Communications

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.

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1852-1853
1890
ID Number
GA.285049.02.01
accession number
285049
catalog number
285049.02.01
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1887
ID Number
GA.02538
catalog number
02538
accession number
21937
"Evening in the City, Synagogue at Eutaw Place, Baltimore" is a color etching by Gabrielle de Veaux Clements (1858–1948). The very small image, printed predominantly in blues and browns, depicts a view across the city at twilight.
Description
"Evening in the City, Synagogue at Eutaw Place, Baltimore" is a color etching by Gabrielle de Veaux Clements (1858–1948). The very small image, printed predominantly in blues and browns, depicts a view across the city at twilight. In the foreground, very faintly rendered with delicate lines, is the roof of a building, the moldings barely visible in the shadows. Two birds are perched on the right side of the rooftop. Along the horizon is a row of buildings. The largest, presumably the synagogue, has a dome and a spire. Several tiny windows are lit with a glowing, yellow light.
Between the years of 1896 and 1927 Clements created several etchings of Baltimore, later to be known as "The Baltimore Series." The series comprised five large plates of significant Baltimore landmarks, such as the Washington Monument and Mount Vernon Place. "Evening in the City," printed in 1920, could be a study for the series.
Toward the end of their careers in 1936 Clements and her partner and fellow printmaker Ellen Day Hale exhibited jointly at the Smithsonian. By that time they had been producing prints for more than sixty years. Their work was included in the first exhibition of etchings exclusively by women at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1887. As a response to the Etching Revival of the late 19th century, curator Sylvester R. Koehler included more than 400 etchings by twenty-five artists in the very successful exhibition titled Women Etchers of America. In 1888 the Union League Club in New York exhibited the same works, plus about 100 more by eleven additional women. A traveling exhibition celebrating the centennial of these two ground-breaking shows, American Women of the Etching Revival, was organized by the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia in 1988. The NMAH lent works by Hale, Clements and others, and the Museum showed the exhibition in Washington in 1989.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1920
ID Number
GA.10740
catalog number
10740
accession number
62397
This etching by Léopold Flameng is known as either Un Rabbin or Un Vieux (An Old Man). The painting by Rembrandt hangs in the Musée Bonat, Bayonne, France.
Description
This etching by Léopold Flameng is known as either Un Rabbin or Un Vieux (An Old Man). The painting by Rembrandt hangs in the Musée Bonat, Bayonne, France. The print was etched for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, a publication started in Paris by Charles Blanc in 1859, which ceased only recently. Flameng had met Blanc in the studio of a well-known engraver, Luigi Calamatta, and became one of two graphic artists on the new publication. He etched no fewer than 100 plates for the Gazette and some forty plates for Blanc’s book on Rembrandt’s work, published in 1859. Flameng’s etchings after Rembrandt were highly regarded by collectors in this period.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
19th century
original artist
Rembrandt van Rijn
graphic artist
Flameng, Léopold
publisher
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
ID Number
GA.14958
catalog number
14958
accession number
94830

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