Energy & Power

The Museum's collections on energy and power illuminate the role of fire, steam, wind, water, electricity, and the atom in the nation's history. The artifacts include wood-burning stoves, water turbines, and windmills, as well as steam, gas, and diesel engines. Oil-exploration and coal-mining equipment form part of these collections, along with a computer that controlled a power plant and even bubble chambers—a tool of physicists to study protons, electrons, and other charged particles.

A special strength of the collections lies in objects related to the history of electrical power, including generators, batteries, cables, transformers, and early photovoltaic cells. A group of Thomas Edison's earliest light bulbs are a precious treasure. Hundreds of other objects represent the innumerable uses of electricity, from streetlights and railway signals to microwave ovens and satellite equipment.

Bryant’s New Showboat was built at Point Pleasant, W. Va., in 1917. Launched in 1918, it could seat around 880 people in its theater.
Description
Bryant’s New Showboat was built at Point Pleasant, W. Va., in 1917. Launched in 1918, it could seat around 880 people in its theater. Most of the shows put on for Bryant’s patrons in small towns along the Kanawha, Ohio, Monongahela, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers were vaudeville or follies productions.
The ornate stage of Bryant’s New Showboat was home to dozens of plays like Hamlet and Little Nell of the Ozarks, and even the antics of a trained bucking mule named January. Owner Billy Bryant offered $10 to anyone who could stay on the animal’s back, but he had to retract that offer in mining towns, as the miners were strong enough to stay on.
The vessel was sold to new owners in 1945, at the end of World War II. Movie theaters, personal automobiles and other developments had gradually ended the colorful showboat era on America’s rivers.
Date made
1976
ID Number
TR.335568
catalog number
335568
accession number
1977.0630
Grand is one of four boats used to survey the "ruggedest" 300 miles of the Colorado River's Grand Canyon during the 1923 expedition by the U.S. Geological Survey. Led by Col.
Description
Grand is one of four boats used to survey the "ruggedest" 300 miles of the Colorado River's Grand Canyon during the 1923 expedition by the U.S. Geological Survey. Led by Col. Claude Birdseye, the expedition's primary purpose was to survey potential dam sites for the development of hydroelectric power. Indeed, the survey party mapped twenty-one new sites.
Grand is eighteen feet long, with a beam of four feet, eleven inches. Heavily built of oak, spruce, and cedar, the boat weighs about 900 pounds. Grand is one of three boats ordered in 1921 by the survey's sponsors, the Edison Electric Company, and built at the Fellows and Stewart Shipbuilding Works in San Pedro. The vessels were patterned after those designed by the Kolb brothers, who had based their boats on vessels used by trappers in the upper Colorado River canyons.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1921
associated date
1923
associated institution
US Geological Survey
maker
Fellows and Stewart Shipbuilding Works
ID Number
TR.034381
catalog number
034381
34381
accession number
71541

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