Transportation - Overview
Americans have always been a people on the move—on rails, roads, and waterways (for travel through the air, visit the National Air and Space Museum). In the transportation collections, railroad objects range from tools, tracks, and many train models to the massive 1401, a 280-ton locomotive built in 1926. Road vehicles include coaches, buggies, wagons, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and automobiles—from the days before the Model T to modern race cars. The accessories of travel are part of the collections, too, from streetlights, gas pumps, and traffic signals to goggles and overcoats.
In the maritime collections, more than 7,000 design plans and scores of ship models show the evolution of sailing ships and other vessels. Other items range from scrimshaw, photographs, and marine paintings to life jackets from the Titanic.
"Transportation - Overview" showing 24 items.
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Duryea Motor Carriage, 1893
- Description
- This experimental vehicle is one of the earliest American-made automobiles. On September 21, 1893, Frank Duryea road-tested the vehicle – a second-hand carriage with a gasoline engine – in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1896, Frank, his brother Charles, and financial backers founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, the first American company that manufactured and sold automobiles. Thirteen production models were made; the only surviving example is in the collection of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. This forerunner was donated to the Smithsonian in 1920 and was restored in 1958.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1893-1894
- maker
- Duryea, Charles E.
- Duryea, J. Frank
- ID Number
- TR*307199
- accession number
- 65715
- catalog number
- 307199
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Gilbert & Barker Gasoline Pump, 1911
- Description
- For almost a century, the gasoline pump has symbolized changing relationships between consumers, the oil industry, and government. In addition to its practical use, each modern pump is a measure of supply and demand, an agent of taxation, a corporate advertisement, a dispenser of cleaner blends that reduce emissions, and a reminder of motorists' growing dependence on domestic and imported oil. Gasoline pumps have served as flash points for energy issues that directly impact consumers. Rising gasoline prices influenced demand for smaller vehicles and stimulated programs aimed at greater fuel efficiency. In the 1970s, gasoline shortages led to massive inconveniences, flaring tempers, and even riots. More often, higher gasoline prices have led to frustration, distrust, or misunderstanding of corporate practices and government energy policies. The gasoline pump has become the most visible symbol of the value of portable energy and recurring discontent and concern over its cost and availability.
- This Gilbert & Barker Model T-6 is one of the first gasoline pumps that counted the number of gallons pumped. In 1865, Charles Gilbert and John Barker formed a company to manufacture a "gas machine" that vaporized petroleum distillates for lighting systems. Gilbert & Barker later manufactured oil burners for industrial furnaces, and in 1910 the company added hand-operated gasoline pumps to its product line.
- When automobiles first came on the market, gasoline was available in large quantities, but it was a little used by-product of oil refining. Kerosene was in great demand for lighting; gasoline was used as a solvent and, to a limited extent, as fuel for cook stoves. Much of the gasoline produced at refineries was treated as waste. The growing use of automobiles greatly increased demand for gasoline. Initially gasoline was retailed much like kerosene; it was transported from bulk oil storage facilities on the edge of town to general stores, hardware stores, and drug stores, where it was sold in metal cans. Repair garages and livery stables were added to these outlets. In some locations, gasoline was sold in barrels using a spigot that released the liquid into a measured container. Motorists soon began driving to bulk storage facilities to refuel, but they still had to transfer the liquid into the gasoline tank with a can, bucket, or pitcher and a chamois-lined funnel--a slow, cumbersome, dangerous method. The first direct refueling station, equipped with a gravity-feed, above-ground tank, hose, and glass gauge, opened at a St. Louis bulk oil facility in 1905.
- The most significant retail innovation--an underground tank with a hand-operated pump--made driving an automobile much more practical. Like oil wells, the refined product was out of sight until needed, offering maximum convenience. By the 1910s, gasoline was dispensed in a continuous flow, with occasional replenishing of underground tanks. Curbside gasoline pumps proliferated at stores that sold hardware, feed, drugs, and general merchandise, as well as at repair garages. Mechanical gauges like the one on this Gilbert & Barker pump made retail sales more practical, efficient, and accurate.
- Demand for curbside service soon led to traffic congestion at the pump. Dedicated, off-street gasoline stations, set back to accommodate several cars, appeared in the 1910s and spread rapidly. By the 1920s, vertical integration within oil companies created branded gasoline products sold at stations and repair garages throughout regional territories. Since the 1930s, electric pumps, price computation, credit cards, advertisements, standardized corporate design and gas station architecture, and self-serve controls have made gasoline pumps an even more intimate part of the driving experience and have brought motorists into closer contact with oil companies.
- In recent decades, gasoline pumps have symbolized concern about finite oil supplies, volatile prices, global politics, and negative effects on the environment and the economy. Since the 1970s, efforts to replace gasoline with homegrown energy sources--ethanol, hydrogen, and electricity generated by coal, nuclear power, wind, sun, water, and biomass--have gained limited momentum. Recent concerns about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming have strengthened the argument for an entirely new form of energy for vehicles. But any modifications to the gasoline retail-distribution infrastructure would have to take into account a century of development and refinement as well as the habits, preferences, and economic choices of motorists and energy producers and retailers.
- Date made
- 1911
- maker
- Gilbert & Barker Manufacturing Co.
- ID Number
- TR*MHI-P-7694A
- accession number
- 230265
- catalog number
- MHI-P-7694A
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Railroad Switch Lamp, ca 1900 - 1940s
- Description
- This large, kerosene-fueled switch lamp, ca. 1900s-1940s, was placed immediately adjacent to the manual operating lever that controlled the position of a switch in a railroad track. The lever, operated by a brakeman or switchman, changed the position of the movable rails of the switch, aligning the switch for a train's movement from one route to another, or from a main track to a siding track.
- This lamp has fresnel lenses - two blue and two red. The crenelated top allows heat to escape from the burner. The body is embossed with the initials, "M.C.R.R.", showing that it was made for and used on the Michigan Central Railroad, a major part of the New York Central System.
- A switch lamp's position was mechanically interlinked with the position of the switch, so that the lamp automatically indicated which way the switch was aligned. When aligned for a main route or normal path ("normal" as specified in the railroad's employee timetable and/or standing instructions for that particular switch's milepost location), the lamp's green (or blue) lenses showed fore and aft; when the switch was changed to a diverging route or siding, the lamp rotated 90 degrees so that the red lenses showed fore and aft.
- Clearly, the safety of passing trains was dependent on the accurate indication of the lamp, if a derailment due to a misaligned switch was to be prevented.
- This large-size lamp is of a type typically used on principal tracks in railroad yards or on main routes in the vicinity of junctions or stations. The kerosene fuel for the lamp had to be replenished regularly by nearby employees. Electric lighting for such lamps became common in the 1890s-1900s along heavily used routes. But kerosene lamps were common into the 1950s along lightly used routes and in many rail yards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- user
- Michigan Central Railroad
- maker
- Peter Gray & Sons
- ID Number
- 1989.0687.01
- catalog number
- 1989.0687.01
- accession number
- 1989.0687
- 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
Cumberland Valley Railroad Steam Locomotive, Pioneer
- Description
- The Pioneer is a steam locomotive made in 1851 by Seth Wilmarth, owner of a large machine shop in Boston who made few locomotives. Pioneer is an early type of steam locomotive on U.S. railroads and used only on a very few of them. This locomotive is significant only because of that rarity. Its age is also unusual among preserved locomotives; Pioneer was built just two decades after America’s first domestically made locomotive. Its general type was obsolete on almost all railroads in the U.S. by 1850.
- Pioneer served the Cumberland Valley RR, connecting Harrisburg, Pa. with Hagerstown, Md. and Winchester, Va. The locomotive was designed specifically to pull two-car passenger trains. Pioneer was one of several locomotives badly damaged by fire during the Civil War, during a Confederate raid on the CVRR roundhouse at Chambersburg, Pa. The CVRR rebuilt the engine, operated it on light, one- and two-car passenger trains till the mid 1880s, and then saved and exhibited it as an historic relic. The Pennsylvania RR (then one of the nation’s largest) absorbed the CVRR soon after. The PRR entirely repainted Pioneer in 1947 for the 1947-48 Chicago Railroad Fair. The lettering on the fenders, “PIONEER,” is inauthentic. A replica headlight was added by NMAH (then NMHT) in Dec 1965.
- In the standard type nomenclature for steam locomotives, Pioneer is a “2-2-2T” type, meaning that it has an unpowered leading pair of wheels; a single powered axle (the larger-diameter wheels, driven by the steam cylinders via connecting (or “main”) rods; and another unpowered pair of wheels at the rear. The “T” stands for “tank engine,” meaning one that has no separate tender for carrying its fuel (wood) and water for the boiler; fuel and water is carried on the same single chassis as the boiler, cab, and running gear.
- Location
- Currently on loan
- date made
- 1851
- used date
- 1851-1948
- maker
- Seth Wilmarth
- Union Works
- ID Number
- TR*317547.01
- accession number
- 230385
- catalog number
- 317547.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Rigged Model, Massachusetts Privateer Rhodes
- Description
- Although the Salem, Massachusetts privateer Rhodes was less than 98 feet long, it had a crew of 90. Privateers needed large crews not only to intimidate their prey and hopefully make them surrender quickly, but also to overpower their enemies if a battle occurred. After a fight, the winner also needed to put a “prize” crew aboard to sail the captured vessel into port, where the ship and contents could be inventoried and sold. The auction proceeds were then distributed among the owners, the ship officers and the crew.
- The three-masted ship Rhodes was sharply built for speed and heavily armed, with 20 cannon. Despite these features, it was captured on a cruise in the West Indies by H.M.S. ship Prothé in February 1782. It was taken back to England, where its hull shape was drawn on paper to document how it might have obtained its speed. The Royal Navy then purchased it and renamed it H.M.S. Barbadoes.
- Date made
- 1962
- privateer captured
- 1782-02
- ID Number
- TR*320667
- catalog number
- 320667
- accession number
- 245900
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
New England Whale Ship
- Description
- This model represents a typical Massachusetts whaleship of the mid-19th century, fully rigged and ready for a long cruise that might last for as much as four years. The name “U.S. Grant, Edgartown” on the ship’s stern is fictional—no ship by that name ever sailed for the whaling fleet. The ship’s bottom is lined with copper sheathing, to keep out the teredo navalis, a tropical worm that bored into the wood of ship’s hulls and weakened the structure, as the termite does to wooden structures on land.
- The whaleboats are the most prominent features. After whales were sighted by lookouts perched at the mast tops, the boats were dropped over the sides of the mother ship to chase them. Also over the side are the cutting stages, where the whale’s fat, or blubber, was sliced off the body in long strips.
- The main feature on the ship’s deck is the try-works, or giant pots set into a brick framework, where the whale’s blubber, was boiled down into oil. After the blubber became liquid, it was drawn off to cool and then poured into heavy barrels and stored below in the ship’s cargo hold.
- This model was purchased in 1875 at Edgartown, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.; it was one of the first objects in the Smithsonian’s National Watercraft Collection.
- Date made
- 1875
- model was purchased
- 1875
- ID Number
- TR*025726
- catalog number
- 025726
- accession number
- 4353
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Temple Toggle Iron
- Description
- Very little is known of Lewis Temple's early life. Born around 1800 to slave parents in Richmond, Virginia , by 1829 he had moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married. By 1836, he had a blacksmith shop on a local wharf, where he made shipsmithing items like spikes, harpoons, rigging elements, cargo hooks, barrel hoop and other iron ship fittings.
- Temple developed a simple but significant refinement to the harppon: the so-called Temple toggle iron or gig. This feature at the tip of a harpoon offered a more secure way to hook into a whale. Unfortunately, Temple never patented his idea, which swiftly achieved widespread application throughout the world's whale fisheries. He died in May 1854, unrecognized and in debt.
- While Lewis Temple did not invent the toggle, his invention made it better. The first barb at the tip of the dart was designed to penetrate the whale's flesh, and the second barb also went straight in. A small wooden peg holding the lower barb in place would then break when the whale pulled away, allowing the barbed head to swivel away from the shaft. The new T-shape of the barb prevented the dart from pulling out of its wound.
- date made
- ca 1859
- inventor
- Temple, Lewis
- ID Number
- TR*330535A
- catalog number
- 330535a
- accession number
- 294088
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Whaler's Mincing Knife
- Description
- Whaling crews used mincing knives to cut the blubber strips into thin slices down to, but not through, the thick whale skin. This process increased the surface area of the blubber and helped it melt faster in the try-pots. Cut in this fashion, the sections of whale blubber and skin were known as “bible leaves” because they resembled the pages of a book.
- date made
- 1876
- collected
- 1876
- ID Number
- AG*025912
- accession number
- 005019
- catalog number
- 025912
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Whaler's Carved Bailer Handle
- Description
- Whalemen used long-handled bailers to remove hot whale oil from large try-pots into cooling tanks, and from those tanks into storage barrels. They had long handles to prevent the handler from being splashed or burned with molten oil.
- This example’s wooden handle has figures of whales whittled into its surface to indicate the number and species of mammals that crossed its greasy path. The “B.H.” refers to bowhead, “S” for sperm, “H.B.” for humpback, and “W” for right whale.
- date made
- 1828
- ID Number
- AG*055809
- catalog number
- 55809
- accession number
- 12284
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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