Natural Resources
The natural resources collections offer centuries of evidence about how Americans have used the bounty of the American continent and coastal waters. Artifacts related to flood control, dam construction, and irrigation illustrate the nation's attempts to manage the natural world. Oil-drilling, iron-mining, and steel-making artifacts show the connection between natural resources and industrial strength.
Forestry is represented by saws, axes, a smokejumper's suit, and many other objects. Hooks, nets, and other gear from New England fisheries of the late 1800s are among the fishing artifacts, as well as more recent acquisitions from the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Whaling artifacts include harpoons, lances, scrimshaw etchings in whalebone, and several paintings of a whaler's work at sea. The modern environmental movement has contributed buttons and other protest artifacts on issues from scenic rivers to biodiversity.
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Oil-Wick Miner’s Lamp Patent Model
- Description (Brief)
- This oil-wick cap lamp is a patent model constructed by William C. Winfield of Hubbard, Ohio that received patent number 115,143 on May 23, 1871. Winfield’s claim in the patent filing is a miner's lamp with “a new article of manufacture, viz., a miner's lamp, provided with a screw-cap constructed, arranged, and operating with relation to the body of the lamp.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- patent date
- 1871-05-23
- patentee
- Winfield, William C.
- ID Number
- AG.MHI-MN-9737
- accession number
- 088881
- catalog number
- MHI-MN-9737
- patent number
- 115143
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Oil-Wick Miner’s Lamp Patent Model
- Description (Brief)
- This oil-wick lamp is a patent model constructed by John Fleming of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania that received patent number 219,352 on July 24, 1879. Fleming claimed as his invention “a miner's lamp provided with a hard-metal bottom having a flange that supports the lower edge of the body of the lamp, and the flange bearing against the inner wall of the body.” Miner’s would strike the bottom of their lamps against a hard surface to raise and lower the wick, and this extra bottom prevented damage to the lamp’s body.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- patent date
- 1879-09-09
- patentee
- Fleming, John
- ID Number
- AG.MHI-MN-9747
- accession number
- 088881
- catalog number
- MHI-MN-9747
- patent number
- 219352
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
