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 5 items.
Hyatt Celluloid Billiard Ball
- Description
- This billiard ball, a gift of the Celanese Corporation, is made of cellulose nitrate, a substance eventually known as "celluloid." John Wesley Hyatt, a printer, was encouraged to develop the new substance when he saw an ad offering $10,000 to the person who invented a usable substitute for ivory in billiard balls. Though he eventually achieved success with his new material, forming the Celluloid Manufacturing Co. in 1871, it seems he never received the $10,000 award.
- The ball is mounted on a walnut stand and has a silver label stating, "Made in 1868 of Cellulose Nitrate, Celluloid. The Year John Wesley Hyatt Discovered This First Plastics Resin."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1868
- inventor
- Hyatt, John Wesley
- originator
- Hyatt, John Wesley
- ID Number
- CH*334572
- accession number
- 310799
- catalog number
- 334572
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Lithographic Printing Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for improvements to the inking, dampening, and tympan apparatus in a scraper machine. The invention was granted patent number 37727.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1863
- date made
- ca 1863
- patent date
- 1863-02-17
- maker
- Reynolds, George H.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.037727
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 037727
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent Model of a Press for Card and Ticket Printing
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a card and ticket press which was granted patent number 48493. The patent details a self-inking press in which a series of flattened surfaces on a large rotating drum provided multiple platens. The type was suspended face down and lowered against the drum. Paper could be fed from a roll, or placed on the flat surfaces, a card at a time, as each platen approached the type. There was also a numbering device.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1865
- date made
- ca 1865
- patent date
- 1865-06-27
- maker
- Sangster, James
- ID Number
- GA*89797.048493
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 048493
- catalog number
- GA*89797.048493
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Patent model for printers' sidesticks and quoins
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for paired sidesticks, grooved and tapered on the inside surfaces to take matching quoins; the invention was granted patent number 87339. The sticks were held together loosely by dowels.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1869
- date made
- ca 1869
- patent date
- 1869-03-02
- maker
- House, Thomas J.
- ID Number
- GA*89797.087339
- patent number
- 087339
- accession number
- 089797
- catalog number
- GA*89797.087339
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scow Schooner Milton
- Description
- The 102-foot three-masted scow schooner Milton was built by Ellsworth & Davidson at Milwaukee, Wis., in 1867. It spent 20 years hauling lumber on Lake Michigan, along with hundreds of other small boats nicknamed the “mosquito fleet.” Built to carry as much cargo as possible, many of these flat-bottom boats did not sail very well.
- The Milton collided with the ship W.H. Hinsdale at Milwaukee in December 1867, causing about $100 in damage to each vessel. It also ran aground twice during its career.
- On 8 September 1885, while transporting a cargo of cedar posts and cordwood, the Milton sank off Two Rivers, Wis., during an autumn storm. The entire crew of five men was lost—three of them brothers.
- Date made
- 1962
- Milton built
- 1867
- ID Number
- TR*321529
- catalog number
- 321529
- accession number
- 246222
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center