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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The Hub
- Description (Brief)
- A letter opener made of cream colored celluloid. Advertising copy for "The Hub," a clothier in Chicago, is on the blade. The handle is a molded head of a clown, finely detailed and with hand-painted features.
- "Henry C. Lytton and Sons Company, popularly known as "The Hub," was one of the city's premier clothing stores during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The main store was originally located on the northwest corner of State and Jackson Streets in Chicago's Loop. In 1912, the store moved into the newly built Lytton Building at 235-243 South State Street. Though specializing in men's clothing, The Hub also had retail sales departments devoted to women's clothing, children's wear, shoes, and other accessories."
- Source: "Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1945"
- http://chicago.urban-history.org/ven/dss/the_hub.shtml
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1887-1930
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0898
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0898
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
So. Pas. Ostrich Farm
- Description (Brief)
- Leather tri-fold wallet-style stamp holder with celluloid inserts on three panels. One panel is engraved with the words "Postage Stamps." The other two have photos of the ostrich farm in South Pasadena, Calif. Information inside tells how to obtain a price list for feather boas, plumes, and fans. The proprietor's name was Edwin Cawston.
- Cawston's Ostrich Farm and Zoological Garden, established in 1886, was both a profitable business dealing in ostrich feathers as well as a popular tourist attraction. Visitors could take the Pasadena & South Los Angeles Electric Railroad out to the park. There they could see ostrich chicks in incubators, learn about the process of feather collecting and dyeing, tour the gardens, and take rides in ostrich-drawn carriages.
- The site has been designated as a historic landmark by the City of South Pasadena. Today the old factory buildings have been repurposed into a 53-unit condominium space known as Ostrich Lofts.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- after 1915
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0984
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0984
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Nokia Cell Phone with "Mayday" Emergency Transceiver
- Description
- This equipment, originally built by NAVSYS of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was the basis of a federal experimental emergency response system from 1995. Tested in Colorado, the system relied on GPS data and map databases to provide the location of emergency cellular calls. Based on this testing, the Federal Communications Commission established regulations which required the caller's location to be provided to first responders for all mobile E-911 calls. Commercial services—Ford’s Rescu, General Motors OnStar—superseded this test system.
- date made
- ca 1996
- maker
- Nokia Inc.
- NAVSYS Corporation
- ID Number
- 2010.0119.01
- accession number
- 2010.0119
- catalog number
- 2010.0119.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Part of Morse's telegraph apparatus, US Patent # 4,453
- Description
- This telegraph receiver is associated with United States patent 4,453 granted April 11th, 1846 to Samuel Morse. The patent covered the use of a magnet in the telegraph receiver to amplify current from the battery and magnet connected to the main telegraph line. This enabled the telegraph to receive messages over longer lines. The patent also specified a combination of apparatuses to move and mark a paper roll in order to record the incoming message.
- inventor
- Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
- Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
- ID Number
- EM*251265
- catalog number
- 251265
- accession number
- 48865
- patent number
- 4453
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Harry Cheetham's Radio Operator License
- Description
- Harry Cheetham was one of the pioneers of early radio in the United States. His 1911 radio operator's license was issued shortly before Titanic sank, and the Boston Globe newspaper hired him to listen for and intercept radio communications messages from Carpathia while it steamed back to New York with the Titanic survivors aboard. Although Carpathia's captain had imposed a general radio blackout, it did communicate the names of survivors for the benefit of the families ashore who were anxiously awaiting news of their relatives' fates. Cheetham intercepted one of the survivor messages and sold the information to the Globe for $175.00.
- date made
- 1911-1929
- ID Number
- EM*310187
- catalog number
- 310187
- accession number
- 112399
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tiffany's Transatlantic Cable Souvenir
- Description
- The completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858 was a cause for much celebration on both sides of the Atlantic. Tiffany & Company of New York purchased the cable remaining on board the USS Niagara after the successful completion of the cable and sold 4-inch sections as souvenirs. Each section of cable was banded at the ends with brass ferrules and had a brass plaque that read “ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH CABLE/GUARANTEED BY/TIFFANY & CO./ BROADWAY • NEW YORK • 1858.” The cable souvenirs originally sold for 50 cents and came with a reproduced letter of authenticity from Cyrus W. Field, the pioneer of the transatlantic cable system. The jubilation turned to jeers when the cable failed a few weeks later, and Tiffany never sold its supply of cable. In 1974 Lanello Reserves began reselling the transatlantic cable, and donated this object to the Smithsonian.
- date made
- 1858
- maker
- Glass, Elliot, & Co.
- ID Number
- EM*334736.01
- accession number
- 312154
- catalog number
- 334736
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Postcard
- Description (Brief)
- A celluloid postcard. One side features a black and white photographic image of a wilderness scene at Emerald Isle, British Columbia. The back of the card has a postmark from Coatesville, Pa..
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1907
- maker
- Rose Company
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0031
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0031
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
French carte postale
- Description (Brief)
- A celluloid postcard or carte postale, made in France. The front is decorated with a pop-up design: a hanging basket, made of paper, and three large flowers, with attached butterflies, dangling off it by silk ribbons. If you pull a ribbon at the top, the flowers holding the butterflies unfold and move the butterflies up.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1908
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0036
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0036
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Customized postcard
- Description (Brief)
- Postcard made of paper (the back) and celluloid (the front). The front is decorated with embossed flowers, which are covered with hand-painted felt. A customized greeting reading, "To Willie From Father" is covered with glitter.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0088
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0088
- 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 decorative elements include a vase, with doves perched on its base. Inside the vase are pansies. It appears at first that there is one flower in the vase, but the pansies unfold to reveal two flowers behind the one in front. The flowers and other parts are hand-painted.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0095
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0095
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center