Communications - Overview
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.
"Communications - Overview" showing 2 items.
Patent Model of a Lithographic Printing Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for improvements to the inking, dampening, and tympan apparatus in a scraper machine. The invention was granted patent number 37727.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1863
- date made
- ca 1863
- patent date
- 1863-02-17
- maker
- Reynolds, George H.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.037727
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 037727
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Press for Card and Ticket Printing
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a card and ticket press which was granted patent number 48493. The patent details a self-inking press in which a series of flattened surfaces on a large rotating drum provided multiple platens. The type was suspended face down and lowered against the drum. Paper could be fed from a roll, or placed on the flat surfaces, a card at a time, as each platen approached the type. There was also a numbering device.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1865
- date made
- ca 1865
- patent date
- 1865-06-27
- maker
- Sangster, James
- ID Number
- GA*89797.048493
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 048493
- catalog number
- GA*89797.048493
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center