch cutters and alligator shears, with derelict cars becoming a widespread problem for American towns and cities,” the Smithsonian says.

The primary invention consisted of a rotor with many hammers, powered by a large engine, that could shred entire vehicles into small fist-sized pieces that could be separated into ferrous and nonferrous materials, providing steel mills with a superior quality of scrap to recycle into steel.

Sam Proler told Recycling Today that he recalled drinking screwdrivers during a flight while trying to think through what to do with 40,000-some tons of No. 2 auto bundles Proler Steel had when the idea of deploying a hammermill on entire automobiles came to him.

"I asked the stewardess for paper and a pencil and started sketching what this thing would look like," he said.

Hammermills were used in mining applications, and scrap companies, including Proler Steel, used similar machines to crush turnings and steel can scrap before the detinning process.

Sam told Recycling Today he approached existing manufacturers of hammermill-style crushers to see if they would be interested in fabricating his automobile shredder, and one manufacturer said "they could build one if the car is quartered and the motor is removed." But that didn’t match his vision.

Eventually, Sam found a machine shop willing to work with drawings he supplied to fabricate custom parts, and he used scrap from Proler Steel's inventory to fabricate other parts for his first auto shredder.

Advantage Metals Recycling (AMR) decommissioned its 1961 Prolerizer, nicknamed “Deborah,” in this summer, donating a representative part of the machine and early archival materials to the museum. The museum’s Archives Center has collected companion photos and drawings from 1964 through 1974.

The archival finding aid is online, and this collection is open to researchers. With the help of the Washington-based Recycled Materials Association (ReMA), AMR and the Proler family, museum curators and archivists plan to continue to build this collection in the next year.

The Prolerizer hammer machine section is a gift through Joshua Jones, regional manager, Advantage Metals Recycling, a Nucor company.

The museum, located on Constitution Avenue N.W., between 12th and 14th streets, is open daily except Dec. 25, between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Admission is free. The doors of the museum are always open online.