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 37 items.
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North African Pirate
- Description
- Deeply impressed by the art of Mariano Fortuny, Stephen Ferris etched reproductions of Fortuny’s paintings and a few of his prints. Ferris made this etching, Riff Pirate, after a painting dated 1871. These pirates preyed on shipping off the North African coast. The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns a related painting, which may be seen on its website.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1871
- original artist
- Fortuny y Carbo, Mariano
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14379.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14379.01
- 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
Portrait of Samuel P. Avery
- Description
- Samuel Putnam Avery (1818–1904), a New York-based art dealer and print collector, made annual buying excursions to Europe from 1867 to 1882 to look for decorative arts and paintings, some of which he commissioned directly from the artists. He also searched for prints to add to his own collection, seeking not just the original etchings valued today but also reproductive works by artists like Flameng, Jacquemart, and Rajon. French prints made up the core of his collection, almost 18,000 of which are now in the New York Public Library. Léopold Flameng etched this portrait of Avery in 1876 after a painting by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta. The Avery family gave the painting to the Metropolitan Museum in 1904. Madrazo (1841–1920) was a fashionable portrait and genre painter, resident in New York and Paris, who was promoted by Avery.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1876
- original artist
- Madrazo y Garreta, Raimundo de
- graphic artist
- Flameng, Léopold
- ID Number
- GA*14576
- catalog number
- 14576
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Dock Scene, Massachusetts
- Description
- Robert Swain Gifford’s etching Coal Pockets at New Bedford shows a grimy Massachusetts dock scene with a coal storage facility and a chimney belching smoke. Gifford pictured the southeastern Massachusetts coast, where he had lived as a boy, in many of his prints. As Sylvester R. Koehler noted in the American Art Review, which published the print in 1880, “The artist lifts the commonplace into the ideal, and teaches us to see beauty where our unguided eyes would have failed to discover it.” The print continued to be popular and was republished several times. In later impressions like this one, the date “-79’’ at bottom right has almost disappeared. Probably the publishers did not want the print to seem out of date.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1879
- graphic artist
- Gifford, Robert Swain
- maker
- Gifford, Robert Swain
- ID Number
- GA*14871.02
- catalog number
- 14871.02
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
First Love Letter
- Description
- Camille Piton made this etching to illustrate a catalog for an auction of works from the collection of J. C. Runkle, which was held in New York on March 8, 1883. Samuel P. Avery, art dealer and himself a collector, organized the sale and the catalog. The New York Times judged Piton’s effort as “handsomely etched.” Ludwig Knaus (1829–1910), the original artist of First Love Letter, was a German painter of sentimental genre scenes which were very popular in his day. Originally titled in German, his painting was known by its English title because it had been purchased by an American.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- original artist
- Knaus, Ludwig
- graphic artist
- Piton, Camille
- ID Number
- GA*14885
- catalog number
- 14885
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Frank Duveneck
- Description
- In 1879 William Unger, a Vienna-based artist, etched this reproduction of William Merritt Chase’s 1876 portrait of friend and fellow painter Frank Duveneck, titled The Smoker. Duveneck is wearing a Dutch-style hat and smoking a long Dutch clay pipe as he holds a portrait print after Frans Hals. Unger etched many prints after Hals and other old masters as well as after contemporary artists like Chase. His etchings were published widely in both Europe and the United States. Some appeared loose in portfolios so that they could be framed or set up on an easel for study.
- Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), son of German immigrants, began his art studies in the United States. Dissatisfied with the experience, he went to Munich in 1870 to attend classes at the Bavarian Royal Academy, where he met William Merritt Chase in 1872. He and Chase became close friends and Chase made several portraits of Duveneck during their years in Munich.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- original artist
- Chase, William Merritt
- graphic artist
- Unger, William
- ID Number
- GA*14974
- catalog number
- 14974
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Anglo-American Telegraph Company Records, 1862-1947
- Notes
- The Anglo-American Telegraph Company was organized in 1865 as a joint British-American venture to lay an Atlantic telegraph cable. After three failed attempts by other telegraph companies, Anglo-American Telegraph Company successfully laid and operated the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1866. The company operated cables until 1912, when they were leased to Western Union
- Summary
- Records relating to the organization of the company, corporate and financial records. Corporate records include two volumes of the company's acts, charters, contracts and agreements, 1862-1883; minutes of board meetings relating to varied subjects, such as agreements between the company and other telegraph companies such as Western Union Telegraph concerning sales of property, details of trnsactions or purchases undertaken by the company. Financial records consist of nine volumes of "journals" showing monthly records of receipts, 1866-1912; nineteen volumes of ledgers reveal a detailed financial status of the company, 1866-1912; and nine volumes of cash books consist of the financial transactions of the company, 1904-early 1941. See also 1 folder of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company telegrams in the Warshaw Collection under the heading "Telegraphs"
- Cite as
- Anglo-American Telegraph Company Records, 1862-1947, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC
- Date
- 1862
- 1862-1947
- 1860-1920
- 1900-1950
- author
- Anglo-American Telegraph Company, Ltd
- collector
- Electricity and Modern Physics, Division of, NMAH, SI
- Subject
- Western Union Telegraph Company
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Alexander Graham Bell's Large Box Telephone
- Description
- One of two telephones used by Alexander Graham Bell in a demonstration that took place between Boston and Salem, Massachusetts on November 26, 1876. Critical features are the iron diaphragm (seen as a black circular disc mounted on the vertical wooden support), two electromagnets (seen in white, facing the diaphragm) and a horseshoe permanent magnet (lying horizontal, pressed against the electromagnets).
- When used as a transmitter, sound waves at the mouthpiece cause the diaphragm to move, inducing a fluctuating current in the electromagnets. This current is conducted over wires to a similar instrument, acting as a receiver. There, the fluctuating current in the electromagnets causes the diaphragm to move, producing air vibrations that can be heard by the ear. This was a marginal arrangement, but it worked well enough to be employed in the first commercial services in 1877. The magneto receiver continued to be used, but the transmitters were soon replaced by a carbon variable-resistance device designed by Francis Blake and based on a principle patented by Thomas Edison.
- date made
- 1876
- used in a demonstration
- 1876
- patentor
- Edison, Thomas A.
- inventor
- Bell, Alexander Graham
- Blake, Jr., Francis
- maker
- Bell, Alexander Graham
- ID Number
- EM*308214
- catalog number
- 308214
- accession number
- 70856
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Jean-Léon Gérôme
- Description
- Stephen Ferris etched a dapper J. L. Gérôme (1824–1904) in 1899, near the end of Gérôme’s very successful career as painter and sculptor. Ferris had admired the French artist’s work for many years, at least since 1863 when he named his son after him. Although Ferris never actually met Gérôme, the two artists had corresponded. For this print Ferris used a photograph he had received from Gérôme. He then sent Gérôme trial proofs for comments and requested a signature to include in the final impressions, which appears here at lower left.
- Gérôme congratulated Ferris on the portrait as “work done with great care and great talent—the effect is very good and very firm. If I had any criticism to make, I would reserve it for the background, which is a little too even, and for the clothing, which has a little softness in the execution.” Gérôme also suggested that the highlight on the order which appears on his left breast and is not particularly noticeable in the photograph, be less bright. The order remains brightly lit, possibly Ferris’s tribute to Gérôme.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- date made
- 1899
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14396.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14396.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Grandma Moran
- Description
- Gerome Ferris thought enough of this etching, Grandma Moran, of his maternal grandmother, Mary Higson Moran, that he exhibited it in 1880 at the annual show of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he was enrolled as a student. He made the print in 1879 after an 1876 pencil sketch by his father, Stephen Ferris, who had taught him to etch.
- Mary Moran was the mother of artists Peter, Edward, John, and Thomas Moran, brothers of Elizabeth Moran Ferris.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
- ID Number
- GA*14435.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14435.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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