A truly "grass roots" sport, organized "go-karting" arose in the late 1950s. In the 1930s and late 1940s, various types of smaller open-wheeled race cars had been developed for certain classes of ...

This upright piano was made by John Isaac Hawkins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1801. Hawkins patented an ingenious small upright piano with a folding keyboard, of which the Smithsonian’s is an ...

Charles Elmer Doolin, founder of the Frito Company, was an inventor with a restless mind. In 1932 he bought the recipe for Fritos (“little fried things”) for $100 from Gustavo Olguin, the owner of a ...

Lawn darts (also known as jarts) were a popular backyard lawn game during the 1980s. This lawn dart set sold by DP Superdarts is composed of three yellow darts and three red darts, with two plastic ...

This papier-mâché mask was made by Miguel Caraballo in 1985. Masks like this are typically worn by young men from the neighborhood, who don the costume of a vejigante , a character who roams the ...

In March of 1968, An Wang saw a prototype of Hewlett-Packard’s HP9100 programmable desktop calculator. This machine reduced the task of finding many scientific functions from programming to pushing a ...

This bundle consists of about one hundred pieces of plastic-coated wire, each about 30 cm (11.8 in) long. Each piece of wire represents the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond, one ...

The Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History holds an extraordinary series of early color photographs: sixty-two color daguerreotype plates made by Rev. Levi L. Hill ...

In 1817, Karl Drais, a young baron and inventor in Baden (Germany), designed and built a two-wheel, wooden vehicle that he straddled and propelled by walking swiftly. A forester for the Grand Duke of ...

Eau de Quinine compound hair tonic was introduced in the 1850s by Ed. Pinaud’s (Edouard Pinaud), a Paris parfumerie. Advertisements indicate that the product was sold into the 1960s. Quinine is a ...

Collections Sholes & Schwalbach Patent Model For Improvement In Type-Writing Machines ...

You are in a hallway just outside the entrance to the exhibit. As you entered this space, you passed through an opening in a black-painted wall. Above that opening is the title of the exhibit, ...