Communications - Overview
Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.
The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.
More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.
"Communications - Overview" showing 725 items.
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Telephone Answering Machine
- Description (Brief)
- This Message On Hold telephone answering machine was designed for business use. The user would connect the device to their phone line so that an incoming caller could listen to music and messages while their call was on hold. This allowed the business to entertain their callers as well as providing a sales opportunity. This particular unit is an early model made by Bogen Incorporated for DMS Corporation.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1990
- maker
- Digital Message Systems Corporation
- ID Number
- 1995.0068.01
- catalog number
- 1995.0068.01
- accession number
- 1995.0068
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Telephone Answering Machine
- Description (Brief)
- This Message On Hold telephone answering machine was designed for business use. The user would connect the device to their phone line so that an incoming caller could listen to music and messages while their call was on hold. This allowed the business to entertain their callers as well as providing a sales opportunity. This particular unit is a production model made by Bogen Incorporated for DMS Corporation.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1993
- maker
- Bogen Communications Inc.
- ID Number
- 1995.0068.02
- catalog number
- 1995.0068.02
- accession number
- 1995.0068
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Telephone Answering Machine
- Description (Brief)
- The origin of magnetic recording can be traced to design work by Oberlin Smith of the United States in 1878. After seeing a demonstration of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, Smith thought about how to record sound using a magnetic medium. After ten years of failing to make a working model, Smith published his idea in the hope that someone else might benefit. Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark read Smith’s idea and in 1898 demonstrated the first practical magnetic recorder, a telephone answering machine he called a “telegraphone.” Various companies sold telegraphones for about ten years but microphone and amplification technology were not sufficiently developed to support the device. Poulsen turned to radio experiments in 1902.
- The telegraphone spurred others to continue development of magnetic recording devices. Much early work took place in Germany where the telephone manufacturing firm of Ferdinand Schuchard hired engineer Semi Begun to work on circuit design. Begun became interested in magnetic recording and while working for Lorenz Company helped to design a new answering machine, the “Textophone.” Introduced in 1933, the textophone sold well since it could also be used as a dictating machine.
- The Textophone consisted of two units: this telephone desk set, and a recording and playback console. The recording mechanism passed a steel wire from one reel to another in front of an electromagnet that impressed a magnetic field on the wire. When the wire was passed back in front of the electromagnet, a signal was induced in the speaker circuit. The desk set operated as a regular telephone but also includes control buttons for the recorder.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1935
- maker
- C. Lorenz AG
- ID Number
- 1995.0316.01
- accession number
- 1995.0316
- catalog number
- 1995.0316.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder
- Description (Brief)
- This model BK-416 “Soundmirror” is a modified version of Brush’s model BK-401. Like the earlier unit, the BK-416 used a paper tape coated with a magnetizable material in a reel-to-reel configuration. The retail price in 1953 was about $280, nearly $2300 in 2012 dollars. Working in parallel with Bell Laboratories and the Armour Research Foundation, Brush Development Company spearheaded American research efforts in magnetic recording prior to World War II. Building on the research of Semi Begun, the company made military wire recorders during the war and introduced consumer products like this Soundmirror after the war ended.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1948
- maker
- Brush Development Company
- ID Number
- 1995.0316.02
- accession number
- 1995.0316
- catalog number
- 1995.0316.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Telephone Answering Machine Component
- Description (Brief)
- The origin of magnetic recording can be traced to design work by Oberlin Smith of the United States in 1878. After seeing a demonstration of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, Smith thought about how to record sound using a magnetic medium. After ten years of failing to make a working model, Smith published his idea in the hope that someone else might benefit. Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark read Smith’s idea and in 1898 demonstrated the first practical magnetic recorder, a telephone answering machine he called a “telegraphone.” Various companies sold telegraphones for about ten years but microphone and amplification technology were not sufficiently developed to support the device. Poulsen turned to radio experiments in 1902.
- The telegraphone spurred others to continue development of magnetic recording devices. Much early work took place in Germany where the telephone manufacturing firm of Ferdinand Schuchard hired engineer Semi Begun to work on circuit design. Begun became interested in magnetic recording and while working for Lorenz Company helped to design a new answering machine, the “Textophone.” Introduced in 1933, the textophone sold well since it could also be used as a dictating machine.
- The Textophone consisted of two units: a telephone desk set, and this recording and playback console. The recording mechanism passed a steel wire from one reel to another in front of an electromagnet that impressed a magnetic field on the wire. When the wire was passed back in front of the electromagnet, a signal was induced in the speaker circuit. The desk set operated as a regular telephone but also includes control buttons for the recorder.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1935
- maker
- C. Lorenz AG
- ID Number
- 1995.0316.03
- accession number
- 1995.0316
- catalog number
- 1995.0316.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tape Recording Cartridge
- Description (Brief)
- This audio tape cartridge was designed in 1963 by Cousino Electronics Corporation. Today’s music listeners familiar with audio tape players typically think of the compact cassette format or perhaps the 8-track cartridge. However, other inventors designed many different tape formats while searching for an optimum combination of reliability, economy and ease of use. One such inventor was Bernard Cousino of Toledo, Ohio, who designed a single-loop magnetic tape cartridge for advertising use in 1952. His company continued producing tapes for a variety of uses into the 1960s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1963
- maker
- Cousino Electronics Corporation
- ID Number
- 1995.0316.07
- accession number
- 1995.0316
- catalog number
- 1995.0316.07
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Magnetic Recording Head
- Description (Brief)
- This “Red Head” recording-playback head was designed by Brush Company around 1950 for sale to tape recorder manufacturers. Inside the housing is a small, specially-shaped electromagnet designed to produce a focused magnetic field. When recording, a current fed into the head varied according to the strength of the input signal and that variation was captured by the recording tape. For playback, the magnetic field on the tape generated a signal in the head as it passed close. The closer the playback signal matched the input signal, the more accurate the recorded sound.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1948
- maker
- Brush Development Co.
- ID Number
- 1995.0316.15
- accession number
- 1995.0316
- catalog number
- 1995.0316.15
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Magnetic Disk Recorder
- Description (Brief)
- This Brush “Mail-A-Voice” recorder was designed in the late 1940s as an office dictating machine. As tape recording technology was developed, experimenters tried a variety of formats including flat paper or plastic discs. These discs resembled the record players familiar to many in that era and did not require threading a wire or tape. The discs could also be folded and mailed to a recipient in an ordinary business-size envelope, something impossible to do with an inflexible record.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1947
- maker
- Brush Development Company
- ID Number
- 1995.3101.01
- nonaccession number
- 1995.3101
- catalog number
- 1995.3101.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Magnetic Recording Disks
- Description (Brief)
- These recording discs were made for the Brush Company “Mail-A-Voice” dictating machine. This set of 62 discs includes several slightly different types, the most significant difference being that some are paper and some are plastic. All are flexible and coated with a magnetizable powder. The Mail-A-Voice was designed by German immigrant Semi J. Begun who also used the device for personal correspondence. Several of the discs in the set are audio letters from Begun to his mother.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1947
- maker
- Brush Development Company
- ID Number
- 1995.3101.05
- nonaccession number
- 1995.3101
- catalog number
- 1995.3101.05
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Telephone Answering Machine
- Description (Brief)
- This Code-A-Phone 700 answering machine was produced in 1966, several years before a series of legal battles forced Bell Telephone to allow connection of non-Bell equipment to their telephone lines. Ultimately the Code-A-Phone was produced by Ford Industries with parts made by Western Electric, the Bell System’s manufacturing unit. Having decided that they could not prevent the use of answering machines, Bell used Code-A-Phone in an attempt to control the market.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1966
- maker
- Western Electric
- ID Number
- 1996.0224.01
- catalog number
- 1996.0224.01
- accession number
- 1996.0224
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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