Work - Overview

The tools, rules, and relationships of the workplace illustrate some of the enduring collaborations and conflicts in the everyday life of the nation. The Museum has more than 5,000 traditional American tools, chests, and simple machines for working wood, stone, metal, and leather. Materials on welding, riveting, and iron and steel construction tell a more industrial version of the story. Computers, industrial robots, and other artifacts represent work in the Information Age.
But work is more than just tools. The collections include a factory gate, the motion-study photographs of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and more than 3,000 work incentive posters. The rise of the factory system is measured, in part, by time clocks in the collections. More than 9,000 items bring in the story of labor unions, strikes, and demonstrations over trade and economic issues.
"Work - Overview" showing 1 items.
Barnet Rudin's Tailor's Sign
- Description
- These shears, pressing board, buttonhole cutter, buttonhole scissors, thread holders, and measuring sticks were owned by a Russian Jew named Barnet Rudin. An apprentice tailor from Minsk, Rudin immigrated to New York City in 1899 and finally settled in Rochester, NY, in 1908. There he opened a tailor's shop, which he continued to run up until his death in 1959.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1890
- user
- Rudin, Bainet
- ID Number
- TE*T17138
- catalog number
- T17138
- accession number
- 310752
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center

