Family & Social Life

Donations to the Museum have preserved irreplaceable evidence about generations of ordinary Americans. Objects from the Copp household of Stonington, Connecticut, include many items used by a single family from 1740 to 1850. Other donations have brought treasured family artifacts from jewelry to prom gowns. These gifts and many others are all part of the Museum's family and social life collections.

Children's books and Sunday school lessons, tea sets and family portraits also mark the connections between members of a family and between families and the larger society. Prints, advertisements, and artifacts offer nostalgic or idealized images of family life and society in times past. And the collections include a few modern conveniences that have had profound effects on American families and social life, such as televisions, video games, and personal computers.

Amateurs began making home radios to transmit and receive messages early in the 1900s. As part of the 1912 Radio Act, these "hams" were assigned to the short-wave part of the radio spectrum.
Description
Amateurs began making home radios to transmit and receive messages early in the 1900s. As part of the 1912 Radio Act, these "hams" were assigned to the short-wave part of the radio spectrum. Radio operators around the world learned code, formed clubs, and exchanged cards listing their license numbers.
In 1933, radio enthusiast William (Bill) J. Halligan of Chicago founded The Hallicrafters, Inc. The firm sold radios and other electronic components. Ham radio operation in the U.S. was suspended during World War II, and Hallicrafters devoted its resources to producing military goods.
After the war, it resumed production for consumers. Hobbyists bought receivers like this one. This sturdy object was owned by Charles E. Dennison, a longtime employee of the Smithsonian Institution.
Reference: Max de Henseler, "When the Sky was the Limit, The Hallicrafters Story 1933-1975," unpublished manuscript.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1946
maker
Hallicrafters, Inc.
ID Number
EM.334935
catalog number
334935
accession number
315488
model number
S-40
In the mid-1960s, most children had never seen an electronic computer. However, they had heard stories of the power of these giant instruments and knew that they were associated with space flight.
Description
In the mid-1960s, most children had never seen an electronic computer. However, they had heard stories of the power of these giant instruments and knew that they were associated with space flight. This toy brought the mathematical principles of the digital computer into the home. The manual describes several problems that could be set up, including a basic check out of whether the device was functioning properly, counting down from 7 to 1 in binary, logical riddles, and the game of NIM. There is a special piece that can be used to represent the logical operation "or." The toy was made by E.S.R., Inc. of Orange and Montclair, New Jersey. It sold for about $5.00.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1965
date received
1977
maker
E.S.R., Incorporated
ID Number
1978.0067.59
catalog number
1978.0067.59
accession number
1978.0067
The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in late 1957 sparked interest in the United States in science education even among elementary school children. In 1958, King Seeley Thermos produced this imaginative box evoking space travel and landings on distant moons and planets.
Description (Brief)
The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in late 1957 sparked interest in the United States in science education even among elementary school children. In 1958, King Seeley Thermos produced this imaginative box evoking space travel and landings on distant moons and planets. Children provided a receptive audience to this imaginary yet hopeful view of scientific achievement in the early years of the space race. This is one of the few pop culture lunch boxes from the late 1950s not designed around a television show.
Description
The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in late 1957 sparked interest in the United States in science education even among elementary school children. In 1958, King Seeley Thermos produced this imaginative box evoking space travel and landings on distant moons and planets. Children provided a receptive audience to this imaginary yet hopeful view of scientific achievement in the early years of the space race. This is one of the few pop culture lunch boxes from the late 1950s not designed around a television show.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1957
1958
maker
American Thermos Products Co.
ID Number
2001.3087.06.01
nonaccession number
2001.3087
catalog number
2001.3087.06.01
This domed steel lunch was manufactured by Aladdin Industries in 1963. It features images from the popular television series, The Jetsons.
Description (Brief)
This domed steel lunch was manufactured by Aladdin Industries in 1963. It features images from the popular television series, The Jetsons. The lunch box features images of the whole Jetson family, George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy, as well as Rosie the Household Robot and Astro the Dog. This box is one of the most coveted by collectors because of its great design, colorful art, and scarcity.
The Jetsons was an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera that aired on ABC from 1962 to 1963 and in reruns for decades after. The primetime sitcom was set in Orbit City in the distant future and focused on the Jetson family – father George, who works at Spacely Space Sprockets, mother Jane, a homemaker, children Judy and Elroy, robot maid Rosie, and their dog Astro. Despite the high-tech gadgetry, labor-saving devices, flying cars, and space colonization of the Jetsons’ world, the series presented the family as a normative American nuclear family of the era, dealing with many of the same issues with work, family, and neighbors faced by the protagonists of The Honeymooners, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best. The Jetsons featured many futuristic technologies that have now become commonplace - video calling, tablet computers, robotic vacuums, smart watches, flatscreen televisions, drones, and holograms – as well as many others that seem misguided or still far-off such as flying cars, high quality instant food, robot housekeepers, and communities built on pillars in the sky.
The series drew from a rich American literary and entertainment genre of futuristic science fiction from Edward Bellamy’s 1887 utopian novel Looking Backward to the pulp and comic book adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, not to mention contemporary space travel entertainment like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Americans in the early 1960s were fascinated by the technological innovations of the Space Age and the brighter future promised by the flood of devices, services, and improvements that marketed “better living through chemistry” and material progress. The broad economic growth and prosperity of the post World War II era had allowed many middle-class Americans to purchase luxury goods and participate in leisure activities beyond what seemed possible in the difficult 1930s and 40s. Advertisers marketed new and more inexpensive consumer goods as modern, sleek, and forward-looking, while the NASA space program and race to land a man on the moon captured the world’s attention. The Jetsons premiered amidst this techno-utopianism and seemed to capture the national mood.
Description
Aladdin Industries profited from the success of The Jetsons television cartoon series in the fall of 1963 by introducing a domed lunch box featuring that space-traveling suburban family and their robotic maid. American notions of family life in the 1960s traveled effortlessly outward to interplanetary space on this fanciful box.
Domed metal lunch boxes traditionally were carried by factory employees and construction workers, but Aladdin and other makers found the curved shape made an excellent young person's landscape, ocean scene, or starry sky. Despite the more earth-bound adult concerns of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the Kennedy assassination, The Jetsons box and bottle showcase the metal lunch box at the zenith of its design life and its popularity among school children.
The Jetsons was an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera that aired on ABC from 1962 to 1963 and in reruns for decades after. The primetime sitcom was set in Orbit City in the distant future and focused on the Jetson family – father George, who works at Spacely Space Sprockets, mother Jane, a homemaker, children Judy and Elroy, robot maid Rosie, and their dog Astro. Despite the high-tech gadgetry, labor-saving devices, flying cars, and space colonization of the Jetsons’ world, the series presented the family as a normative American nuclear family of the era, dealing with many of the same issues with work, family, and neighbors faced by the protagonists of The Honeymooners, Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best. The Jetsons featured many futuristic technologies that have now become commonplace - video calling, tablet computers, robotic vacuums, smart watches, flatscreen televisions, drones, and holograms – as well as many others that seem misguided or still far-off such as flying cars, high quality instant food, robot housekeepers, and communities built on pillars in the sky.
The series drew from a rich American literary and entertainment genre of futuristic science fiction from Edward Bellamy’s 1887 utopian novel Looking Backward to the pulp and comic book adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, not to mention contemporary space travel entertainment like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Americans in the early 1960s were fascinated by the technological innovations of the Space Age and the brighter future promised by the flood of devices, services, and improvements that marketed “better living through chemistry” and material progress. The broad economic growth and prosperity of the post World War II era had allowed many middle-class Americans to purchase luxury goods and participate in leisure activities beyond what seemed possible in the difficult 1930s and 40s. Advertisers marketed new and more inexpensive consumer goods as modern, sleek, and forward-looking, while the NASA space program and race to land a man on the moon captured the world’s attention. The Jetsons premiered amidst this techno-utopianism and seemed to capture the national mood.
Date made
1963
maker
Aladdin
ID Number
2003.3070.22.01
nonaccession number
2003.3070
catalog number
2003.3070.22.01

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