Industry & Manufacturing - Overview
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.
"Industry & Manufacturing - Overview" showing 1 items.
U.S. Patent Office Centennial Commemorative Medal
- Description (Brief)
- This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1891. 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 medals.
- Obverse: Image of an eagle on the shield of the United States, with a cogwheel and sheaf of grain to the left. The legend reads: PATENT OFFICE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
- Reverse: The legend reads: PATENT CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION/WASHINGTON April 10, 1891.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- referenced
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- maker
- Scovill Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- 1981.0296.1608
- accession number
- 1981.0296
- catalog number
- 1981.0296.1608
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center