Energy & Power - Overview
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.
"Energy & Power - Overview" showing 5 items.
Thomson DC Generator
- Description
- 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. It came to the Smithsonian from the U. S. Patent Office, representing patent number 333,573, issued to Thomson on January 5, 1886. The patent itself indicates that no model was submitted (which is not surprising since by that time models were not required), and this example was probably given to the Patent Office at a slightly later date for display purposes.
- Thomson and Edwin Houston were school teachers in Philadelphia in the 1870s when they formed a partnership (the Thomson-Houston Company) to enter the new and competitive arc-lighting field. They produced a number of successful generators, motors, meters, and lighting devices. Most of their system employed alternating current, which was as good as direct current for lighting. With the development of the transformer in the mid-1880s, AC systems assumed added importance because electricity generated at a low voltage could now be converted to high voltage for more efficient transmission and then converted back to safer low voltage for use by consumers. But electro-chemical applications (like plating) required DC generators, and, until the invention of a practical AC motor by Nikola Tesla at the end of the 1880s, street railways depended on DC.
- Thomson-Houston merged with Edison's company in 1892 to form General Electric.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1886
- patent date
- 1886-01-05
- associated person
- Thomson, Elihu
- associated company
- Thomson-Houston Electric Company
- maker
- Thomson, Elihu
- ID Number
- EM*252663
- catalog number
- 252663
- patent number
- 333573
- accession number
- 49064
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Experimental Incandescent Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- Experimental incandescent lamp, U.S. Patent # 247380. A ribbon radiator will glow but short-circuit before melting.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1881
- associated person
- Maxim, Hiram S.
- maker
- Maxim, Hiram S.
- ID Number
- EM*308595
- catalog number
- 308595
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 247380
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Incandescent Lamp Patent Model
- Description (Brief)
- Incandescent lamp, U.S. Patent #344343. The lamp has two glass envelopes to prevent breakage due to cold air.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1886
- maker
- Buell, Charles E.
- ID Number
- EM*308601
- catalog number
- 308601
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 344343
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Goose Pond, East Hampton
- Description
- Mary Nimmo Moran chose The Goose Pond, Easthampton as her diploma work when the recently formed Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in London elected her a Fellow in 1881, the only woman among the sixty-five original Fellows. When she exhibited four etchings in the Society’s show, the New York Herald commented on a review in a London paper, ‘“Mrs. Moran’s work is so masculine [sic] that the Daily News critic takes it for that of a man.”’ Her vigorous etching style has been frequently noted along with her preference for working outdoors directly on a prepared plate, before the subject.
- The print shows a pond, now known as Town Pond, and Gardiner’s Mill, which still stands in the town of East Hampton, where the Morans spent many summers. Landscape and in particular the landscape around East Hampton was the subject of many of Mary Nimmo Moran’s etchings.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Moran, Mary Nimmo
- ID Number
- GA*14566
- catalog number
- 14566
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Lewis Latimer Patent Drawing
- Description
- Electricity pioneer Lewis Latimer drew this component of an arc lamp, an early type of electric light, for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company in 1880.
- The son of escaped slaves and a Civil War veteran at age sixteen, Latimer trained himself as a draftsman. His technical and artistic skills earned him jobs with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, among others. An inventor in his own right, Latimer received numerous patents and was a renowned industry expert on incandescent lighting.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1880
- maker
- Latimer, Lewis H.
- ID Number
- 1983.0458.21
- accession number
- 1983.0458
- catalog number
- 1983.0458.21
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center