Communications

WANN Microphone

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.

Culture: Mexicans

Camera-ready comic art drawing for Gordo

This pen-and-ink drawing prepared for the Gordo newspaper comic strip shows Gordo’s nephew ruining the gifts Gordo is bringing his date by trying to explain them scientifically.Gustavo "Gus" Arriola (1917-2008) was a Mexican American comic artist and animator.
Description (Brief)
This pen-and-ink drawing prepared for the Gordo newspaper comic strip shows Gordo’s nephew ruining the gifts Gordo is bringing his date by trying to explain them scientifically.
Gustavo "Gus" Arriola (1917-2008) was a Mexican American comic artist and animator. He was born in Arizona, and raised by his older sister in a Spanish-speaking home. His first jobs included preparing animation art for Screen Gems and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Arriola's strip, which debuted in 1941, promoted a better understanding of Mexican culture and environmental concerns. The strip was suspended during World War II until 1943, when Arriola began drawing again from his military station. He remained the sole artist and writer on the strip for its entire run.
Gordo (1941-1985) was a strip about a Mexican dirt farmer, drawn with stereotyped attributes. After complaints from his public about his style and message Arriola altered the character to offer a more realistic representation. The strip’s subject was presented as a continuous narrative with daily gags. In later years it included features about Aztec and Mexican history and culture, as well as political and environmental commentary.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1966-08-21
graphic artist
Arriola, Gus
publisher
United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
author
Lizer, Anna
ID Number
GA.22445
catalog number
22445
accession number
277502

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