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. |
|
 |
|
Selected Objects |
|
|
|
|
Battery: Voltaic Pile
In 1800, Alessandro Volta of Italy announced his invention of a device that produced a small but steady electrical current. His "voltaic pile" operated by placing pieces of cloth soaked ...
|
|
|
|
|
Carrier Centrifugal Refrigeration Compressor
The first successful mechanical refrigeration equipment was patented soon after the Civil War, but the large size and high cost of these early machines restricted their use to industrial processes. ...
|
|
|
|
|
Gasoline Pump
Made in Fort Wayne Indiana, this gasoline pump sold "Red Crown" gasoline, a brand produced by Standard Oil of Indiana. Consumers could see how much gas was pumped as the ...
|
|
|
|
|
General Electric Demonstration Fluorescent Lamp
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, reports began reaching GE and Westinghouse of French experiments with neon tubes coated with phosphors. A phosphor is a material that absorbs one ...
|
|
|
|
|
H. M. Wood Windmill Patent Model
During most of the 19th century, the U.S. Patent Office required inventors seeking patent protection to submit both a written application and a three-dimensional model. This wood and metal patent ...
|
|
|
|
|
Model of Bucyrus-Erie Stripping Shovel
In 1960, the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisc., presented this 14-inch-high, scale model of what was to become the world's largest stripping shovel to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later ...
|
|
|
|
|
Niagara Falls Original Turbines
Using this extremely fine wood model as part of its technical proposal, the Swiss firm Faesch & Piccard won the contract to design the original turbines for the Niagara Falls ...
|
|
|
|
|
Nier Mass Spectrograph
In 1939, as political tensions in Europe increased, American physicists learned of an astonishing discovery: the nucleus of the uranium atom can be split, causing the release of an immense ...
|
|
|
|
|
Thomson DC Generator
This model of a direct-current generator was designed by Elihu Thomson to produce a constant voltage. It could also be used as a motor that would maintain a constant speed. ...
|
|
|
|
|
Weston Potential Indicator
In the 1880s—the early days of commercial electric power—convenient, rugged, and reliable instruments for measuring that power did not exist. Engineers had to struggle with complex, delicate, laboratory-type instruments that ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
