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 8 items.
Patent Model for a Hand Stamp
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a self-inking percussion stamp; the invention was granted patent number 16608.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1857
- date made
- ca 1857
- patent date
- 1857-02-10
- maker
- Ramsay, P. A.
- ID Number
- 1996.0062.15
- patent number
- 016608
- accession number
- 1996.0062
- catalog number
- 1996.0062.15
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent model for printers' chase lock
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a combination of quoins and sidesticks, with a special lever for their adjustment; the invention was granted patent number 11091.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1854
- date made
- ca 1854
- patent date
- 1854-06-13
- maker
- Sprague, E. H.
- ID Number
- 1996.0062.16
- patent number
- 011091
- accession number
- 1996.0062
- catalog number
- 1996.0062.16
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Paper-Folding Machine
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a paper-folding machine which was granted patent number 7722. It was a machine for folding sheets of paper by forcing them between plates.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1850
- date made
- ca 1850
- patent date
- 1850-10-15
- maker
- Snow, George K.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.007722
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 007722
- catalog number
- GA*89797.007722
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model for a Hand Stamp
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a self-inking stamp, operated by hand or foot; the invention was granted number 16641.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1857
- date made
- ca 1857
- patent date
- 1857-02-17
- maker
- Elliot, William H.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.016641
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 016641
- catalog number
- GA*89797.016641
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Hand Stamp
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a self-inking hand stamp which was granted patent number 21980.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1858
- date made
- ca 1858
- patent date
- 1858-11-02
- maker
- Phelps, James N.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.021980
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 021980
- catalog number
- GA*89797.021980
- patent number
- 021980
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ship Model, Steamboat Buckeye State
- Description
- The Buckeye State was built at Shousetown, Pa., south of Pittsburgh. In 1849 the hull was completed and hauled up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh to be finished. Under the supervision of David Holmes, the Buckeye State was completed in February 1850. It was owned and operated by the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line, which ran it regularly on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The company owned six or seven steamers at a time, and ran daily departures between the two cities. By the mid-1840s the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line was praised by a Pittsburgh newspaper editor as “the greatest convenience . . . ever afforded the citizens on the banks of the Upper Ohio.”
- On May 1, 1850 the Buckeye State left Cincinnati for Pittsburgh and completed the trip in a record 43 hours. Under Capt. Sam Dean, the steamer made 24 stops along the route, needing coal once and wood three times. One hundred years later, the Buckeye State still held the record for the fastest trip ever made by a steamboat between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
- In 1851, showman P. T. Barnum organized a race between the Buckeye State and the Messenger No. 2 as a publicity stunt to advertise Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind’s American tour. Steamboat racing was growing in popularity, and so a race was the perfect promotion. Although Lind and Barnum were aboard the Messenger No. 2, the Buckeye State won the race. The Buckeye State continued its service up and down the Ohio for six more years until it was retired and dismantled in 1857.
- date made
- 1963
- construction completed on Buckeye State
- 1850-02
- Buckeye State retired
- 1857
- participated in a steamboat race
- 1857
- owned and operated by
- Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line
- supervised construction of Buckeye State
- Holmes, David
- captain of the Buckeye State
- Dean, Sam
- maker
- Boucher-Lewis Precision Models, Inc.
- ID Number
- TR*322425
- catalog number
- 322425
- accession number
- 247839
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Lowe Press No. 2, patented 1856
- Description
- Samuel W. Lowe of Philadelphia invented the Lowe printing press, an unusual conical cylinder press patented in 1856. Like Adams's Cottage printing press, it did not include a frisket and included an automatic tympan. The rights for the press were sold in 1858 to Joseph Watson, who marketed both presses in Boston and Philadelphia.
- The Lowe printing press does not appear to have been as heavily advertised as the Adams, although the company notes that we have sold many presses … to druggists … in this country and in other lands. Every boy and business man seems to be having one.
- As for portability, the Lowe was more than a third lighter than the Adams, ranging from between 12 and 120 pounds as compared to Adams's press at between 100 and 400 pounds. The Lowe used a simpler frame and relatively thin castings.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1860
- patent date
- 1856
- maker
- Lowe, Samuel W.
- ID Number
- 1988.0650.03
- accession number
- 1988.0650
- catalog number
- 1988.0650.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Shipbuilder's Half Hull Model, Whaleship Jireh Swift
- Description
- Half hull ship models were carved by shipwrights to a shape negotiated with the future owners of the ship. Once finished, the builder lifted the curved shape of the outer hull off the model and scaled it up to the dimensions of the full-sized ship on the floor of the molding loft. Then the ship’s timbers were cut to fit the lines drawn on the floor and lifted into position in the ship’s framework.
- African American shipwright and former slave John Mashow built the whaler Jireh Swift in 1853 at Dartmouth, Mass. near New Bedford. The vessel measured 122 feet in length and 454 tons. Its first voyage was to the northern Pacific and lasted nearly four years. The ship collected 45 barrels of sperm oil, 2,719 barrels of whale oil and 14,900 lbs of whalebone. Swift’s second voyage, to the same grounds, lasted more than four years and netted much more oil and bone for her owners. Nearly three years into her third voyage, on 22 June 1865 she was captured in the Arctic by the Confederate raider Shenandoah and burned, for a loss of more than $40,000.
- Date made
- 1853
- maker
- Mashow, John
- ID Number
- TR*076323
- catalog number
- 076323
- accession number
- 015358
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center