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.

Resource Type: Prints

Chicken Breasts Florentine

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.09
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.09

Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1630
engraver
Pontius, Paulus
original artist
Rubens, Peter Paul
ID Number
GA.01451
catalog number
01451
accession number
20802

The Bridge

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.15
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.15

Picture postcard, "Carmel Mission, Near Monterey, Calif."

This postcard view of Carmel Mission in Monterey was printed by the Detroit Publishing Company in about 1910, using a copyrighted photolithographic process called "Photostint."The Detroit Publishing Company, previously known as the Detroit Photographic Company, was first listed i
Description (Brief)
This postcard view of Carmel Mission in Monterey was printed by the Detroit Publishing Company in about 1910, using a copyrighted photolithographic process called "Photostint."
The Detroit Publishing Company, previously known as the Detroit Photographic Company, was first listed in Detroit city directories in 1888. William A. Livingstone, its manager, invited the famous landscape photographer William Henry Jackson to join the company as a partner in 1897. Jackson brought with him his own photographic images, which would be used by the company.
Mission San Carlos Borroméo del rio Carmelo, or the Old Mission Chapel, was established in 1770 by Fr. Junípero Serra, the Spanish Franciscan founder of twenty-one missions in California between 1769 and 1823. San Carlos was the second of these missions, established to convert American Indians of the Esselen and Ohlone, or Costanoan, tribes to Catholicism.
Today the mission serves as a parish church.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1910
graphic artist
Detroit Publishing Co.
ID Number
1986.0639.2014
accession number
1986.0639
catalog number
1986.0639.2014

Apple Sauce

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.01
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.01

Innocent the Tenth

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1774
artist attribution
Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y
engraver
Green, Valentine
delineator
Farington, George
ID Number
GA.20769
catalog number
20769
accession number
226630

Californians Crossing the Isthmus of Panama

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1852
associated date
1852
graphic artist
Gleason, Frederick
ID Number
GA.309390.15
accession number
309390
catalog number
309390.15

Arabes Assis (Arabs Sitting)

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c. 1860
original artist
Fortuny y Carbo, Mariano
graphic artist
Amand-Durand, Charles
ID Number
GA.16755
catalog number
16755
accession number
119780

A Fruit Piece

Mezzotint from George P. Marsh's copy of The Houghton Gallery, vol. 1. Removed from the binding for framing in 1894. Companion print to A Flower Piece, also after van Huysum.
Description
Mezzotint from George P. Marsh's copy of The Houghton Gallery, vol. 1. Removed from the binding for framing in 1894. Companion print to A Flower Piece, also after van Huysum. In the volume's table of contents, the publisher described these two prints as surpassing, "in point of execution, every print before engraved in this manner."
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1781
engraver
Earlom, Richard
publisher
Boydell, John
delineator
Farington, Joseph
original artist
Huysum, Jan van
ID Number
1978.0534.02.90
accession number
1978.0534
catalog number
1978.0534.02.90

The Green Calash

"The Green Calash" is a soft ground color etching and aquatint by Ellen Day Hale (1855–1940), produced in 1925 after her 1904 painting. The print is a three-quarter-view portrait of a young woman seated with her hands resting together in her lap.
Description
"The Green Calash" is a soft ground color etching and aquatint by Ellen Day Hale (1855–1940), produced in 1925 after her 1904 painting. The print is a three-quarter-view portrait of a young woman seated with her hands resting together in her lap. She is wearing a large green bonnet or hood called a calash because of its resemblance to the folding top of an 18th-century carriage known as a calash.
"The Green Calash" was shown at the Smithsonian as part of a print exhibition in November 1936. Other exhibitors were Gabrielle DeVeaux Clements, Margaret Hoyt, and Lesley Jackson. Clements and Hale experimented extensively with color printmaking throughout their careers. They were especially inspired by French artist René Ligeron's 1924 treatise on color intaglio, which Hale translated into English for the Smithsonian exhibition. Clements wrote to curator R.P. Tolman that she and Hale had "been working on an interesting line of experiments in printing etchings in color" and that they had "lately gained better control of the medium, and greater simplicity."
The 1936 exhibition came near the end of Hale's and Clements's careers. 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 Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1887. Curator Sylvester R. Koehler included more than 400 etchings by twenty-five artists in a 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 other women printmakers, and the Museum showed the exhibition in Washington in 1989.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1925
ID Number
GA.17165
catalog number
17165
accession number
142035

Yoghourt Crepes

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.30
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.30

tall pine with small cabin

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
ca 1927
ca 1933
ca 1932
ca 1936
ca 1929
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.43
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.43

seated nude woman with stockings

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
ca 1927
ca 1933
ca 1932
ca 1936
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.31
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.31

Young woman writing

Color woodblock print of a young woman writing.Currently not on view
Description
Color woodblock print of a young woman writing.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
GA.03630
catalog number
03630
accession number
23893

waterbuck at pool

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
ca 1927
ca 1933
ca 1932
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.27
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.27

Rye Bread

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.23
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.23

Temple of Edfou, Egypt

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
original artist
Frith, Francis
ID Number
GA.04316
catalog number
04316
accession number
23155

Sail Boat

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
ca 1927
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.24
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.24

Uncle Sam

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.13
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.13

Marinated Tomatoes

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.14
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.14

Independence Hall

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1861
maker
Wells, Charles H.
Neagle, J. B.
ID Number
2014.2050.55
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.55

Witch Doctor

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
ca 1927
ca 1933
ca 1932
ca 1936
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.30
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.30

Ralph Totten's Book

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1930
ca 1928
ca 1931
graphic artist
Totten, Ralph J.
ID Number
2013.0196.23
accession number
2013.0196
catalog number
2013.0196.23

Nandina domestica

Japanese wood block print. No. 8 in a series of progressive proofs of a stylized group of leaves and berries from the shrub Nandina domestica. Designed by Tsubaki Chinzan, engraved by Kotaro Kido, and printed by Iwakichi Yamamoto.Currently not on view
Description
Japanese wood block print. No. 8 in a series of progressive proofs of a stylized group of leaves and berries from the shrub Nandina domestica. Designed by Tsubaki Chinzan, engraved by Kotaro Kido, and printed by Iwakichi Yamamoto.
Location
Currently not on view
engraver
Kido, Kotaro
ID Number
GA.03217.08
catalog number
03217.08
accession number
22582

Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.

If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.