Energy & Power

Lewis Latimer Patent Drawing

Description

Electricity pioneer Lewis Latimer drew this component of an arc lamp, an early type of electric light, for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company in 1880.

The son of escaped slaves and a Civil War veteran at age sixteen, Latimer trained himself as a draftsman. His technical and artistic skills earned him jobs with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, among others. An inventor in his own right, Latimer received numerous patents and was a renowned industry expert on incandescent lighting.

Location

Currently not on view

Date made

1880-07-25

maker

Latimer, Lewis H.

ID Number

1983.0458.21

accession number

1983.0458

catalog number

1983.0458.21

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Model of Bucyrus-Erie Stripping Shovel

Description

In 1960, the Bucyrus-Erie Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, presented this 14-inch-high, scale model of what was to become the world's largest stripping shovel to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Later that year, the President transferred this gift to the Smithsonian Institution. The Bucyrus-Erie Company had custom-designed this monster machine for the Peabody Coal Company. Bucyrus-Erie engineers anticipated that they would need two years to manufacture the behemoth, and an additional six months to assemble it at the site of the open-pit mine. (They planned to ship the machine's parts in over 250 railcars.) When finished, the shovel would weigh 7,000 tons, soar to the roofline of a 20-story building (some 220 feet high), and be able to extend its enormous 115-cubic-yard dipper over 460 feet, or about the length of an average city block. (The dipper's capacity would equal that of about six stand-sized dump trucks.) Fifty electric motors-ranging from 1/4 to 3,000 horsepower-would power the shovel, which was designed to be controlled by a single operator, perched in a cab five stories high. Publicists for Bucyrus-Erie called this the "largest self-powered mobile land vehicle ever built."

Location

Currently not on view

date made

1960

recipient

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

maker

Bucyrus-Erie Company

ID Number

MC.317688

catalog number

317688

accession number

231557

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Morse-Vail Telegraph Key

Description

Alfred Vail made this key, believed to be from the first Baltimore-Washington telegraph line, as an improvement on Samuel Morse's original transmitter. Vail helped Morse develop a practical system for sending and receiving coded electrical signals over a wire, which was successfully demonstrated in 1844.

Morse's telegraph marked the arrival of instant long-distance communication in America. The revolutionary technology excited the public imagination, inspiring predictions that the telegraph would bring about economic prosperity, national unity, and even world peace.

Date made

1844

used date

1844

demonstrator

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese

Vail, Alfred

maker

Vail, Alfred

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese

ID Number

EM.181411

catalog number

181411

accession number

31652

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Levee Wall Fragment

Description

One of the signature events of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was the failure of the levees of New Orleans. Seemingly impregnable earthen walls surmounted by concrete barricades turned out to be no match for the surging flood waters that turned Lake Pontchartrain into a force that devastated one of the nation's major cities.

From the earliest years of the city's establishment several feet below sea level, New Orleans has been at risk of catastrophic flooding. And yet the city's vital location at the mouth of the Mississippi River, taking in raw materials and finished goods and distributing them to the world, was too strong an economic force to be turned away. The threat of water inundation was nothing that good engineering and a few pumps could not overcome.

But some of the largest drainage pumps in the world were rendered useless on the morning of August 30th when some eighty percent of New Orleans became a part of Lake Pontchartrain. The great pump houses stood silent beneath many feet of flood water. The city that depended upon strong walls and the pumps behind them in order to stay dry had encountered a force of nature unlike anything it had experienced before: a large, strong hurricane sweeping vast quantities of ocean water into the lake at high tide.

Geological studies would later reveal that some of the earthen levees of New Orleans had been built on soft, peaty soils and that many of the concrete flood walls that topped the levees were poorly anchored. Several of these levees and their walls were undercut and then destroyed by the ponderous weight and power of the lake water.

To acknowledge the key role of the levees and walls in the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the Smithsonian selected several decorative chunks of concrete from the damaged floodwall along the London Avenue Canal at Mirabeau Street.

This floodwall's attractive concrete ribbing faced houses that stood within several feet of the canal, houses later destroyed by waters the levee intended to keep at bay.

Location

Currently not on view

Associated Date

2005-08-2005-09

ID Number

2006.3059.02

nonaccession number

2006.3059

catalog number

2006.3059.02

Data Source

National Museum of American History