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 665 items.
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Flower cart postcard
- Description (Brief)
- A postcard made of paper and decorated with movable celluloid parts on the front. The celluloid parts are a wagon filled with flowers, pulled by two birds holding the traces in their beaks. The decorative parts have been hand-painted. The birds fold back behind the wagon in order to mail the card. A message and an address are on the back. The card is also stamped and the stamp has been cancelled.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0096
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0096
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Postcard with movable parts
- Description (Brief)
- A postcard made of paper and decorated with movable celluloid parts on the front. The celluloid parts are a wagon filled with flowers, pulled by two dogs whose traces are garlands of flowers. The celluloid parts are hand-painted. The dogs fold back behind the wagon.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0097
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0097
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Postcard with movable parts
- Description (Brief)
- A postcard made of paper and decorated with movable celluloid parts on the front. The celluloid parts are a pot of flowers set on a stand with a hen, chicks, and eggs folding out from the stand. All celluloid parts are hand-painted. The back has a message and addressee, but was not stamped.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0100
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0100
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Radio Log
- Description (Brief)
- A small, two-ring notebook with pages containing an index of cities alphabetically listed. The radio station call letters are with the cities and there is room for notations next to each city. The front cover is ivory pearlescent celluloid laminated to brown. The back cover is heavy black celluloid. An image of a radio microphone is on the front, as well as the words, "Radio Log." It is unmarked.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- after 1920
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0914
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0914
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Radio log
- Description (Brief)
- Radio Log with celluloid cover. The front cover is red, with an applied relief of a bird. The back cover is black. The pages are paper, with call letters and cities for various radio stations. The book is bound at top by two black rings.
- date made
- ca 1930
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.1367
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.1367
- 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
Alexander Graham Bell Experimental Telephone
- Description
- Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated several experimental telephones at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. This unit features a single electro-magnet and could be used both as transmitter and receiver. Bell approached the problem of transmitting speech differently from other telephone inventors like Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. They were mostly experienced telegraphers trying to make a better telegraph. Bell's study of hearing and speech more strongly influenced his work.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- maker
- Bell, Alexander G.
- ID Number
- EM*252599
- accession number
- 49064
- catalog number
- 252599
- patent number
- 174465
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Carpathia Switch Lever
- Description
- This switch lever was part of RMS Carpathia's wireless radio apparatus; most likely it was a manual breaker for the antenna connection to the radio. It would have been opened in storms to prevent lightning from striking the radio itself. It was damaged during the rescue of Titanic's passengers, and the next time the ship was in Boston, Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company employee Harry Cheetham went aboard Carpathia to service the wireless. At the time, shipboard radios belonged to the radio company, not the shipping lines.
- date made
- 1911
- maker
- Marconi
- Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd.
- ID Number
- EM*309910
- catalog number
- 309910
- accession number
- 110988
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Leyden Jar from RMS Carpathia
- Description
- Leyden jars were essential for storing electrical charges used by the earliest wireless radios used aboard ocean liners. Shortly after RMS Carpathia's rescue of Titanic survivors, the ship visited Boston, Massachusetts. Marconi Wireless Radio employee Harry Cheetham boarded Carpathia to service the radio, which had been damaged during the Titanic operations. He replaced these two Leyden jars. One is intact and the other is broken, but fortunately the broken one shows how the jars were constructed inside to store and relay an electrical charge. Cheetham kept these artifacts as Titanic souvenirs, and donated them to the Smithsonian in 1930.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1910
- maker
- Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd.
- ID Number
- EM*310242.01
- catalog number
- 310242.01
- accession number
- 113406
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Leyden Jar from RMS Carpathia
- Description
- Leyden jars were essential for storing electrical charges used by the earliest wireless radios used aboard ocean liners. Shortly after RMS Carpathia's rescue of Titanic survivors, the ship visited Boston, Massachusetts. Marconi Wireless Radio employee Harry Cheetham boarded Carpathia to service the radio, which had been damaged during the Titanic operations. He replaced these two Leyden jars. One is intact and the other is broken, but fortunately the broken one shows how the jars were constructed inside to store and relay an electrical charge. Cheetham kept these artifacts as Titanic souvenirs, and donated them to the Smithsonian in 1930.
- date made
- ca 1910
- maker
- Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd.
- ID Number
- EM*310242.02
- catalog number
- 310242.02
- accession number
- 113406
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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