Communications

Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.

The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.

More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1886
ID Number
2012.0093.27
accession number
2012.0093
catalog number
2012.0093.27
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
c. 1850
date made
ca 1800
graphic artist
Melish, John
ID Number
1985.0303.05
accession number
1985.0303
catalog number
1985.0303.05
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1865
ca 1872
ID Number
GA.04537
catalog number
04537
accession number
23155
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1762
ID Number
GA.23133.02
accession number
289956
catalog number
23133.02
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1762
graphic artist
Lattre, Jean
maker
Monnet, Charles
ID Number
GA.23133.01
catalog number
23133
accession number
289956
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1762
ID Number
GA.23133.03
P. S. Duval and Company (ca 1840s-1858) of Philadelphia produced this chromolithographic print from an original illustration by John M. Stanley (1814-1872).
Description (Brief)
P. S. Duval and Company (ca 1840s-1858) of Philadelphia produced this chromolithographic print from an original illustration by John M. Stanley (1814-1872). The image of "Wooden Ware, etc." was published as Plate X in Volume 2, following page 116 of Appendix E (Indian Antiquities) by Thomas Ewbank (1792-1870) in the report describing "The U.S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere during the Years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852" by James M. Gillis (1811-1865). The volume was printed in 1855 by A. O. P. Nicholson (1808-1876) of Washington, D.C.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1855
original artist
Wallis, O. J.
Dreser, William
Herbst, Francis
graphic artist
Sinclair, Thomas
Dougal, William H.
Duval, Peter S.
printer
Nicholson, A. O. P.
publisher
United States Navy
original artist
Richard, John H.
Stanley, John Mix
Siebert, Selmar
author
Cassin, John
Ewbank, Thomas
Baird, Spencer Fullerton
Gilliss, James Melville
ID Number
2007.0204.01
accession number
2007.0204
catalog number
2007.0204.01
This engraved woodblock of the “Earliest map showing [the] location of the Cherokees, 1597” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the image was published as Plate VII (p.128) in an article by Charles Royce (1845-1923) entitled “The Cherokee Nation of
Description
This engraved woodblock of the “Earliest map showing [the] location of the Cherokees, 1597” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the image was published as Plate VII (p.128) in an article by Charles Royce (1845-1923) entitled “The Cherokee Nation of Indians: a narrative of their official relations with the colonial and federal governments” in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1883-84.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1887
publisher
Government Printing Office
Bureau of American Ethnology
printer
U.S. Government Printing Office
author
Royce, Charles C.
block maker
J. J. & Co.
ID Number
1980.0219.1531
catalog number
1980.0219.1531
accession number
1980.0219
This etching by Emily Sartain entitled "Welcome News," sometimes called "News from the Front," depicts an image after a painting by E. Wood Perry Jr. A young woman points to a location on a map spread out on the table with two elders looking on.
Description (Brief)
This etching by Emily Sartain entitled "Welcome News," sometimes called "News from the Front," depicts an image after a painting by E. Wood Perry Jr. A young woman points to a location on a map spread out on the table with two elders looking on. She holds a letter in her left hand which appears to be associated with a location on the map, presumably the location of a son, husband, or brother involved in the Civil War. Beginning in the 1860s, Emily's father and brothers produced a number of Civil War-related prints, and this etching indicates the continuing market for such images and the family's long involvement in the genre.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
circa 1888
original artist
Perry Jr, E. Wood
graphic artist
Sartain, Emily
ID Number
2002.0260.01
catalog number
2002.0260.01
accession number
2002.0260

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