Sports & Leisure - Overview
The nation's passion for sports is obvious every day—at NASCAR races, kiddie soccer matches, and countless other contests. From a handball used by Abraham Lincoln to Chris Evert's tennis racket to a baseball signed by Jackie Robinson, the roughly 6.000 objects in the Museum's sports collections bear witness to the vital place of sports in the nation's history. Paper sports objects in the collections, such as souvenir programs and baseball cards, number in the hundreds of thousands.
Leisure collections encompass a different range of objects, including camping vehicles and gear, video games, playing cards, sportswear, exercise equipment, and Currier and Ives prints of fishing, hunting, and horseracing. Some 4,000 toys dating from the colonial period to the present are a special strength of the collections.
"Sports & Leisure - Overview" showing 20 items.
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Canoe, SAIRY GAMP
- Description
- This small canoe was built in 1882 by J. H. Rushton in Canton, New York, for writer and adventurer George Washington Sears. Under the name "Nessmuk," Sears penned essays on hunting, fishing, and camping for popular journals and magazines.
- Location
- Currently on loan
- date made
- 1882
- maker
- Rushton, J. H.
- ID Number
- TR*160315
- accession number
- 7809
- catalog number
- 160315
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1934 Trav-L-Coach house trailer
- Description
- The Cate family of Lakeport, New Hampshire purchased this trailer in 1936 to serve as their vacation home. Cars and highways had created vast new recreational opportunities, and during the Depression many families who were financially stable still enjoyed driving to remote scenic areas. The Cates, like other trailer owners, thought of touring as an extension of home life, and they could afford the security, comfort, and intimacy of a manufactured cottage on wheels.
- Eben Cate was a rural mail carrier on a route through several villages near Lake Winnipesaukee. He earned two weeks of vacation time per year. In 1936 he saw this trailer in a showroom in Laconia, a few miles from his home, and purchased it for pleasure trips. Eben and Vernie and their children, Rudolph and Virginia, made one trip to Florida in their new trailer in 1937, staying one night in many different locations. Every summer during the 1940s, they spent a week at Decatur Motor Camp at York Beach on the southern coast of Maine. They kept house in the trailer, went for walks, and swam in the Atlantic Ocean. Vernie did the housekeeping — not much of a vacation for her, but a change of scenery nonetheless. The Cates also visited Vernie's relatives in East Corinth, Vermont and parked the trailer "out near the barn" with an electrical hookup. The wooden trailer came equipped with a bedroom, sofa beds, table, kitchen, closets, and cupboards.
- House trailers were so appealing that thousands of itinerant people lived in them full-time in the 1930s. But early residential trailer camps had poor sanitary conditions and no landscaping. Some observers believed that traditional communities were threatened by the existence of these ad hoc, transient communities. Trailers created contradictory feelings of pride and disapproval —a far cry from the euphoric autocamping outings of the 1920s.
- Date made
- 1934
- user
- Cate, Eben
- Cate, Vernie
- maker
- Trav-L-Coach
- ID Number
- 1981.0524.01
- accession number
- 1981.0524
- catalog number
- 1981.0524.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1953 Glasspar sports car
- Description
- This 1953 Glasspar is an example of fiberglass-body sports cars made in small quantities after World War II. Some American motorists, particularly veterans returning from overseas duty, wanted European-style sports cars. Several American companies began small-scale production of sports cars with molded fiberglass bodies. This type of body could be made in small quantities without the expensive tooling, dies, and presses needed to make steel bodies. William Tritt, a California fiberglass-boat builder, introduced the Jaguar-like Glasspar in 1951 and sold several hundred bodies. The Glasspar body fit on a used automobile chassis that the owner obtained and customized by shortening the wheelbase. A fiberglass body was not only simpler to make; it was lightweight, rustproof, dent-resistant, and easy to repair. And it was inexpensive; a Glasspar body sold for only $950, one-fourth the price of a Jaguar and less than half the price of a Ford convertible. Tritt improved the technique of making fiberglass bodies and made more bodies of this type than his competitors. He understood the importance of casting an automobile body in one piece, and he developed techniques to avoid shrinkage, tearing at metal joints, and mismatched parts. Dale L. Dutton, a Glasspar enthusiast, donated this car to the Smithsonian in 1996.
- Major auto manufacturers dismissed plastic bodies following an unsuccessful Ford experiment in the early 1940s, but William Tritt demonstrated that a body made of polyester resin and glass strands was practical, economical to produce, and superior to steel in many ways. Tritt introduced the Glasspar in 1951 and made about 300 sports car bodies by hand over a period of several years. Despite its advantages, the plastic car seemed destined to remain a low-volume vehicle because of slow production and limited capital investment; only one Glasspar body was made per day. But in 1953, General Motors decided to make Corvette bodies of fiberglass and consulted with Tritt
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1953
- maker
- Glasspar Company
- ID Number
- 1996.0401.01
- accession number
- 1996.0401
- catalog number
- 1996.0401.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Simplex '50' Racing and Touring Car, 1912
- Description
- This Simplex '50' is an early example of a type of car marketed as a touring car that could also be raced. Thus it is an example of what came to be termed, in the 1940s, a "sports car."
- American automobile racing is characterized by many widely divergent types of racing, each type having its own distinct history. Many aspects are/have been unique to each racing type: the general design of its participating cars, its sanctioning organization, its funding sources and owner-participants, the types of courses raced on, the different designated classes within an overall design, the official rules governing design details of the cars (rules that usually change every few years), and an enthusiastic base of fans who are often uninterested in the other types of motor racing. A century-long and complex history explains these distinctions and their genesis. A "fascination with speed" is only the seed of the story of each type and explains very little of what was seen in the past, or what is seen today, on race tracks around the United States.
- "Sports cars" came to the US as a post-World War II phenomenon. Ex-servicemen who had been based in England began bringing British sports cars to American soil in 1948. Auto dealerships selling such makes as MG, Triumph, and Jaguar - and Porsche from Germany and Ferrari from Italy - opened in the US for the first time. These cars were typical of European engineering for two-door performance cars: light, agile, many with small or medium-sized engines compared to general US custom, and right at home on curving, twisting roads where a driver could test his or her cornering skill.
- The provenance of this Simplex is not known in detail, nor whether it has a racing history. In 1922, it was registered to a Dunbar Adams of Bay Shore, Long Island; in 1929 it was given to the Smithsonian by a Mr. and Mrs. John D. Adams of the same town. The car has a stock Simplex '50' chassis with a 'skeleton' body - meaning, a sporting as distinct from a commodious body - by the Holbrook Co. (A customer purchasing a chassis-and-engine from an auto manufacturer and a body separately for fitting-on by a body manufacturer was a common practice in the first decade of the 20th century, though a rapidly declining practice by the mid-1910s.) The car is red (the semi-official color for American cars in international races of the time), with a four-cylinder engine and chain drive.
- The car was repainted and reupholstered by a contractor to the Smithsonian in 1950. At that time, Harvey Firestone, Jr., donated the seven 33-inch x 5-inch tires now fitted
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1912
- contributed
- Firestone, Jr., Harvey S.
- through
- King, George S.
- maker
- Simplex Automobile Co.
- ID Number
- TR*309549
- catalog number
- 309549
- accession number
- 104418
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Vanderbilt Cup, 1904
- Description
- William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. and AAA established America’s first international auto race in 1904. Held annually on Long Island’s public roads, the race was aimed at improving the performance of American automobiles. The trophy, a silver cup made by Tiffany, is inscribed with the winning entries and an image of Vanderbilt in his Mercedes race car. After a spectator fatality in 1906, Vanderbilt constructed the first highway designed for automobiles, the Long Island Motor Parkway, where races resumed in 1908. After more fatalities, the race relocated to Georgia, Wisconsin, and California. Vanderbilt donated the cup to the Smithsonian in 1934.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1904
- maker
- Tiffany & Co.
- ID Number
- TR*310894
- accession number
- 131820
- catalog number
- 310894
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ford Coupe Stock Car, 1952
- Description
- In 1952, Leon Hurd extensively modified this 1932 Ford coupe, beefing-up the frame and installing stronger springs, and installing a 1942 Ford "59A"-block "flathead" V-8 engine. Initially the car ran without fenders, during the short time that was permitted by the Atlantic Racing Association racing rules. (NASCAR was in its infancy.)
- Hurd raced in New England from 1952 through 1955, winning more than 100 races in that time. The car carried racing number "00." In 1979, Hurd did some minor restoration on the car.World War II period saw a relative explosion of motor racing on both sides of the Atlantic and a proliferation of distinctly American types of racing with no counterparts in Europe. One such uniquely American type was "stock car" racing. Popular interest was whetted by races run with cars that were entirely like - or mostly looked like - those for sale in the showrooms or on the used-car lots. Fans could cheer for cars that looked like the cars they drove in everyday use.
- Most auto racers preferred two-door coupes: a smaller, two-door car was lighter for better acceleration yet could house a powerful engine; and a coupe had a roof, which helped protect the driver in roll-overs, which were not uncommon in the pell-mell anarchy of beach races. To help him set rules for stock-car racing, Bill France created the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR, in 1948; NASCAR's first season was 1949. Then France had another idea: too many spectators could enjoy his beach races without paying the admission charges for his viewing areas closer to the course. So why not build a modern oval race track away from the beach, surrounded by bleachers, and thus configured so that any and all spectators had to pay to see the races - and far more spectators at that?
- It was an old idea, actually. In the US from about 1910, the dominant money in the early years of auto racing came from entrepreneurial track owners (many of whom had previously owned bicycle tracks or velodromes). Track owners knew that strict control of access to the racing venues was the key to maximum income from spectators. And oval tracks gave by far the best view to the most customers, also a motivating factor for ticket buyers. (In contrast, Europe and Britain never developed such enclosed oval tracks. Very wealthy car-owners and manufacturers have always controlled auto racing there, and such elite car-owners and manufacturers have strongly preferred open-road courses as more sporting - and also more likely to help improve auto design technology. Thus modern European closed tracks still follow the "open road" idea, with lots of turns and curves.)
- Bill France saw the success of the paved oval track built at Darlington, SC, in 1950. So, with his business model in hand based on droves of paying race fans, France began raising money in 1953 and, a few years later, opened a new Daytona Speedway. NASCAR came of age in 1959, with the first running of the Daytona 500.
- "Stock-car" racing found a home quickly in the South, where "moonshiners" or "rum runners" during Prohibition had been modifying ordinary-looking cars with "souped-up" engines (i.e., modified for greater power) and stiffened suspensions -- and hidden tanks for booze -- to outrun federal marshals on backwoods roads when necessary to elude arrest. But organized stock-car racing on closed courses -- beginning in the late 1940s -- found eager fans as well in the Northeast, Midwest, and Far West; the South had no monopoly. Sponsorship money, particularly from local auto dealers, became more plentiful; "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" soon became a byword among retail car dealers. The cheaper, individually owned stock cars -- coupes that were often referred to as "jalopies" -- raced on local and regional dirt tracks. Well-sponsored cars fielded by wealthier owners with funding and engineering assistance from Detroit manufacturers raced at larger, paved oval tracks with extensive bleachers for the fans.
- Track owners set the pattern for organized stock-car racing. Bill France, of Daytona Beach, Florida, had witnessed the popularity of pre-war "beach racing" (see Web entry on the racing automobile, Winton 'Bullet' No. 1). In the late 1940s, he organized beach races for any local car-owners who liked the idea of competing against each other with more-or-less "stock" automobiles.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1952
- maker
- Hurd, Leon H.
- ID Number
- 1992.0029.01
- accession number
- 1992.0029
- catalog number
- 1992.0029.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1948 Tucker Sedan
- Description
- Preston Tucker's automobile was promoted as "the first completely new car in fifty years" because of its novel engineering and safety features and its unique styling. The rear-mounted engine and rubber suspension were designed to improve performance and reduce noise, fumes, and vibration. Safety features included a center headlight that turned with the front wheels and collision protection provided by a pop-out windshield, padded dashboard, and "safety chamber" for the front passenger. Tucker's styling gave the car a futuristic appearance and an impression of power and speed. Fifty-one cars were built before production was halted due to financial problems.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1948
- ID Number
- 1993.0484.01
- accession number
- 1993.0484
- catalog number
- 1993.0484.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Corvette ZR-1 racing sports car, 1990
- Description
- Few private owners, and only extremely wealthy ones, campaigned cars in the top sports car races in Europe. As a result of the European influences toward more specialized engineering for the best sports cars, the "prototype" racing classes emerged in the US for the fastest, most powerful US and European-built sports cars - none of which were street legal by any stretch.
- In this context, professional sports car racing became more popular by the 1970s. Later, organizations such as the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) organized professional races for prototype sports cars and high-powered "GT" sports coupes.
- The Corvette ZR-1 No. 92 was built specially by Tommy Morrison Motorsports in 1990 for racing in the IMSA "GTO" class. General Motors provided backing and technical services; the major financial sponsors were Mobil Oil and EDS. The car is one of several built "from the ground up" as race cars. The tubular space frame resembles that of a modern NASCAR racer; the body follows the Corvette ZR-1's lines exactly but was designed to fit the custom-built frame. The modified Chevrolet V-8 engine was developed by the Mercruiser Corp. The all-independent suspension is that of a production ZR-1 Corvette, with special springing and shock absorbers for racing.
- No. 92 placed 4th in class in the 1991 Daytona 24-hour endurance race, on Daytona's "road course" that uses multiple corners on the big track's infield combined with part of the high banking used by NASCAR racers. The 92 also placed 6th in class in the 1991 Sebring 12-hour endurance race, held at the historic sports car track in Sebring, FL, that still uses a portion of a World War II-era concrete airfield in its circuitous course. Even finishing these endurance races is an accomplishment, and 4th and 6th places, out of the large fields of competing cars, are regarded as highly successful.
- Another of Morrison's ZR-1's set the world speed record for a 24-hour run, averaging some 174 mph.
- Sports-car racing was a post-World War II phenomenon in the US. While racing by stock cars, sprint cars, and dragsters attracted fans of generally middle-class and more modest means, sports-car racing attracted young car-owners and fans primarily of wealthier means. This relationship stemmed from the pronounced cachet that went with European automotive engineering from the late 1930s through the 1960s.
- Ex-servicemen who had been based in England began bringing British sports cars to American soil in 1948. Auto dealerships selling such makes as MG, Triumph, and Jaguar - and Porsche from Germany and Alfa-Romeo from Italy - opened in the US for the first time. These cars were typical of European engineering for two-door performance cars: light, agile, many with small or medium-sized engines compared to general US custom, and right at home on curving, twisting roads where a driver could test his or her cornering skill. Many sports cars were relatively small (by American passenger-car standards) two-door convertibles, and a few were low-slung, two-door coupes. Organized racing for sports cars sprang up immediately. Since no oval track could bring out the qualities of sports-car agility, local organizers often marked out multi-cornered courses with rubber cones and hay bales on the abundant pavements of abandoned military airfields. Organized races through city streets were sometimes approved by local officials.
- Soon enough, paved race tracks—with hilly, twisting layouts emulating courses in continental Europe for "Formula" and sports cars—began appearing in the US. And variations on sports-car racing also quickly took root: endurance races (of two, six, 12, and 24 hours), together with numerous classes (so that less-powerful MGs and Triumphs, for example, could race in different classes than, say, Jaguars, Ferraris, or Maserattis). And "autocrossing" was organized locally in towns all over the US—wherein one car at a time competed for the shortest elapsed time over short, twisting courses often marked off temporarily on large, open macadam parking lots.
- Before long, America got its first sports car: the Chevrolet Corvette, introduced tentatively in 1953. By the late 1950s, a re-engineered Corvette took its place as a competitive sports car, both in the showrooms and on sport-car race tracks.
- The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) organized sports car races in the US and also licensed amateur drivers, after an on-track skills test with a well-experienced driver. Regional championships were competed-for in many classes, including hand-built sports cars intended only for the track. Through about 1960, a top amateur competitor could file an entry and drive his production sports car to a sports car race, tape-up the headlights (to keep broken glass from flying too far in an incident), remove a few excess parts such as mufflers and bumpers, paint-on an assigned race number to the car temporarily, and go racing. By the early 1960s, such a cavalier approach became passé, and serious sports-car racers prepared their cars as fully as stock-car and sprint-car owners. The SCCA responded to the change by loosening the design rules for its "production" classes to include a variety of engine and other performance modifications - although the car still had to be "street legal," meaning it still had to comply, off the track, with passenger vehicle licensing requirements for use on public roads. The SCCA "modified" classes became more so, including exotic cars intended only for the most serious racing.
- Europeans, meanwhile, developed sports car racing after World War II to a level of sophistication in cars and organization of races almost equal to that of Formula 1 "Grand Prix" racing. And in both types of racing, factory teams were by far the majority of participants.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1990
- maker
- Morrison Motorsports, Inc.
- ID Number
- 1997.0120.01
- accession number
- 1997.0120
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Racing Go-Kart
- Description
- A truly "grass roots" sport, organized "go-karting" arose in the late 1950s. In the 1930s and late 1940s, various types of smaller open-wheeled race cars had been developed for certain classes of organized racing on oval tracks, including the "midget racers" - diminutive but full-fledged, single-seat, high-speed cars. But for would-be racers of limited means in the 1950s, even these midget race cars were out of financial reach. Meanwhile, marketers of leisure-time products had started producing small, motorized "karts" for pre-teens. Such a kart, intended for driving on paved surfaces off the public roadways, had a light frame made of tubular steel, no "body" at all, a rudimentary open seat, and was equipped with a small gasoline engine mounted behind the driver and tiny tires. Adults thought up the idea of installing more-powerful motors, and the racing "go-kart" was born. Racing of such karts by kids was soon organized -- but racing classes for adults were created as well. Such races were sometimes held at regular paved race tracks but were usually run on specialized, short paved courses designed and built expressly for the karts. In the early days, races ran on large parking lots, with courses marked off for the day with stripes and rubber cones.
- Many racing drivers who became well known in the 1970s, '80s, and through the present -- such as NASCAR's Jeff Gordon, 'Indy 500' drivers Al Unser, Jr. and Michael Andretti, and European 'Formula-1' drivers -- learned their early skills by becoming champion kart drivers in the classes for pre-teens.
- Elwood "Pappy" Hampton (1909-1980), however, was one of thousands who took to the sport as adults. He was a Washington, DC, machinist who became interested in go-kart racing as a hobby. He built several karts, each time refining their design and improving their performance.
- This kart is one made about 1960, which Hampton raced frequently from 1960 through 1962 to first-, second-, and third-place finishes, mostly at the Marlboro Speedway in Maryland. In 1962, he won the East Coast Championship. At age 51 in 1960, "Pappy" was one of the oldest successful kart racers in the mid-Atlantic area, hence his nickname.
- The kart has a duralumin chassis (duralumin for strength with extreme lightness) made especially for racing karts by Jim Rathmann of Indianapolis (the winning driver in the 1960 Indianapolis 500), and a drive train engineered and made by Hampton. The engine is one made in England, fueled on alcohol.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1960
- maker
- Hampton, Sr., Elwood N. "Pappy"
- Rathmann, James
- ID Number
- 1997.0378.01
- accession number
- 1997.0378
- catalog number
- 1997.0378.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1935 Simplex Servi-Cycle Motorbike
- Description
- Beginning in 1935, the Simplex Manufacturing Corporation of New Orleans made motorbikes, which were smaller and lighter than motorcycles. Their simple designs made personal transportation accessible to young people and adults. Owners found many uses for Servi-Cycles, including errands, pleasure rides, and package delivery using a three-wheeled model. Top speed was 40 miles per hour, and average cruising speed was 30 miles per hour. Postwar sales were strong, but Servi-Cycle sales declined in the 1950s because of the growing popularity of imported motor scooters. Simplex ended motorbike production in 1960 but made motor scooters until 1972, when the company went out of business.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1935
- maker
- Simplex Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- TR*317365
- accession number
- 230387
- catalog number
- 317365
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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