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 1 items.
Patent Model of a Platen Printing Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a platen printing press which was granted patent number 16109. The press had a revolving ink cylinder behind the type bed. Inking rollers circulated entirely around the cylinder and over the type. The patent also covered a device for quick disconnection of bed and platen in case of a feeding accident. Patentee Franklin Bailey took out a number of printing patents, and sold several of them to the Hoe Company. This patent was assigned to Hoe in 1860.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1856
- patent date
- 1856-11-25
- maker
- Bailey, Franklin L.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.016109
- patent number
- 016109
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.016109
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center