Industry & Manufacturing

Eli Terry Mass-Produced Clock

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.

Metal Button Depicting Cupid

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03261
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03261

Button with Shell Center, Metal Rim, and Metal Overlay Design in Center

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03681
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03681

Black Oval Button Inlayed with a Pearl Floral Pattern

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1960.233749.0053
accession number
233749
catalog number
233749.0053

Ball Bearing

This is a vial of small bearing balls collected by the Anti-Friction Bearing Manufacturers Association for a public relations exhibit during the early 1950s that was donated to the museum in 1977.
Description
This is a vial of small bearing balls collected by the Anti-Friction Bearing Manufacturers Association for a public relations exhibit during the early 1950s that was donated to the museum in 1977. For optimum bearing performance, balls in a bearing must be perfect spheres of exactly uniform size. If not, the bearing’s load will focus on the irregular ball, leading to failure in the bearing. During the middle of the 20th century, balls were manufactured by the “cold heading” process. In cold heading a piece of cylindrical steel wire is cut and compressed by a spherical die. This forms rough balls with protrusions at the top and around the equator. The balls go into a grinder to remove these protrusions in a process called deflashing. Further heating, grinding, lapping, and cleaning leaves uniform balls ready to be added to its matching cage or raceway to make a fully assembled bearing.
Simple bearings have been used for thousands of years reducing friction on turning parts like the axles of carts. In the late 1800s and early 1900s advances in machining and production expanded bearing use in all types of machines greatly increasing their life and precision. Bearings reduce friction on turning surfaces and keep them running true. Bearings come in a variety of shapes and sizes (including ball, roller, tapered, and simple friction). Modern bearings are often set in an inner and outer ring (called a race) sometimes with cages (separators) spacing the bearings. Changes to the size, shape, alignment, race, and cage allow for bearings to be used in almost any industry—from industrial turbines and automobiles to household mixers and computer hard drives.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
MC.336100.0112
catalog number
336100.0112
accession number
1977.0585

Light switch for Edison installation

Original switch key by which current was turned on lamps in the building. #499 and 451 Water Street, New York City, on the evening of January 15, 1881. A wooden pivot switch mounted on a wooden base. Four binding posts.
Description (Brief)
Original switch key by which current was turned on lamps in the building. #499 and 451 Water Street, New York City, on the evening of January 15, 1881. A wooden pivot switch mounted on a wooden base. Four binding posts. Used in the Hinds-Ketchum printing plant as part of the first commercial installation of the Edison lighting system.
Date made
1881
ID Number
EM.180942
catalog number
180942
accession number
24315

Ornate Metal Cufflinks

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.1491
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.1491

Meissen porcelain sauceboat (Stadholder Service)

The sauceboat is part of a large table service known as the Stadholder Service after its first owner, Stadholder Willem V of the Netherlands, Prince of Orange and Nassau (1748-1806).
Description
The sauceboat is part of a large table service known as the Stadholder Service after its first owner, Stadholder Willem V of the Netherlands, Prince of Orange and Nassau (1748-1806). Evidence links the service to a commission from the Dutch East India Company (Ostindianische Compagnie), and as Stadholder Willem V was chief governor of the Company, but precise details about the occasion of the gift to Willem are not known.
The entire service was painted by Meissen artists in polychrome enamels with topographical scenes of places in the Dutch Republic and the Dutch colonial port of Batavia (present day Jakarta). A significant number of the scenes depict properties connected to the Dutch East India Company. Meissen artists painted the scenes with considerable accuracy after contemporary Dutch prints made available to the painting division at the Manufactory. On the sauceboat are two views of the village (now town) of Loenen on the river Vecht. Other Meissen artists painted the floral ornaments, and yet other specialists were responsible for the gold cartouches and ornament on handles, feet, and rims.
The service was molded in Meissen's "New Spanish" design in the rococo style that probably dates to the 1750s. By the 1770s the style was somewhat outmoded.
Provenance: From Meissen in Germany the Stadholder Service was sent to the Netherlands for presentation to Willem V, but when the French invaded in 1795 Willem escaped to England with his large family and took the complete dinner service with him. He did not return with it when he left England a few years later, and William Beckford of Fonthill (1760-1844) acquired the service (it is not known how), probably in the very early years of the nineteenth century. Beckford had a passion for fine and beautiful things, but his ambitious architectural project for the construction of Fonthill Abbey and his collecting activities led to financial difficulties. In 1823 the dinner service was sold at auction to a Mr. Hodges of London. In 1868 Christie’s of London sold the service in lots, and it was then dispersed widely across Europe, but it appears that the Reverend Alfred Duane Pell ((1864-1924) of New York City acquired about fifty or more pieces from the Stadholder Service, possibly on one or more of his European tours.
On this service see Abraham. L. den Blaauwen, 1993, "The Meissen Service of Stadholder Willem V."
On William Beckford see Derek E. Ostergard et.al, 2001, "William Beckford, 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent."
This sauceboat belongs to the Alfred Duane Pell collection in the National Museum of American History. Before Pell (1864-1924) became an Episcopalian clergyman quite late in life, he and his wife Cornelia Livingstone Crosby Pell (1861-1938) travelled widely, and as they travelled they collected European porcelains, silver, and furniture. Pell came from a wealthy family and he purchased the large William Pickhardt Mansion on 5th Avenue and East 74th Street in which to display his vast collection. The Smithsonian was one of several institutions to receive substantial bequests from the Reverend Pell which laid the foundation for their collections of European applied arts in the early twentieth century.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1772-1774
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-968
catalog number
P-968
accession number
225282

Printing press and sheet-fed apparatus

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a press for printing material such as envelopes, and the pneumatic apparatus for feeding sheets to the press. The two patents, numbers 303550 and 386440, are demonstrated on a single model.
Description (Brief)
This patent model demonstrates an invention for a press for printing material such as envelopes, and the pneumatic apparatus for feeding sheets to the press. The two patents, numbers 303550 and 386440, are demonstrated on a single model. Despite the dates of the patents, both applications were made on 10 July 1880. They were granted after unusually long delays.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1884
ca 1888
patent date
1884-08-12
1888-07-17
maker
Swift, Henry D.
Swift, D. Wheeler
ID Number
GA.89797.303550
patent number
GA*303550
accession number
089797
catalog number
GA*89797.303550
386440

Patent Model of a Type Breaker

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a type breaker which was assigned patent number 86968. This device broke the jets from the bodies of newly cast type and was intended to be attached to a typecasting machine.
Description (Brief)
This patent model demonstrates an invention for a type breaker which was assigned patent number 86968. This device broke the jets from the bodies of newly cast type and was intended to be attached to a typecasting machine. The patent was granted to Philip Heinrich, proprietor of the Ph. Heinrich type foundry in New York.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1869
patent date
1869-02-16
maker
Baer, Charles
ID Number
GA.89797.086968
patent number
086968
accession number
089797
catalog number
GA*89797.086968

Metal Eye Hook

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.2959
accession number
314686
catalog number
314686.2959

Blue Glass Button Speckled with Gold and Decorated with a Cream Abstract Plant Pattern

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.01652
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.01652

Miner’s Safety Lamp

This lamp's manufacturer is unknown, but based on its design it was most likely made in the late 19th century. The safety mining lamp was a tremendous step forward in preventing mining disasters.
Description (Brief)
This lamp's manufacturer is unknown, but based on its design it was most likely made in the late 19th century. The safety mining lamp was a tremendous step forward in preventing mining disasters. Encasing the flame in glass or metal gauze prevented combustible mine gases (called firedamp) from exploding, as would happen with the open flames of carbide or oil-wick lamps, and the metal bonnet protects the flame from being extinguished.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
AG.MHI-MN-8766
catalog number
MHI-MN-8766
accession number
265669

Metal Hardware

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.3249
catalog number
314686.3249
accession number
314686

Metal Button Depicting the Profile of a Warrior Surrounded by a Decorative Rim

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03752
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03752

Marcasite Button with Metal Rim

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.04178
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.04178

Meissen porcelain cup and saucer (part of a service)

TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer from a tête à tête tea and coffee serviceMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 1 5/8 in x 15 3/4 in x 10 1/4 in; 4.1275 cm x 40.005 cm x 26.035 cmOBJECT NAME: TrayPLACE MADE: Me
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer from a tête à tête tea and coffee service
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 1 5/8 in x 15 3/4 in x 10 1/4 in; 4.1275 cm x 40.005 cm x 26.035 cm
OBJECT NAME: Tray
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1805-1815
SUBJECT: The Alfred Duane Pell Collection
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: The Alfred Duane Pell Collection
ID NUMBER: CE*P-896Fab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: Alfred Duane Pell
ACCESSION NUMBER: 225282
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords and a star in underglaze blue .
This cup and saucer is from a Meissen tea and coffee service made for two people, and services of this kind for use at breakfast or for intimate meetings are known as têtê à têtê or cabaret services. Most interesting, however, are the enamel painted topographical images of Egyptian landscapes and antiquities, which date the service to the early nineteenth century after the publication of Baron Dominique Vivant Denon’s Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte (Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt) in 1802.
In 1798 Denon traveled to Egypt as a member of Napoleon’s large team of scientists, engineers, artists, and scholars appended to the general’s army of about 20,000 troops who occupied Lower Egypt and chased the Mamluk Turks, then rulers of the country, into Upper Egypt. Known as the savants, these men studied and recorded all that they saw of both ancient and modern Egypt. As an artist, art collector, and antiquarian, Denon marveled at the sites of Egyptian antiquity and recorded in drawings everything that he could get down on paper while traveling with a battalion of the French army into Upper Egypt. His drawings, later engraved and published in the Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte are still a valuable record of Egypt’s ancient sites before the archaeological excavations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the construction of the first and second Aswan Dams.
Napoleon’s campaign was not a military success, his fleet destroyed by the British at the Battle of Abū Qīr Bay near Alexandria on August 1, 1798, thus isolating the French army on land in Egypt and restoring British control of the Mediterranean Sea. His team of scientists, engineers and artists, however, were undoubtedly successful in bringing new knowledge of ancient Egypt to Europe and America. Denon’s Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte was a very successful publication and the spirited account of his experiences was soon translated into English and other languages. It is likely that the enamel paintings on this tea and coffee service were commissioned privately by someone who owned a copy of the Voyage. When compared with the original drawings there are differences in detail and composition, which was not unusual, but for the most part the Meissen painters were faithful to Denon’s record, which was not in color, unlike the rich polychrome enamels seen on the porcelain.
The parts of the service are molded in the severe, but nevertheless ornate, neoclassical style fashionable in designs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With its origins in France artists and designers who worked in the neoclassical style took inspiration from ancient Roman and Greek art and architecture. Neoclassicism in its most ideologically pure form expressed a taste for elevated, didactic, and moral subjects in rejection of the court culture of the old regime prior to the French Revolution. In the German States, and especially in Berlin, the neoclassical style was favored by designers and architects.
On the cup we see the Meissen painter’s version, after the engraving in Denon’s Voyages, of the “Fountain of Kittah”, a water source in the desert east of the Nile. Denon described the well as “a very singular fountain, since it is situated on a higher level of all the surrounding ground; this fountain consists of three wells six feet in depth, and the strata of which are, first, a bed of sand, and beneath, a free-stone rock, through which the water filtrates and slowly fills the holes that are dug.” The domed structure seen in the painting on the cup was a shelter for travelers, known as a caravansary, but in a later description written by the Englishman, Sir Richard Phillips, the “small covered chambers” were filled with the remains of dead asses and camels “the smell from which is infectious.” Phillips described the water as “brackish” but “drank by the camels without much repugnance.”
Denon's original drawing of the Fountain of Kittah records contemporary life in the Egypt of 1798, and not the Egypt of antiquity.
On the saucer we see another view of the first cataract on the Nile, and Denon drew several riverscapes of the cataract from different vantage points, later engraved in Paris from his original drawings and published in the Voyages.
Bob Brier, Napoleon in Egypt, exhibition catalog Hillwood Art Museum, Brookville, New York: 1990.
Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania, the Egyptian Revival: a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Canada with the Louvre, Paris, 1994.
Paul V. Gardner, 1956, 1966 (rev. ed.), Meissen and other German Porcelain in the Alfred Duane Pell Collection.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1805-1815
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-896Fab
catalog number
P-896Fab
accession number
225282

Patent model for printing on pyroxyline compounds (celluloid)

This patent model demonstrates an invention for variations on the method of printing celluloid under heat and pressure. The invention was granted patent number 348222.
Description (Brief)
This patent model demonstrates an invention for variations on the method of printing celluloid under heat and pressure. The invention was granted patent number 348222. The model consists of three photogravure specimens.
John Wesley Hyatt (born 1837) started his working life as a printer. Early in his career, he took out a patent for a composition for artificial ivory billiard balls, which led him to the invention of celluloid in 1868. In 1869 Hyatt and his brother Isaac founded the Celluloid Manufacturing Company. He held some 250 patents, mostly concerned with the use of celluloid.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1886
patent date
1886-08-31
maker
Lefferts, Marshall C.
Hyatt, John W.
ID Number
GA.89797.348222
accession number
089797
patent number
348222
catalog number
GA*89797.348222

Metal Button Depicting a Wealthy Elizabethan Era Man

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03772
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03772

Shell Button Painted with Orange, Green, and Brown Design

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03316
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03316

Round Goldstone Button

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
1962.239460.03992
accession number
239460
catalog number
239460.03992

Ulysses S. Grant Campaign Badge

This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer, and is still in business today.
Description (Brief)
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer, and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges.
The badge features a tintype photograph of Ulysses S. Grant set into a brass frame, which would have originally been attached to a pin and displayed on clothing.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1868
depicted
Grant, Ulysses S.
maker
Scovill Manufacturing Company
ID Number
1981.0296.1069
accession number
1981.0296
catalog number
1981.0296.1069

Henry Clay Button

This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1845. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today.
Description (Brief)
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1845. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals.
Obverse: Profile image of Henry Clay facing left. The legend reads: HENRY CLAY 1845.
Reverse: Illegible manufacturer’s stamp.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1845
depicted
Clay, Henry
maker
Scovill Manufacturing Company
ID Number
1981.0296.1201
accession number
1981.0296
catalog number
1981.0296.1201

Metal Cap

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1890 - 1930
maker
Waterbury Button Company
ID Number
MC.314686.4056
catalog number
314686.4056
accession number
314686

Pennsylvania Model T-15 Power Mower

Date made
1951
maker
Pennsylvania Lawn Mower Works
ID Number
1992.0358.01
accession number
1992.0358
catalog number
1992.0358.01

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