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 166 items.
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Reel-to-Reel Wire Recorder
- Description (Brief)
- In 1945 William Lear purchased a license from the Armour Research Foundation and made wire recorders like this “Dynaport” unit. The Dynaport combined a wire recorder with a disk record player. The user could play records and make a wire recording of the contents. Users could also connect the Dynaport with a radio and record programs off the air.
- The Dynaport did not sell well and Lear turned his attention to other products like small business jets. Years later he redesigned a tape cartridge system and became a driving force in the introduction of 8-track tape players for automobiles.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1948
- date ordered, given, or borrowed
- 1981-01-15
- maker
- Lear, Inc.
- ID Number
- 1984.0901.01
- accession number
- 1984.0901
- maker number
- 175
- catalog number
- 1984.0901.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
The Hub
- Description (Brief)
- A letter opener made of cream colored celluloid. Advertising copy for "The Hub," a clothier in Chicago, is on the blade. The handle is a molded head of a clown, finely detailed and with hand-painted features.
- "Henry C. Lytton and Sons Company, popularly known as "The Hub," was one of the city's premier clothing stores during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The main store was originally located on the northwest corner of State and Jackson Streets in Chicago's Loop. In 1912, the store moved into the newly built Lytton Building at 235-243 South State Street. Though specializing in men's clothing, The Hub also had retail sales departments devoted to women's clothing, children's wear, shoes, and other accessories."
- Source: "Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1945"
- http://chicago.urban-history.org/ven/dss/the_hub.shtml
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1887-1930
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0898
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0898
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tiffany's Transatlantic Cable Souvenir
- Description
- The completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858 was a cause for much celebration on both sides of the Atlantic. Tiffany & Company of New York purchased the cable remaining on board the USS Niagara after the successful completion of the cable and sold 4-inch sections as souvenirs. Each section of cable was banded at the ends with brass ferrules and had a brass plaque that read “ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH CABLE/GUARANTEED BY/TIFFANY & CO./ BROADWAY • NEW YORK • 1858.” The cable souvenirs originally sold for 50 cents and came with a reproduced letter of authenticity from Cyrus W. Field, the pioneer of the transatlantic cable system. The jubilation turned to jeers when the cable failed a few weeks later, and Tiffany never sold its supply of cable. In 1974 Lanello Reserves began reselling the transatlantic cable, and donated this object to the Smithsonian.
- date made
- 1858
- maker
- Glass, Elliot, & Co.
- ID Number
- EM*334736.01
- accession number
- 312154
- catalog number
- 334736
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder
- Description (Brief)
- This reel-to-reel BK-401 “Soundmirror” used paper recording tape coated with artificial magnetite particles. Brush Company designed the BK-401 after Semi Begun’s experiments convinced him that a thin, flexible tape would give good audio performance. Introduced in 1947 with tape made by Shellmar Company, the expensive BK-401 malfunctioned easily. Despite good initial sales, production ceased in 1952.
- Before leaving Nazi Germany in 1935, Begun had heard of Fritz Pfleumer’s work on printing cigarette paper with a gold-colored band. Pfleumer also made paper tape coated with magnetizable materials and fabricated a demonstration tape recorder in 1931.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1948
- maker
- Brush Development Company
- ID Number
- EM*336308
- catalog number
- 336308
- accession number
- 1977.0895
- model number
- BK-401
- serial number
- 6677
- model number
- BA-106
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Postcard
- Description (Brief)
- A celluloid postcard. One side features a black and white photographic image of a wilderness scene at Emerald Isle, British Columbia. The back of the card has a postmark from Coatesville, Pa..
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1907
- maker
- Rose Company
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0031
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0031
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Page from an advertising brochure for the Lowe Press manufactured by the Lowe Printing Company, Boston, about 1865
- Description
- One of the Lowe printing press advertisements included examples of the fonts of type available for sale with the Lowe Press kits. They were sold with three sizes and three fonts of type, described as both plain and fancy.
- The brochure reads: We have sold many Presses to the Army and Navy, to printers, druggists, medicine dealers, merchants, clergymen, lawyers, mechanics . . . in the country, the Canadas, and in other lands.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1865
- maker
- Lowe, Samuel W.
- manufacturer
- Watson, Joseph
- ID Number
- 2007.0162.014
- accession number
- 2007.0162
- catalog number
- 2007.0162.014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Christopher Columbus Dying
- Description
- Sixteen-year-old Gerome Ferris etched this print in 1879 after his own painting of the dying Christopher Columbus, 1506 Last Days of C. Columbus at Vallodolid. The current location of the painting is unknown, but the choice of topic anticipates Gerome’s future as a history painter, focusing on American narrative subjects.
- After death, Christopher Columbus’s journeys were not over. His remains traveled from Vallodolid to Seville and in 1542 were taken to the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, colonized by Columbus after 1492. After a move to Havana, Cuba, they returned to Seville cathedral in 1898 where they are today.
- The etching was printed on chine-collé, a very thin sheet of paper that accepts the image in passing through the press with a heavier sheet of backing paper to which is it glued during the printing.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
- ID Number
- GA*14450
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14450
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Egyptian Street Scene
- Description
- James David Smillie etched Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s painting of a Middle Eastern street scene Lady of Cairo Visiting for the American Art Review issue of June 1881. Commenting on the issue, the New York Times noted that Smillie had been “particularly happy in his drawing” of the donkey, which appears prominently in the print.
- A catalogue raisonné of Smillie’s prints has estimated that about 10,000 impressions of this scene were made, primarily for use as art magazine illustrations. To produce such a large number of prints from a copper plate, a soft metal that deteriorates with use, the publishers would have had to face the copper by electroplating. In this process (known as “steel facing”), a thin layer of iron is deposited on the copper plate.
- Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847–1928) trained with Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris and later was known as “the American Gérôme.” He made a number of trips from his Paris base to North Africa and Egypt to sketch and collect artifacts for his paintings of Egyptian and Algerian subjects.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- original artist
- Bridgman, Frederick Arthur
- graphic artist
- Smillie, James David
- ID Number
- GA*14802
- catalog number
- 14802
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Regency Model TR-1 Transistor Radio
- Description
- During World War Two scientists and engineers at Bell Laboratories conducted research on many radar and radio devices. One goal was to find a replacement for fragile and energy-wasting vacuum tubes. Building on war-time research, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, working with group leader William Shockley, developed a device they called a transistor. The first laboratory demonstration took place on 23 December 1947. Bell publicly announced the new invention on 30 June 1948.
- At first the US military bought all the transistors Bell Labs could make, and the company agreed to license other manufacturers. As engineers learned how to use the new invention, plans were made for commercial products that could take advantage of the transistor's small size, energy efficiency, and rugged design. In 1953 hearing aids became the first commercial product to use transistors.
- A small, portable radio seemed a good opportunity, and a company called Idea Incorporated designed and produced the Regency. Planning began in 1951 between Idea and Texas Instruments, supplier of the transistors. Work began in earnest in the spring of 1954, and this first Regency transistor radio was in stores for the Christmas season later that year. The Regency model TR-1 contained four transistors. Capable of receiving AM stations, the radio cost about $50 (that would be almost $400 today.)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1954
- maker
- Idea Incorporated
- ID Number
- 1984.0040.01
- accession number
- 1984.0040
- catalog number
- 1984.0040.01
- model number
- TR-1
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Kodak Bullet Camera
- Description (Brief)
- This Eastman Kodak "Bullet" camera commemorates the New York World’s Fair (1939-1940.) The camera’s faceplate features the Fair’s dominant architectural features, the Trylon and the Perisphere.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1939
- ID Number
- 1989.0438.1740
- catalog number
- 1989.0438.1740
- accession number
- 1989.0438
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center