This is a wool carder owned by the Copp family of Stonington, Connecticut during the 18th and 19th century. The carding process is part of preparing wool for spinning into yarn. Wool is brushed between two hand carders (see DL*006833.02) to align fibers in the same direction. The wool is rolled off the carder into a rolag and then spun.
The Copp Collection contains a variety of household objects that the Copp family of Connecticut used from around 1700 until the mid-1800s. Part of the Puritan Great Migration from England to Boston, the family eventually made their home in New London County, Connecticut, where their textiles, clothes, utensils, ceramics, books, bibles, and letters provide a vivid picture of daily life. More of the collection from the Division of Home and Community Life can be viewed by searching accession number 28810.
Fiber sample, Sea Island cotton, from Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands, grown in 1841. One of a group of fiber samples given by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, in 1885, to the US National Museum's economic botany collection..
This early telegraph register was designed and made by Alfred Vail, who worked closely with Samuel Morse on the telegraph invention. The beige coils are electromagnets and their large size was typical for early units. Vail’s signature is stamped on the base.
Telegraph registers are electrically-activated printers that receive Morse code messages. The message travels as a series of electrical pulses through a wire. The pulses energize the register’s electromagnets which move a lever-arm holding a pen or stylus. A clockwork mechanism pulls a strip of paper across the pen or stylus, recording the message. Short pulses draw or emboss a dot, slightly longer pulses a dash. The sequence of dots and dashes represent letters and numbers.
