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.
Buffalo Chase and Encampment
- Description
- Bear's Heart, or Nock-ko-ist,
- drawn between 1875 and 1878 at Fort Marion, Florida
- "Buffalo Chase and Encampment"
- Collected by Richard Henry Pratt about 1878
- Colored pencil, ink, colored ink, and watercolor
- This drawing shows an encampment, and men and women courting outside their tipis. The men are dressed in black and the women in blue and green. Above them, in another level of the story drawing, are warriors on a buffalo hunt. Three riders prepare to kill the buffalo, with bows drawn and ready.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1875-1878
- original artist
- Bear's Heart
- ID Number
- 2008.0175.54
- catalog number
- 2008.0175.054
- accession number
- 2008.0175
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Council (or more properly, Sun Dance or Medicine Lodge)
- Description
- Bear's Heart, or Nock-ko-ist (Cheyenne),
- drawn between 1875 and 1878 at Fort Marion, Florida
- "Council" (or more properly, Sun Dance or Medicine Lodge)
- Collected by Richard Henry Pratt about 1878
- Colored pencil, ink, colored ink, and watercolor
- The drawing of a Sun Dance or Medicine Lodge gathering offers a partial view of one moment in the most sacred of Plains Indian ceremonies. The event is represented here by the Sun Dance lodge with its cloth and tree-branch offerings flying. The people stand outside to bear witness to the sacred offerings being made, while four painted Sun Dancers stand ready to make their sacrifices inside. Four men, probably warrior society officers, stand guard over the ceremony.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1875-1878
- original artist
- Bear's Heart
- ID Number
- 2008.0175.56
- accession number
- 2008.0175
- catalog number
- 2008.0175.056
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center