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 4 items.
Patent Model for a Flatbed Cylinder Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder press which was granted patent number 3551. This presses’ tapered bearers were attached to the bed to prevent slurring of the impression at the ends of the form
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1844
- patent date
- 1844-04-17
- patentee
- Hoe, Richard March
- maker
- Hoe, Richard March
- ID Number
- GA*89797.003551
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.003551
- patent number
- 003551
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Rotary Press Printing Both Sides of a Sheet
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a sheet-handling system for printing both sides of a rotary press; the invention was granted patent number 24875. According to Stephen D. Tucker’s History of R. Hoe & Company, this apparatus did not work well and was never brought into use.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1859
- patent date
- 1859-07-26
- patentee
- Hoe, Richard March
- maker
- Hoe, Richard March
- ID Number
- GA*89797.024875
- accession number
- 089797
- patent number
- 024875
- catalog number
- GA*89797.024875
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for Rotary Perfecting Presses
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a rotary perfecting press which was granted patent number 92050. The patent details improvements to sheet- or web-fed perfecting presses. Instead of being attached to the impression cylinder, the press blanket was an endless web that travelled with the paper and acted as its support. The press was patented in England in 1871 (Patent 1825 to W.E.Newton).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1869
- patent date
- 1869-06-29
- patentee
- Hoe, Richard March
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- Hoe, Richard March
- ID Number
- GA*89797.092050
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 092050
- catalog number
- GA*89797.092050
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Flatbed Cylinder Printing Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder printing press which was granted patent number 108785. The patent details methods of controlling the motion of the type bed. The model is broken.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1870
- date made
- ca 1870
- patent date
- 1870-11-01
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- Hoe, Richard March
- ID Number
- GA*89797.108785
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 108785
- catalog number
- GA*89797.108785
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center