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 17 items.
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Patent model for paper-folding machine
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for an improved sheet-folding apparatus, made to stand as an independent machine, or to be attached to a web perfecting press; the invention was granted patent number 186384.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1877
- patent date
- 1877-01-16
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- 1996.0062.18
- catalog number
- 1996.0062.18
- accession number
- 1996.0062
- patent number
- 186384
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Sheet-delivery Apparatus for Web Presses
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a delivery apparatus for web presses which was adaptable for sheets of different sizes; the invention was granted patent number 197694.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1877
- patent date
- 1877-11-27
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- 1997.0198.01
- patent number
- 197694
- accession number
- 1997.0198
- catalog number
- 1997.0198.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Machine for Coating Electrotype Molds with Plumbago
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a machine for coating electrotype; the invention was granted patent number 85411. The patent details a machine for brushing black lead (plumbago, graphite) or bronze powder onto either wax or gutta percha molds, in order to give them conducting surfaces. Stephen Tucker was an employee and, from I860, a partner with R. Hoe & Co. He was responsible for numerous patents for the company, and was the author of the company history, "A History of R. Hoe & Company, 1834- 1885.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1868
- patent date
- 1868-12-29
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.085411
- patent number
- 085411
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.085411
- 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
Patent Model of a Flatbed Cylinder Press, Typographic or Lithographic
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder press which was granted patent number 124460. The patent describes improved mechanisms for control of the impression cylinder, inking rollers, sheet flier, and feed guides on stop cylinder presses for typographic or lithographic printing. The model is broken and incomplete.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1872
- patent date
- 1872-03-12
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.124460
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.124460
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Rotary Perfecting Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a rotary printing press which was granted patent number 131217. The invention offers a new system of feeding, carrying, and delivering sheets for rotary perfecting presses. The model consists of the central group of feeding cylinders. According to Stephen D. Tucker’s History of R. Hoe & Company, a press on this plan was capable of printing 8000 sheets per hour and was used successfully by the New York Daily News.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1872
- patent date
- 1872-09-10
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- Hoe, Richard March
- ID Number
- GA*89797.131217
- patent number
- 131217
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.131217
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of an Inking Apparatus for Printing Presses
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a method of improved ink distribution on flatbed cylinder presses. The patent was granted number 173085.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1876
- patent date
- 1876-02-01
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.173085
- accession number
- 089797
- patent number
- 173085
- catalog number
- GA*89797.173085
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for Flatbed Cylinder Printing Presses
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed printing press; the invention was granted patent number 173295. The patent describes improvements to the movement of the bed, the sheet fly, and the inking table of cylinder presses.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1876
- date made
- ca 1876
- patent date
- 1876-02-08
- maker
- Hoe, Richard March
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.173295
- patent number
- 173295
- catalog number
- GA*89797.173295
- accession number
- 89797
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Sheet-delivery Apparatus for Web Perfecting Presses
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a sheet-delivery apparatus which was granted patent number 191494. The patent describes a delivering cylinder with accessories: grippers, tapes, a folding blade, and pasting devices.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1877
- patent date
- 1877-05-29
- maker
- Tucker, Stephen D.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.191494
- patent number
- 191494
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.191494
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center