Publications
The list of selected staff publications may be searched by keyword or author and can be sorted by year.
A discussion of trade issues between China and America in the early 19th century.
A history of collecting and exhibiting art photography at the Smithsonian. Illustrations highlight objects and past exhibitions from the NMAH collections.
Summary of the exhibition of the first photographic salon in the United States, and the beginnings of the national collection of photography at the Smithsonian. Illustrations of images shown at the 1896 salon now in the NMAH collections.
Popular interest news feature on the public reaction to digital watches when they were first introduced in the 1970s.
Web site article exploring the shift from pocket watches to wristwatches in the early 20th century, and the subsequent shift to electronic timekeeping in the 1970s.
Survey of three independent teams in the United States, Switzerland and Japan that invented the first electronic quartz wristwatches.
Web site exploring the global competition to develop the first quartz electronic wristwatches in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Sidebar article on the application of liquid crystal display technology in digital watches in the 1970s.
An analysis of the Lemelson Center's Nobel laureate video history documentation project (2000-2003) which explores laureates' youthful inspirations, views on creativity and innovation, and social visions.
Experiments with Bell's instruments (and reproductions of them), combined with remarks made in his notebooks, provide fresh insights into the origins of his invention.
A discussion of how and why exhibitions at technical museums have increasingly had the potential to be controversial.
Word analysis is used to speculate on where Franklin got some of his ideas.
This is an attempt to analyze Edison's work as a matter of "style."
There are essays on the history of technologies for reproducing and transmitting images and also one on museums of printing and photography.
In many ways Franklin benefitted from his isolation in America and was free to develop new concepts.
How the introducton of new technologies and hardships in a remote Newfoundland station interacted.
A detailed discussion of experimental and theoretical work, based on Ph.D. dissertation.
By measuremnt and analysis of published accounts it is possible to determine the voltage levels of these machines and (by measuremnets on Leyden jars) their energy output.
A look at how practice was determined (or not determined) by the design of the instruments.
A history of submarine telegraphy with emphasis on the period from the 1850s to the 1950s, including speculation about what people in the 1860s might reasonably have projected the impact of the cables to be.
This is an anlaysis of the symbolic use of the incandescent lamp in religious writings, cartoons, art (including Picasso's Guernica).
