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When Watchmen were Klansmen
Note: While history shouldn’t require a spoiler alert, this blog does contain some minor ones regarding the HBO series Watchmen.“You know...
How picturing the Boston Massacre matters
Maybe this painting looks familiar. A long row of red-coated soldiers. A cloud of gun smoke engulfing the street. Falling bodies.Detail of...
The most radical thing about Stonewall wasn’t the uprising
The Stonewall uprising began June 28, 1969, in response to a police raid at The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, and has since...
Blog Posts in "Invention & Innovation"
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Invention & Innovation
50th Anniversary
The little Jeep that could
What weighs a quarter ton, has four wheels, was the first of its kind, and was built in Pennsylvania? The Bantam Jeep Prototype of course!...
What did 1889 sound like?
Q: What’s cylindrical, made of wax, and part of one of history’s great showdowns?A: These records in the museum collection with audio...
A white collar with a message
Men’s celluloid collar, 1900sAt first glance, this collar from the 1800s might not look like much. A closer inspection shows that this...
Grace under pressure
On December 7, 1941, two days before her 35th birthday, Grace Murray Hopper, an associate professor of mathematics at Vassar College, was...
The crop of the 21st century
"Information is your new crop!" proclaimed John Deere's brochure, announcing the company's newly launched GreenStar Precision Farming...
Mickey Mouse turns 90
It is hard to believe, but Mickey Mouse is celebrating his 90th birthday this year. For an old mouse, he still looks pretty spry! One of...
Adventures in collecting: Kenneth Salisbury's robot hand
A visitor to Kenneth Salisbury's Stanford University office can't miss the evidence of his life-long fascination with hands.Kenneth...
“This is 9-1-1. What is your emergency?”: A history of raising the alarm
At 2 p.m. on February 16, 1968, a special red telephone rang at the police station in Haleyville, Alabama. Rather than a police officer, U....
Bumping into new technologies: Hey, that's not what a light bulb is supposed to look like!
People tend to be creatures of habit. That tendency often shows up when we’re faced with an odd-looking new technology that replaces...
Smart phones: Collecting an electronic montage
New inventions always build on inventions of the past—and sometimes more than one. Few devices demonstrate that more clearly than...
Ordinary objects or incredible inventions?
According to a recent report by Mintel, a marketing research agency, few millennials use bar soap. Don't be alarmed, though. They...
A seven-year struggle to build New York's subway
William Steinway's diary resides in the National Museum of American History's Archives Center as part of the Steinway and Sons...
Sneaky 1960s rabies prevention inventions
Antibodies are always looking out for us, and this week we're taking a closer look at them. Antibody-based tests, vaccines, and drugs have...
An-tee-bodies: T-shirts in celebration of the antibody
Antibodies are always looking out for us, and this week we're taking a closer look at them. Antibody-based tests, vaccines, and drugs have...
Now you're cooking with electricity!
Before Alton Brown, Rachael Ray, and Giada De Laurentiis, there was Louisan Mamer (1910–2005). An early employee of the Rural...
When real patriots got Tetanus
"The coming stupendous holocaust, caused by the sky-rocket, the giant fire cracker and the toy pistol, that leaves an annual trail of...
Well, that sucks…or does it?
Vacuum technology is fascinating to me. Unfortunately for my house, I'm talking about a vacuum defined by the absence of matter, not the...
Man vs. machine: Computing innovations since Deep Blue
On May 11, 1997, a chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, and world chess champion Garry Kasparov were on their sixth and final game. His...
Piano maker William Steinway saw the future in suburbia in the 1880s, so he built a factory and then an entire village
Piano manufacturer William Steinway described his vision of suburban America to Congress in 1883, but in his own life the future had...
Pioneers of agriculture reflect on the genetically-engineered revolution
The fall of 2016 was an important milestone in the history of agriculture—the 20-year anniversary of the first large-scale harvest of a...
Follow the yellow brick road, the Appalachian Trail, or your own path
Update: Thanks to you, our Kickstarter campaign to "Keep Them Ruby" was a success and we have the support we need to conserve and display...
Pokémon: A shared experience for a new generation
Every generation comes to define itself by the experiences it shares, whether tragic or blissful. Sometimes, a single entertainment...
Thoughts provoked by the 150th anniversary of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable
I came to the Smithsonian in the summer of 1962, excited about the opportunity to apply my academic training in the history of science to...
The Collinwood School disaster influenced fire safety protocols
With the academic year in full swing, schools across the country are beginning their first rounds of fire drills. Remember those? As alarms...
Frankenstrats and families: Inspiring family engagement in our "Draper Spark!Lab"
Rolling across the Potomac on any given Sunday morning in the late 1990s, you could probably find a white Volvo with my dad driving my...
I say "Always Ready." You say "Semper Paratus."
Our fire engine has a secret message. For a few years now, this hand-pumped engine has been on display on the museum's first floor. For a...
Preston Tucker's sedan: Showcasing a beautiful business failure
Given an opportunity to suggest a landmark artifact outside the entrance to American Enterprise, the museum's new business history...
The Torchon Lace Company: The fine line between entrepreneurship and fraud
Walking down a street in Chicago in 1901, Sylvester G. Lewis saw a large group of women enthralled with a lady making lace in a window...
When tail fins made waves
Although visitors would be hard-pressed to find shark fins in our museum's displays, there is one kind of fin (or, at least, part of a fin...
Postwar potluck: Grilling out, convenience cooking, and other 1950s food trends
For the third installment of our Patrick F. Taylor Foundation Object Project potluck series, we embraced 1950s cooking. We found...
Inventing for the public good
New posters around the museum remind us as we come to work each morning that our theme this year is "America Participates." This...
Type-O-Rama: What do typewriters reveal about innovation?
The sound of clicking typewriter keys filled the museum's Innovation Wing recently during Type-O-Rama. This event, presented by the ...
A taste of wartime rationing in 1940s product cookbooks
The Patrick F. Taylor Foundation Object Project team had a variety of reactions, taste-wise, to the 1930s recipes that...
The blizzard of 1888
Piano maker William Steinway woke up on March 12, 1888, and discovered "the most fearful snowstorm . . . I ever experienced" had buried New...
The World War I story of Nénette and Rintintin
Some dolls, some dogs, and a charming Parisian story from our textile collections, part of our World War I series this month.In July 1918,...
Playing Monopoly (and its discontents) on its 80th anniversary
This month marks the 80th anniversary for Charles S. Darrow's patent for the board game Monopoly. By the time Darrow was awarded the patent...
Board games have been teaching us how to shop for more than a century
This November 27, 2015, the day after Thanksgiving, millions of Americans will kick off the holiday shopping season with what has...
Tasting the 1930s: An experiment with congealed salads and other one-dish wonders
The members of the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation Object Project team have been poring over authentic period cookbooks as research...
Not just a cool convenience: How electric refrigeration shaped the "cold chain"
Electric refrigeration motivated Americans to rethink how they purchased, prepared, and stored food when it first took off in the 1930s....
Combating infectious disease and slaying the rubella dragon, 1969-1972
Metaphors of war and combat are almost impossible to avoid when describing humankind's struggle to control infectious disease. The war may...
Next on your radio dial, 15 minutes of healthy talk
At the first sign of symptoms, many people turn to the Internet for health advice. Early listeners to radio could turn their dials and...
The book boom: Early bookbinding inventions
American inventions associated with the book were having a bit of a boom between the 1850s and the 1880s. The number of books published...
Learning the lingo of patents and trademarks
The Smithsonian and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are hosting an Innovation Festival at the museum on...
The sazón in hip-hop
A slow disco melody spins on the turntable, interrupted by the metallic sound of symbols. Right after that, the running sounds of bongo...
Standing at the crossroads of innovation and immigration
Entrepreneurial success and innovative spirit can come in many forms, and emerge from innumerable paths. The same can be said for stories...
Part 1: A Philadelphia snapshot from when daguerreotypes were new
Guest blogger Sarah Weatherwax, a photography curator at the Library Company of Philadelphia, brings her expertise to bear on several...
Part 2: A Philadelphia snapshot from when daguerreotypes were new
Guest blogger Sarah Weatherwax, a photography curator at the Library Company of Philadelphia, brings her expertise to bear on several...
Director John Gray shares the joyful moments and lessons learned in opening a new wing
Now that the first floor of our West Wing is open, I was curious what the head of our museum, Elizabeth MacMillan Director John Gray,...
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