Industry & Manufacturing

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

Telegraph message, printed in Morse code, transcribed and signed by Samuel F. B. Morse.
Description
Telegraph message, printed in Morse code, transcribed and signed by Samuel F. B. Morse. This message was transmitted from Baltimore, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., over the nation's first long-distance telegraph line.
In 1843, Congress allocated $30,000 for Morse (1791-1872) to build an electric telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Morse and his partner, Alfred Vail (1807-1859), completed the forty-mile line in May 1844. For the first transmissions, they used a quotation from the Bible, Numbers 23:23: "What hath God wrought," suggested by Annie G. Ellsworth (1826-1900), daughter of Patent Commissioner Henry L. Ellsworth (1791-1858) who was present at the event on 24 May. Morse, in the Capitol, sent the message to Vail at the B&O Railroad's Pratt Street Station in Baltimore. Vail then sent a return message confirming the message he had received.
The original message transmitted by Morse from Washington to Baltimore, dated 24 May 1844, is in the collections of the Library of Congress. The original confirmation message from Vail to Morse is in the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society.
This tape, dated 25 May, is a personal souvenir transmitted by Vail in Baltimore to Morse in Washington the day following the inaugural transmissions. The handwriting on the tape is that of Morse himself. Found in Morse’s papers after his death the tape was donated to the Smithsonian in 1900 by his son Edward, where it has been displayed in many exhibitions.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1844-05-25
1844-05-24
associated date
1844-05-24
donated
1900-04-18
associated person
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
maker
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
ID Number
EM.001028
catalog number
001028
accession number
65555
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.4053
catalog number
314686.4053
accession number
314686
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1377
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1377
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.2481
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.2481
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.3964
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.3964
This metal buckle is stamped into a plain rectangular frame.The Waterbury Collection tells the story of an important American manufacturer.
Description
This metal buckle is stamped into a plain rectangular frame.
The Waterbury Collection tells the story of an important American manufacturer. As evidence of one company’s diverse output, the collection consists of several thousand metal objects and assemblies made in Waterbury, Connecticut, in the Naugatuck Valley from about 1890 to 1930. During the 19th Century, the Naugatuck Valley became a center of brass manufacturing, drawing heavily on the armory manufacturing practice of interchangeable parts.
The Waterbury Button Company traces its beginning to the War of 1812, when Aaron Benedict began crafting uniform buttons. During the nineteenth century the company grew from a small village shop to a large national manufacturer. Its product line expanded to include machine produced brassware such as knobs, hinges, and buckles. The company also experimented with innovative materials such as celluloid in the 1870s and Bakelite in the 1920s. In the spirit of its founding, the company continued to supply uniform buttons and mobilized to meet wartime demands during major conflicts including the Civil War and World War I.
This rich history of product innovation and machine assembly is captured in the more than 7,500 examples of military insignia, civilian emblems, belt plates, buckles, and machine components donated to the museum in 1975. Varying in size from a thumbtack to a soup can, the majority of these objects are composed of metal such as tin, nickel, brass, and other copper and iron alloys. They originally came to the museum mounted on cardboard display boards. At the National Museum of American History, the collection is divided between the Division of Work and Industry and the Division of Armed Forces History. Additional artifacts can be found at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.0848
catalog number
314686.0848
accession number
314686
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1197
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1197
As energy prices soared in the 1970s, lamp makers focused research efforts on raising the energy efficiency of electric lamps. A great deal of effort by many researchers went into designing small fluorescent lamps that might replace a regular incandescent lamp.
Description
As energy prices soared in the 1970s, lamp makers focused research efforts on raising the energy efficiency of electric lamps. A great deal of effort by many researchers went into designing small fluorescent lamps that might replace a regular incandescent lamp. These efforts led to modern compact fluorescent lamps that use bent or connected tubes, but many other designs were tried. This experimental "partition lamp" from 1978 shows one such design.
Soon after the 1939 introduction of linear fluorescent lamps, inventors began receiving patents for smaller lamps. But they found that the small designs suffered from low energy efficiency and a short life-span. Further research revealed that energy efficiency in fluorescent lamps depends in part on the distance the electric current travels between the two electrodes, called the arc path. A long arc path is more efficient than a short arc path. That's why fluorescent tubes in stores and factories are usually 8 feet (almost 3 meters) long.
Inventors in the 1970s tried many ways of putting a long arc path into a small lamp. In this case there are thin glass walls inside the lamp, dividing it into four chambers. Each chamber is connected in such a way that the electric current travels the length of the lamp four times when moving from one electrode to the other. So the arc path is actually four times longer than the lamp itself, raising the energy efficiency of the lamp. This unit was made by General Electric for experiments on the concept, though other makers were also working on partition lamps.
While the partition design works, it proved to be expensive to manufacture and most lamp makers decided to use thin tubes that could be easily bent and folded while being made.
Lamp characteristics: No base. Two stem assemblies each have tungsten electrodes in a CCC-6 configuration with emitter. Welded connectors, 3-piece leads with lower leads made of stranded wire. Bottom-tipped, T-shaped envelope with internal glass partition that separates the internal space into four connected chambers. Partition is made of two pieces of interlocked glass and is not sealed into the envelope. All glass is clear. No phosphors were used since the experimenter wanted to study the arc path.
Date made
ca 1978
date made
ca. 1978
maker
General Electric Corporate Research & Development Laboratory
ID Number
1998.0050.16
accession number
1998.0050
catalog number
1998.0050.16
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.2978
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.2978
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.2976
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.2976
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1771
catalog number
314686.1771
accession number
314686
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.3033
catalog number
314686.3033
accession number
314686
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1351
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1351
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1332
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1332
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1325
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1325
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1358
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1358
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1338
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1338
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1340
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1340
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1373
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1373
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1301
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1301
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1225
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1225
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1304
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1304
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1211
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1211
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1354
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1354

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