Natural Resources - Overview
The natural resources collections offer centuries of evidence about how Americans have used the bounty of the American continent and coastal waters. Artifacts related to flood control, dam construction, and irrigation illustrate the nation's attempts to manage the natural world. Oil-drilling, iron-mining, and steel-making artifacts show the connection between natural resources and industrial strength.
Forestry is represented by saws, axes, a smokejumper's suit, and many other objects. Hooks, nets, and other gear from New England fisheries of the late 1800s are among the fishing artifacts, as well as more recent acquisitions from the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Whaling artifacts include harpoons, lances, scrimshaw etchings in whalebone, and several paintings of a whaler's work at sea. The modern environmental movement has contributed buttons and other protest artifacts on issues from scenic rivers to biodiversity.
"Natural Resources - Overview" showing 675 items.
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Environmental Button
- Description
- The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. The occasion was first conceived by Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, as a national day of observance for environmental problems. Millions of people participated in events across the country, while thousands of schools held special educational sessions, all dealing with environmental concerns. Earth Day has since become an annual event, celebrated worldwide.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1175
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1175
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- This button was produced by Horn Badge Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the tenth anniversary of Earth Day.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1178
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1178
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- This button makes use of a dramatic image taken from space to remind people of the fragility and uniqueness of Earth.
- date made
- 1989
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1229
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1229
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- The image of the Earth on this button, produced by the Sierra Club in the 1980s, makes it clear the slogan refers to our planet. It’s a play on the late 1960s/early 1970s rant against the protesters of the Vietnam War–stop complaining about America and either love it or leave it.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1243
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1243
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- The slogan on this button is a humorous take-off on the well-known “save the whales” buttons, which were popular in the mid-1970s to the 1980s.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1256
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1256
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- On March 24, 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, off the coast of Alaska. Almost 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the sea, the largest oil spill in United States history. The resulting oil slick contaminated 1,300 miles of coastline and killed over 200,000 sea birds and sea mammals such as otters, seals, and killer whales. The clean-up cost over 2.2 billion dollars.
- Environmental disasters are often used to galvanize public support for reform; the Exxon Valdez accident is a perfect example. This button was produced to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the event.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1418
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1418
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Environmental Button
- Description
- This button is part of a donation from Jerry Meral, an environmental activist from Sacramento, California. In over 35 years, Meral collected nearly 1,600 buttons from around the world. He donated his collection to the Museum in 2003.
- ID Number
- 2003.0014.1446
- accession number
- 2003.0014
- catalog number
- 2003.0014.1446
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Horned Grebe
- Description
- Robert Havell Jr.'s 1835 engraving for John James Audubon's publication the Birds of America, was published in Britain between 1827 and 1838 as a series of large folio engravings. The Museum's Graphic Arts Collection includes seven of the original copper plates and prints from several editions of the work.
- The Birds of America was published in several formats. The first large folio edition was intended for wealthy patrons or institutions. Later editions, produced in the United States for a more general audience, included text and smaller, less costly lithographic illustrations.
- Audubon introduced new species and new artistic forms. His dramatic images of birds, pictured life-size in animated poses with realistic backgrounds, represented a departure from the conventions of natural history illustration. His artistic ingenuity, as reproduced in engravings and lithographs, won new audiences for the subject of nature study, eventually leading to the organization of Audubon societies.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1835
- referenced
- Havell, Jr., Robert
- Audubon, John James
- original artist
- Audubon, John James
- graphic artist
- Havell, Jr., Robert
- ID Number
- 2006.0021.01
- accession number
- 2006.0021
- catalog number
- 2006.0021.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Circassian Walnut Frame
- Description (Brief)
- This frame was made by William F. Bucher of Washington, D.C. as part of his collection of framed tree photographs. The frame is made of Circassian walnut veneer on an ash frame with macassar ebony back bead. Bucher, a cabinetmaker, framed each photograph in wood of the same species as the tree depicted in the print. Bucher explained the philosophy behind his collection in a 1931 letter to the Museum: “’Old World' trees have gathered about them so much folklore and poetry, I thought it would be interesting to show by pictures and wood, that many of our American trees have attained by their own merits, an equal right to a place in the 'hall of fame.’”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- AG*115767.15
- catalog number
- AG*115767.15
- accession number
- 115767
- maker number
- 18
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Bryan Gravimeter
- Description
- Gravimeters (gravity meters) are extremely precise instruments that measure the earth’s gravity at a specific location. Gravimeters are often used by prospectors to locate subterranean deposits of valuable natural resources (mainly petroleum) as well as by geodesists to study the shape of the earth and its gravitational field. Differences in topography, latitude, or elevation—as well as differences in subterranean density—all affect the force of gravity. Commonly, gravimeters are composed of a weight hanging on a zero-length spring inside a metal housing to negate the influence of temperature and wind. Gravity is then measured by how much the weight stretches the spring.
- This gravimeter was built in 1938 under the direction of Andrew Bonnell Bryan (1897 1989), a Ph.D. physicist who served as Director of the Geophysics Division of the Carter Oil Co., in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bryan described an earlier model at the 1937 meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, noting that it "was originally designed in the laboratories of the Humble Oil & Refining Company and is now being built and used by both Humble and Carter in slightly different forms." The gravimeter weighed 112 pounds, and could be "readily handled by two men." The Carter Oil Co. donated this instrument to the Smithsonian in 1959.
- Ref: F. G. Boucher to P. W. Bishop, August 6, 1959, in NMAH accession file.
- A. B. Bryan, "Gravimeter Design and Operation," Geophysics 2 (1937): 301-308.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1938
- maker
- Carter Oil Company
- ID Number
- AG*MHI-P-7658
- catalog number
- MHI-P-7658
- accession number
- 230569
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center