Engineering, Building, and Architecture

Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.

The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.

The Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company manufactured this Honeywell T852 electric clock thermostat beginning in 1960. The thermostat had two external tabs for setting the temperature for daytime and nighttime.
Description
The Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company manufactured this Honeywell T852 electric clock thermostat beginning in 1960. The thermostat had two external tabs for setting the temperature for daytime and nighttime. The thermostat connected to the house’s electric system so that it did not have to be wound or set.
The ubiquity of thermostats in 21st century homes shrouds the decades of innovation, industrial design, and engineering that went into making them an everyday object in almost every home. In the early 20th century, a majority of American households still heated their homes with manually operated furnaces that required a trip down to the basement and stoking the coal fired furnace. Albert Butz’s “damper-flapper” system was patented in 1886 and allowed home owner to set the thermostat to a certain temperature which would open a damper to the furnace, increasing the fire and heating the house. Progressive innovations allowed for the thermostats to use gas lines, incorporate electricity, turn on at a set time, include heating and cooling in one mechanism, and even connect to the internet.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1960
ID Number
2008.0011.10
accession number
2008.0011
catalog number
2008.0011.10
Honeywell Incorporated of Minneapolis, Minnesota manufactured this Honeywell Comfort T882 Chronotherm thermostat around 1966. While conventional thermostats would allow for different settings during the day and night, the change had switched by hand.
Description
Honeywell Incorporated of Minneapolis, Minnesota manufactured this Honeywell Comfort T882 Chronotherm thermostat around 1966. While conventional thermostats would allow for different settings during the day and night, the change had switched by hand. The Chronotherm could automatically change the thermostat’s setting between day and night. Chronotherm is one of Honeywell’s most prominent brands and has been in existence since the 1930s. The T882 model Chronotherm has a clock on the left side of the face and a temperature indicator on the right side. Above the temperature indicator are two glass sliders that can be set between 60 and 90, one controlling the temperature during the night and the other during the day. The T882 was the first Chronotherm that had heating and cooling capabilities, previously the house would only be cooled by to the ambient temperature.
The ubiquity of thermostats in 21st century homes shrouds the decades of innovation, industrial design, and engineering that went into making them an everyday object in almost every home. In the early 20th century, a majority of American households still heated their homes with manually operated furnaces that required a trip down to the basement and stoking the coal fired furnace. Albert Butz’s “damper-flapper” system was patented in 1886 and allowed home owner to set the thermostat to a certain temperature which would open a damper to the furnace, increasing the fire and heating the house. Progressive innovations allowed for the thermostats to use gas lines, incorporate electricity, turn on at a set time, include heating and cooling in one mechanism, and even connect to the internet.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1966
ID Number
2008.0011.15
accession number
2008.0011
catalog number
2008.0011.15
In 1960, the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presented this 14-inch-high, scale model of what was to become the world's largest stripping shovel to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Description
In 1960, the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presented this 14-inch-high, scale model of what was to become the world's largest stripping shovel to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later that year, the President transferred this gift to the Smithsonian Institution. The Bucyrus-Erie Company had custom-designed this monster machine for the Peabody Coal Company. Bucyrus-Erie engineers anticipated that they would need two years to manufacture the behemoth, and an additional six months to assemble it at the site of the open-pit mine. (They planned to ship the machine's parts in over 250 railcars.) When finished, the shovel would weigh 7,000 tons, soar to the roofline of a 20-story building (some 220 feet high), and be able to extend its enormous 115-cubic-yard dipper over 460 feet, or about the length of an average city block. (The dipper's capacity would equal that of about six stand-sized dump trucks.) Fifty electric motors-ranging from 1/4 to 3,000 horsepower-would power the shovel, which was designed to be controlled by a single operator, perched in a cab five stories high. Publicists for Bucyrus-Erie called this the "largest self-powered mobile land vehicle ever built."
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1960
recipient
Eisenhower, Dwight D.
maker
Bucyrus-Erie Company
ID Number
MC.317688
catalog number
317688
accession number
231557
This is a Honeywell Round T832 day-night thermostat that was manufactured by the Minneapolis-Honeywell Company around 1960. Renowned industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designed the iconic “Round” line of Honeywell thermostats that debuted in 1953.
Description
This is a Honeywell Round T832 day-night thermostat that was manufactured by the Minneapolis-Honeywell Company around 1960. Renowned industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss designed the iconic “Round” line of Honeywell thermostats that debuted in 1953. This 1960 model has two built-in red indicators that allow for the setting of two temperatures as well as a “set-back timer” which would automatically switch between the two thermostats. Staring in the 1953, Honeywell offered the Round in a variety of colors to match any home’s color scheme for a price of $12.80.
The ubiquity of thermostats in 21st century homes shrouds the decades of innovation, industrial design, and engineering that went into making them an everyday object. In the early 20th century, a majority of American households still heated their homes with manually operated furnaces that required a trip down to the basement and stoking the coal fired furnace. Albert Butz’s “damper-flapper” system was patented in 1886 and allowed the home owner to set the thermostat to a certain temperature which would open a damper to the furnace, increasing the fire and heating the house. Progressive innovations allowed for the thermostats to use gas lines, incorporate electricity, turn on at a set time, include heating and cooling in one mechanism, and even connect to the internet.
date made
1960
ID Number
2008.0011.16
accession number
2008.0011
catalog number
2008.0011.16
The family fallout shelter represents the public policy assumptions of the atomic age, namely, that with enough preparation, the American family and with it the nation's social and political fabric would survive a nuclear attack.
Description
The family fallout shelter represents the public policy assumptions of the atomic age, namely, that with enough preparation, the American family and with it the nation's social and political fabric would survive a nuclear attack. This free-standing, double-hulled steel shelter was installed beneath the front yard of Mr. and Mrs. Murland E. Anderson of Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The Andersons purchased their shelter from J. L. Haverstock, a Ft. Wayne realtor who began selling family fallout shelters as a sideline in early 1955 after reading a promotional Life magazine article.
The Andersons maintained the shelter from its installation in 1955 through the 1960s, a period spanning the development of the hydrogen bomb and the Cuban missile crisis. Insufficiently anchored against Ft. Wayne's high water table when first installed, the shelter popped to the surface of the Anderson front yard in time for the Cuban missile crisis and was quickly reinterred in a frenzy of shelter building activity in 1961. The donors purchased the property, including the shelter, from the Andersons in 1968.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1950
date made
1950s-1960s
maker
Universal Tank & Iron Works, Inc.
ID Number
2005.0051.04
accession number
2005.0051
catalog number
2005.0051.04

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