Don’t make me get the flying monkeys

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A souvenir "Chistery," the original flying monkey, soars on the breezes in my office, above a sign that reads, "Don't make me get the flying monkeys! — The Wicked Witch" (a gift from my sister years ago!). Photo by Joyce Bedi

OK, let’s get the confession out of the way. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Wizard of Oz. I know, I know. I should pick something more edgy, or more indie, or even something French. But I am an unabashed fan of the Emerald City gang. Even though I grew up in the era of black-and-white television, a local station showed Oz every year around Easter. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was the Easter-egg hues of the film’s sets and costumes (even though we couldn’t see them). Maybe it was to mark the beginning of tornado season in the Midwest. I honestly don’t know. But my Mom and I looked forward to that broadcast each Spring. And when I finally saw the film in color in my college years, when I opened the Kansas farmhouse door and stepped into the Technicolor world of Oz for the first time, my addiction was complete, undeniable, and irreversible.

A year ago or so, I discovered a new dimension to the Oz story. I had seen Gregory Maguire’s book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, in bookstores but never quite brought myself to buy it. I guess I could have gone to a public library, but that never happened, either. Then, I got an iPad and started delving into e-books, and one of the first I read was Wicked. What a great complement to the story I know so well. It had more in common with L. Frank Baum’s original book published in 1900 than the classic 1939 MGM film, and added new plot points from Maguire’s imagination. I really enjoyed this deeper glimpse into the history of Oz, if you can call it that.

So recently, when my husband and I saw an ad for performances of Wicked, the musical, I mentioned that I would like to see the play. Being the best husband in the world (no exaggeration), he announced a few days later that he planned to take me to a performance as part of our anniversary celebration! I wasn’t sure what to expect, and that turned out to be a good mental state to bring to the theater. The show was amazing. But my historian-of-technology’s eye couldn’t stop seeing the inventions and innovations that appeared as uncredited actors throughout the production.

Jeanna De Waal as Glinda and Christine Dwyer as Elphaba in Wicked. Photo by Joan Marcus

For example, in one scene, it begins to rain. It truly looked like rain, but it was all done with lighting and projections. The vaguely steampunk, clockwork design of the sets also displays innovative techniques, like the bicycle brakes and bass drum pedal used to manipulate the enormous Wizard’s-head puppet. Of course, there is the makeup that makes Elphaba (the alleged Wicked Witch of the West’s real name) her signature green. Makeup designer Joe Dulude II tweaked a commercially-available product from M.A.C. to give Elphaba a complexion that, as he put it, looks like skin, not makeup.

Mandy Gonzalez as Elphaba. Photo by Joan Marcus

Then there are the costumes created by Tony-award-winning designer Susan Hilferty. She calls her concept for Wicked “twisted Edwardian,” taking inspiration from Baum’s book and from the characters themselves. For Elphaba, a character she sees as rooted in the earth, she created a variation on the stereotypical witch’s black dress and hat, designing an asymmetrical costume of many dark colors, reminiscent of the hues found in coal, mica, and other minerals. Glinda the Good’s costume is the opposite—light and airy and “of the sky.” Then there are the flying monkeys, whose hand-painted costumes must allow them to move like, well, monkeys, but also to “fly,” with integrated mechanical wings.

The National Museum of American History recently collected Elphaba's dress, hat, and broom, a donation from Susan Hilferty. As soon as it went on display in the American Stories exhibition, I dashed up to see it. As great as it looked on stage, it was even more impressive up close. Smithsonian photo.

As I did a little research into these behind-the-scenes features of the show, I found that, not surprisingly, the creative process of the designers isn’t all that different from the inventive process that we document and teach at the Lemelson Center. In our Spark!Lab, we break down the invention process into a number of nonlinear steps:

  • Identify a problem or need (Think it)
  • Conduct research (Explore it)
  • Make sketches  (Sketch it)
  • Build prototypes (Create it)
  • Test the invention (Try it)
  • Refine it (Tweak it)
  • Market the invention (Sell it)

Susan Hilferty articulated a number of these same steps in talking about her design for Elphaba’s costume. “First of all,” she said” “I do a sketch and I have a very clear idea about what I want it to look like. And there is a draper who interprets my sketch. So we first look at in a . . . cheap fabric so I can look at what the draper has put together. . . While we’re doing that step, we’re talking about how it’s going to be fabricated . . . The skirt itself, for instance, takes about 40 yards of fabric where we piece it together. We take yards of fabric, rip it up, and piece it back together again, to make it feel like an organic material, which incorporates many, many different colors. Then they are stitched together by one person and it takes her about 40-60 hours stitching all of those layers on so they’re right up next to and around each other, almost like a topographical map.”

Susan Hilferty's sketch for the Elphaba costume was part of the donation to the Museum.

Imagining, sketching, prototyping, manufacturing, tweaking. These are activities with which inventors are intensely familiar. To modify an old chestnut (perhaps an appropriate thing to do during this holiday season), great creative minds think alike.

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Cool Inventions from Different Invention Cultures

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Cultures of invention are as diverse as places of invention. One community of inventors’ attitudes toward failure, success, competition, and collaboration during the invention process may differ widely from other inventor communities. An interesting example of this contrast is the pioneering counterculture communities of hip-hop and skateboarding.

Skateboards were invented in California during the 1940s and 1950s by laid-back surfers interested in finding a way to do on land what they did for fun in the ocean. Skateboarding gained wider recognition and popularity in the 1970s and 1980s with the construction of skate parks, improvement in skateboard materials and designs, and an explosion in the invention of tricks.

Hip-hop music was invented in the 1970s and 1980s by a disadvantaged community of African American and Caribbean (Jamaican, Puerto Rican, etc…) American urbanites in the Bronx. When the elements of hip-hop coalesced, gang territories became DJ territories and physical fights became break dancing fights, rapping contests, or DJ battles. The community reinvented the turntable as a musical instrument through physical alternations and new techniques of use. In the mid to late 1980s hip-hop expanded both artistically and geographically and around the 1990s became a part of mainstream America.

In both communities, then and today, individual inventors tend to work first in isolation; when they meet with others, the two communities, generally speaking, have different attitudes toward collaboration. Skate culture values humility. Egos are disliked. Many skaters resist skateboarding being labeled as a sport and don’t want skateboarding to be included in the Olympics for fear that skateboarding could become “jockified.” Experimentation in front of peers is encouraged and failure is accepted as an important part of the process. It typically takes a skater many days of attempting the same trick to succeed once. If a guy fails for two hours then does an amazing trick, the community embraces him. It is an open-source community where skaters enjoy sharing their tricks with others. Skateboarders create an environment supportive of failure, and the quantity of failure enforces skaters’ humility.

In hip-hop, ego and competitiveness is valued. As DJ Cash Money says “I’m a very competitive person [and] I wanted to be known as the world’s greatest DJ.” The records from which a DJ samples music is a closely guarded secret. Some early DJs replaced record labels with others and even spied on each other while they were out buying records. Young DJs often learned techniques through observation while “paying their dues” (carting around equipment for more prestigious artists). When two DJs showed up at a venue it was often not for experimentation but competition—a DJ would throw down a challenge to another to meet at a specific time and place for a battle. Some had a crew to give them an aura of power and intimidation (and, because DJ’s had so much large and heavy equipment to transport to and from gigs, crews helped transport it and ensure that it wasn’t stolen). DJs set up their equipment on opposing sides of the venue and the one with the most cheers and dancers won. At first DJs won primarily by having the louder sound system, but later they won more through showing off better techniques. The winner continued to rock the party and the loser went home to tweak their system and techniques then fight another battle. As Cash Money put it, “If someone beats you, you just go back to the drawing board and try to do better the next time.” Ego in the form of a crew, a superhuman DJ name (like Immortal), MC boasts, clothing, and sound volume could all help win battles and respect, or street cred. DJ Immortal describes competing competition the following way: “I saw them going back and forth, fighting each other with the turntables. The crowd was totally eggin’ ‘em on. It was this awesome instrument that I was seeing, the turntable. Plus that competitive element, too, where you could just destroy someone. It was like a real sport.”

From "Yes Yes Y'all."

Competitions and contests exist within the skateboarding community as well. Skaters seek recognition by, say, being featured in magazine articles, garnering lots of positive comments on their YouTube videos, or winning skating contests. But once you have fame, it can often be prohibitive to further invention. As a skater is defending their title or reputation, they may be more likely to keep doing their signature tricks and take fewer risks on new moves, as it becomes difficult to retain an environment where they feel comfortable failing. So while competing well can be a motivating factor it is only one path to the success of receiving credit for inventing a new trick.

Similarly with hip-hop, a skate contest can provide the street cred or name recognition many seek. But hip-hop artists are typically motivated to achieve more than just name recognition, such as a recording deal, commercial endorsements, more money, wider fame, their own brand labels, etc. Cash Money’s DJ name in itself illustrates this focus. Skaters tend to invent for the purpose of inventing and impressing their own community, and many are satisfied with receiving recognition for their inventions in the form of a contest title, magazine photo, or YouTube video.

That these two inventive communities value different means for achieving success emphasizes to me that place matters. A place or environment shapes the values of the inventors that live there, and their values shape their invention process and definition of success. Any place can become a place of invention because people in any community can develop amazing inventions with a mix of creativity, collaboration and competition, risk-taking and problem-solving along the way.

Source for Cash Money and DJ Immortal quotes: Katz, M. (2012). Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

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Traveling in Time with James Smithson

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Of the millions of visitors to the Smithsonian each year, I suspect that scarcely more than a handful know anything about the obscure figure who was behind its founding. Born in England in 1765, James Smithson, the illegitimate son of a British nobleman, became a dedicated scientist, deeply versed in chemistry, and well regarded for his careful micro-experiments. From this successful career in chemistry and mineralogy, he invested wisely enough to amass a reasonable fortune. But even those of us who work here know little else about James Smithson because a catastrophic fire in the Smithsonian Castle in 1865 destroyed all his papers and mineral collections, along with all his personal effects.

James Smithson as an Oxford Student, 1786, by James Roberts, Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Ref. NPG.96.28.

During a recent trip to England, I found myself on a pilgrimage of sorts to  places significant to James Smithson, whose surprise bequest gave birth to the Institution. My first stop was Pembroke College, one of Oxford University’s smaller colleges from which Smithson graduated in 1786. Although the college is currently undergoing renovation, modernization, and physical expansion, respect for its heritage remains strong. Sitting in the common room of the College’s main hall, I had a palpable sense of Smithson’s presence and of the tradition that shaped him. Around the walls hang solemn portraits of the bearers of that tradition, the Masters of the College. Smithson, on the other hand, is a somewhat obscure presence at Pembroke. His memory is marked by a rather modest plaque on the outside wall of the entrance to the main hall; it was a gift from the Smithsonian in 1896. The Brits, it seems, are even less familiar with Smithson than we are in the United States.

I was able to view Smithson's manuscripts in the Royal Society's archives.

From Oxford, I traveled back to London, where my next stop was the Royal Society. Only twenty-two years old when he was inducted into that venerable scientific body in 1787, Smithson was its youngest member. Early on, he had set his sights on becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, still considered an honor on a par with winning the Nobel Prize. In the Society’s archives, I saw his manuscripts reporting experiments on Tabasheer, among other chemical substances, submitted for publication in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions. I was also thrilled to read the minutes of Smithson’s induction into the Royal Society, even though he eventually had a terminal falling out with the organization.

James Smithson's induction into the Royal Society.

No one really can say why he gave his money to the United States. Some conjecture that his bitter parting of ways with the Royal Society, coupled with anxieties about his illegitimate birth, may have led him to bequeath his largesse not to England but to the United States, a country he had never seen. We have only this famously cryptic mandate: “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” That was the long and the short of it. Yet, from this seed a large research and museum complex eventually grew. This led me naturally to the question: What would James Smithson, a chemist known solely for extremely precise analytical experiments, think of his legacy in terms of what the Smithsonian Institution is today?

Jake Andraka at the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Awards. Photo via Smithsonian Magazine.

By coincidence, only a few days after returning from my brief Smithson exploration, I attended the inaugural Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Awards. This celebration of creativity in its myriad forms illustrates the modern-day Institution’s range, far beyond the highly specialized realms of chemistry pursued by Smithson. The award categories comprised nine subject areas: the Physical and Natural Sciences, Social Progress, Visual Arts, Historical Scholarship, Technology, Education, and Performing Arts.  For me, one of the most inspiring moments was the acceptance speech by high school sophomore Jack Andraka, the Youth Achievement winner, who invented a paper sensor that can detect a protein linked to pancreatic cancer (a project that also won him the grand prize at this year’s Intel Science and Engineering Fair). Bursting with youthful creative energy, Andraka told us how an uncle’s illness prompted his amazingly simple invention. All of the incredibly talented and accomplished winners, though, represented the spirit and variety of the nineteen museums and research centers that make up today’s Smithsonian. They also perfectly embodied the spirit of invention and innovation at the core of the Lemelson Center and of the Smithsonian as a whole.  I came away from the event with a much better understanding of the convergence of all forms of creativity, and heightened insight into how the disparate parts of the Smithsonian can work together toward the greater whole.

If Smithson could have traveled in time to our day, though, what would he have made of all this?  What little survives in Smithson’s own hand deals almost solely with his chemical and mineralogical research, but thanks to Heather Ewing’s recent biography The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian, we now know a great deal more about him, and we see a man and a world not all that different from our own. Uncovering a wealth of fresh evidence, much of it circumstantial but entirely convincing, Ewing argues that Smithson had a romantic soul and a broad interest in man’s place in the cosmos; she documents, for example, his fascination with pre-history and lost civilizations.

Just as important is what she notes about his era: that it was one of amazing discoveries. In Smithson’s time, chemistry was emerging as a science and the basis for a world-transforming chemical industry. A host of new gases were being isolated and electric current was revealing itself as an important new force of nature. New planets and galaxies were being discovered, while geology was undergoing a revolution that would challenge the biblical chronology of creation.

In short, it was an age of ingenuity, perhaps even rivaling our own (keeping in mind that we all tend to be technology chauvinists for our own age). Armed with Ewing’s new evidence, I feel I can say with confidence that James Smithson would have not only understood but applauded the Smithsonian’s American Ingenuity Awards and the wide-ranging institution whose spirit they represent.

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A Very Kitschy Christmas

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KITSCH:

Happy holidays!

The Christmas Tree, Lithograph ca1860. Source: NMAH , neg. # 2003-24670, The Harry T. Peters Collection,

Is it just me, or do you also sometimes wonder who invents all of the kitschy stuff being marketed, purchased, and possibly displayed in your own living room this time of year? Christmas is not the only holiday in December, but surely it wins the contest for inspiring the most odd, sometimes amusing, often ridiculous assortment of commercial products in stores right now. And these items appear on shelves earlier and earlier each season. I recall taking a photo in October as I stood in a home improvement store gaping in disbelief at the array of flashing Christmas lights, fake trees, singing Santas, and other decorations already being stocked. It wasn’t even Halloween yet (which arguably wins the overall award for holiday kitsch) and suddenly I felt pressured to consider buying things made by Santa’s little elves.

Christmas aisle...at Halloween.

Now, don’t get me wrong, “kitsch” has its place in our marketplace. There is a supply and demand relationship, and besides who hasn’t bought at least a few items just because they made you laugh?! I certainly have. So I’m not intending here to disparage anyone who decides to purchase, say, a sensor-activated reindeer who sings the Rudolph song while his red nose lights up. [I haven’t actually seen such a thing. Maybe I should invent it?] However, as I was helping my friend and neighbor decorate her house last week, I was struck by the array of items emerging from her holiday storage bins. Who are the inventors behind these products?

Well, I certainly cannot fully answer that question in this blog. Unfortunately I do not have the time or energy to look up patent numbers on my neighbor’s holiday décor or my own, let alone search for non-patented kitsch. However, I was intrigued when a colleague of mine shared a recent blog about a 1950 patent from inventor Leo R. Smith for a vibrating Christmas tree (not the phrase he used on the patent application but I didn’t want to seem too risqué).

This led me to quickly search “Christmas” on Google’s patents website, which brought up approximately 199,000 results including in just the first few pages: a “Pop-Up Artificial Christmas Tree” (U.S. patent #6514581, inventor Cheryl A. Gregory); “Christmas Tree Shaped Pasta (design patent #D392785, inventors Ricardo Villota and Guillermo Haro); “Christmas Stocking, Puppet and Story Media Combination” (patent #5389028, inventors Catherine Cabrera, Pepper de Callier, and Priscilla de Callier); and “Christmas Deer Toy Capable of Moving Head, Neck, and Tail” (patent #6769954, inventor Lien Cheng Su).

Patent drawing for “Christmas Deer Toy Capable of Moving Head, Neck, and Tail."

Aha! The deer toy sounded a bit like my Rudolph idea.  So then I looked at the patent citations on Lien Cheng Su’s 2003 patent application. The first one on the list is for a “Voice Making Device for Moving Animal Toy and Moving Animal Toy Using the Voice Making Device” (patent #4820232) by inventors Hajime Takahasi and Elichi Maeda. Note I did not make up the patent name.

I could spend innumerable hours conducting this research. Suffice it to say here that pondering these unheralded inventors and innovators reminds me how little we know about the people who have created the material objects around us or their motivations. We will probably never learn why Mr. Smith, Ms. Gregory, and Mr. Su felt it was necessary to invent a vibrating Christmas tree, pop-up Christmas tree, or a moving Christmas deer, respectively.  However, I would like to argue that we should take a moment every now and then to appreciate that people have shared their creative energy with us through their inventions no matter how kitschy they may be.

I will end with a reference to the Library of Congress’s Everyday Mysteries article “Who invented electric Christmas lights?” Regardless of whether or not you celebrate the holiday or like to decorate for it, I think most people would agree that seeing Christmas lights on a dark winter’s night makes things feel festive. As the article says, “We can be grateful to Thomas Edison, Edward H. Johnson and Albert Sadacca for illuminating our holiday season.”

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Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen, Skateboard Legends…and Inventors?

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In January 2011 I found myself in a rather unusual place—at the National Surf and Skate Expo in Orlando, Florida. Along with my colleagues Jane Rogers, an Associate Curator in the Museum’s Division of Entertainment, Sports, and Culture, and Betsy Gordon, a Project Executive from the National Museum of the American Indian, I traveled to Orlando to meet some of skateboarding’s founding pioneers and enduring legends. The National Museum of American History had just launched a broad collecting initiative focusing on skateboarding and I was keenly interested in the role of invention, innovation, and creativity play in skate’s history and culture. As a group that feels that it has been cast as “outsiders” most of their lives, the skaters were surprised at the Smithsonian’s interest, but very welcoming and eager to share their experiences with us. The day culminated with an “All-80s” skate competition that featured the likes of Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Andy MacDonald, and a host of other icons of skateboarding lore. At the conclusion of the event, Tony Hawk donated his skateboard to the Museum while standing in the middle of the vert ramp surrounded by 2,500 screaming fans.

Tony Hawk signs deed of gift for his skatedeck. Jane and I are standing by--the skateboarders were expecting the Smithsonian to be represented by a bunch of "old dudes." Photo by Lee Leal, Embassy Skateboards.

Since that time, the Lemelson Center and the Museum have continued to build important relationships with skateboarding’s innovators. The Lemelson Center’s belief that everyone is inventive and that innovation abounds all around us is one of our greatest strengths and affords us the opportunity to explore the history of invention and innovation from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and across a broad range of subjects. Most associate invention and innovation with technology and science, but the Center often explores other unexpected places where invention and innovation flourishes—like skateboarding. This wide exploration is critical to fostering an appreciation for the central role invention and innovation play in the history of the United States. It also makes our work extremely interesting, fun, and exciting as we meet, collaborate, and explore the world of invention and innovation with all types of people.

Skate legend Rodney Mullen was kind enough to let us film him doing tricks on the roof terrace of the Museum.

In August of 2012, the Lemelson Center invited Rodney Mullen, the unquestioned leader and pioneer of street skating, to visit us to discuss the role of invention and innovation in American life. It was a truly wonderful day in which we exchanged ideas and views not only about skateboarding, but about the role and importance of creativity and innovation to building a better society.  You can watch our video podcast with Rodney below or on YouTube.

Our exploration of the intersection between innovation and skateboarding continues. On June 21-22, to coincide with National Go Skate Day 2013, the Lemelson Center will host Innoskate, a major public festival that will celebrate invention and creativity in skate culture. Innoskate will highlight the contributions skate innovators make to society through demonstrations, hands-on education activities, public programs with inventors and innovators, and donations of objects to the national collections. Activities will also include discussions and demonstrations of evolving technology such as decks, wheels, trucks, board design, materials, etc., as well as innovations in tricks that fueled further technological innovations. Hands-on activities related to skate culture may include aspects of board design and fabrication, use of new materials, and/or the engineering and physics of making decks and performing tricks.

We will continue to share program information about Innoskate in the months to come—so keep checking back with us.

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Podcast: Political Machines — Innovations that let people be heard

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Laurel Fritzsch interviews Rachna Choudhry for our podcast series.

A lobbyist and a Congressional staffer walk into a dinner party. It sounds like the start of some sort of inside-the-Beltway joke; instead, it’s an invention story. Rachna Choudhry and Marci Harris found common ground on a vexing issue–when constituents write in to Congress, there is no way of the writer knowing if the message has been received or for Congressional staffers to know that it’s coming from a real person. The result of that conversation is Popvox, a web tool that verifies, aggregates, and simplifies communication with Congress.

Rachna sat down with Laurel Fritzsch to talk about the process behind developing Popvox in our latest podcast. Click here to listen in.

Note: This post is not an endorsement of any product.

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Igniting a Spark in the high desert of Nevada—sounds dangerous, right?

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Sarah Gobbs-Hill, an Education Program Coordinator at the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum in Reno, Nevada. A member of our Spark!Lab National Network, The Discovery has been home to the first Spark!Lab off the National Mall for just over a year.

Here in Reno, Nevada we like to do things a little different. So when a group of people decided to bring a discovery museum to the downtown area just south of the casinos, critics were a bit skeptical. “Who’s going to bring their family down there?” they said. But after seven years of fundraising, planning and construction, the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum (The Discovery) was born. The Discovery boasts 26,000 square feet of gallery space including a two-story climbing structure, a glass wall for the ephemeral painting made by fingers, an 85 foot-long river, and a lab for sparking the innovation held within the minds of those living in, and visiting, Northern Nevada.

The Spark!Lab Smithsonian at The Discovery has had an estimated 115,000 visitors in the first year, which is a lot for a city of just under a quarter million residents. In the museum’s first year, 10,000 students visited Spark!Lab as part of a school fieldtrip; for those interested teachers we created a specific fieldtrip class focused on collaboration and the principles of invention. Children and parents have shrieked with delight at the most shocking of our exhibits in Spark!Lab—Ben Franklin is a popular person in our space. We have added circuitry dough to our collection of activities, which allows us to create electric sculptures. We have invited our visitors to invent or redesign shoes, housing, transportation, and toys. A few of the best inventions by visitors so far have been a fan extravaganza (15 fans running off of snap circuits!); bionic biology (a robotic horse game that can be used to teach about anatomy); and a  toy-suck-a-rooni (a vacuum cleaner that sucks up toys without damaging them to leave a clean room). We never cease to be amazed by the creativity of the members of our community.

As with all new organizations we are learning the best way to support and work with our community. With the Spark!Lab at The Discovery, we aim to support the creative minds living here who are pushing the boundaries and creating a different vision for our community. We have big plans for The Discovery’s Spark!Lab moving forward and we believe, by working with our community and providing experiences that make people say, ”what will they think of next?,” we can not only spark their interest in innovation, but ignite the fire that will lead to “Reno-vation” and contribute to continued changes in the cultural landscape here in Northern Nevada.

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A Concrete Example

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Concrete is everywhere. Foundations, buildings, bridges, sidewalks, roads, sculptures, tunnels, retaining walls, and even skateboard parks are made with concrete. We are surrounded by this gray, cold, often impersonal, and ubiquitous material. Yet, I know very little about concrete, except that it is a construction material composed primarily of aggregate (sand and crushed rock), cement, and water, and that it is often reinforced with steel. On the rare occasions when I think about concrete, I immediately picture the Hoover Dam, a construction and engineering marvel built with more concrete than I can fathom.  According to the Bureau of Land Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region, the Hoover Dam “contains enough concrete to pave a strip 16 feet wide and 8 inches thick from San Francisco to New York.”  However, prior to the Hoover Dam’s construction in 1931, others were mixing it up with concrete.

In the early-twentieth century, for example, Robert Augustus Cummings (1866-1962), a civil engineer who worked primarily in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, made significant contributions to the field of reinforced-concrete construction and foundation work. Cummings clearly stated his confidence in his material of choice in a 1904 presentation to the Member Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania (and “member” refers to construction components, not engineers with a secret handshake):

Reinforced concrete makes an excellent paint for preserving iron or steel, adhering to the metal very firmly and protecting it thoroughly against corrosion. It can easily be made water tight, and its durability is beyond question. . . . Correctly designed re-enforced concrete structures are not liable to sudden failures, as is the case with ordinary concrete, but gives warning by the falling off of the surface concrete long before the point of failure is reached.

Pamphlet, Reinforced Concrete The Cummings System, circa 1907.

Cummings knew his concrete and built his reputation and livelihood around it. Founded in 1900 and incorporated in 1911, Cummings Structural Concrete Company specialized in reinforced concrete for the construction of all types of structures, from bridges, barges, warehouses, filtration systems, private residences, machine shops, dry docks, and piers, to retaining walls, abutments, factories, dams, and locks. If it involved concrete, Cummings was doing it.

Cummings is best known for inventing the “Cummings System of Reinforced Concrete,” in which iron or steel bars are embedded within a mixture of Portland cement (a finely ground powder made of limestone mixed with clay or shale) water, sand, and gravel or broken stone. The Cummings system utilized steel rods of any size or grade that were welded together to form a variety of shapes. Cummings held over 25 patents related to reinforced concrete and metal structures (see U.S. Patent 761,288 for one example). Spaces between the metal structure were filled with concrete to form arches, walls, floors, walls, and roofs.

Types of metal bars and framework (1905) that Cummings used.

Cummings's son, Robert A. Cummings, Jr., holding metal framework, around 1905.

Some of Cummings more noteworthy projects included the Davis Island Dam on the Ohio River; a water tank for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad; the Ninth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh; the Harbison-Walker Refractories in Birmingham, Alabama; a concrete floor for the machine shop, National Tube Company in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania; a mill building and boiler house for the National Casket Company in Ashville, North Carolina; pilings, abutments, and retaining walls for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company; and a clear water basin (a drainage area to collect runoff) for the H. J. Heinz Company in Pittsburgh.

A 1911 image of a commercial building being constructed near H.J. Heinz Company. Depicted are metal bars in wood frames awaiting concrete.

A reinforced concrete column at the National Bureau of Standards Laboratory in Pittsburgh, 1913. Robert A. Cummings is standing to the right of the column.

In 1915, the Scott Paper Company (also known as the Chester Paper Company) of Chester, Pennsylvania, manufacturers of Scott tissues, toilet paper, and paper towels, contracted with Cummings to work on their beater rooms (housing machines that beat, rolled, and processed paper fibers) and machine rooms. Cummings work at the Scott Paper Company is well documented through sketches, blueprints, design notebooks, specifications, correspondence, progress reports, payroll records, and photographs. For example, in a July 21, 1916 letter, Cummings sent a quote for the work to Mr. Leibeck at the company:

[O]ur bid, entire job, $132,250.00. Substitutes reinforced concrete for structural steel in floors. Also flat slabs for docks. Sheet piling omitted. Reinforced concrete piles $1.40 per [linear?] foot in place. Can start work immediately. Alternate bid, actual cost, labor, materials, and miscellaneous expenses, plus ten percent.

In his Manual of Uniform Field Methods, 1915, Cummings outlined how the company would conduct its work. Job sites were to be photographed on the first and sixteenth of each month to show progress and special features of the work, leaving behind a wealth of photographic documentation such as these images from a construction album for the Scott Paper Company. Meticulously documented, the album pages provide a rich visual history of concrete construction processes, equipment used, and men laboring.

The negotiations with Scott Paper Company were carefully and thoroughly recorded, primarily through correspondence. Details of the work, especially the timeframe for completing the job would become an issue for Cummings.  Among papers related to “contract planning” is a letter dated May 7, 1917, from President Edward Irvin Scott of Chester Paper Company to Cummings.

Now Mr. Cummings, we have got some plain talk to give you. We cannot stand for the delay on the buildings at Chester; our beater rooms are nowhere near completion; you only have a small amount of people, and we have absolutely got to have that work finished, and we cannot submit to further unnecessary delay.

Scrapbook of photographs, Scott Paper Company, Chester, Pennsylvania, 1916-1917.

Cummings finally finished the project a month later; clearly, Cumming wasn’t working with quick-set.

To learn more about the concrete endeavors and inventive career of civil engineer Robert A. Cummings, visit the Archives Center.

———————————————–

References

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 50, Ann Arbor: University Microfilm, 1971.

United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region, http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/History/essays/concrete.html (last accessed October 17, 2012)

All images are from the Cummings Structural Concrete Company Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

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Stanley Moves In

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Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the National Air and Space Museum’s blog. The author is National Museum of American History curator Carlene Stephens. 

On October 24, Stanley, winner of a historic robot race, left its home at the National Museum of American History aboard a flatbed truck and arrived safely at its destination, just seven blocks away. For the foreseeable future, Stanley will be here at the National Air and Space Museum, a centerpiece in the exhibition “Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting From Here to There.”

Stanley, an autonomous vehicle that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, hitches a ride from NMAH to NASM

Stanley hitches a ride to the National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Richard Strauss. 

The irony of the situation escaped no one. Stanley, a driver-less vehicle that had navigated 132 miles on its own to win the 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects Grand Challenge, needed the help of scores of people AND a truck ride to get from there to here.

Frankly, moving Stanley is nerve-racking for me. I collected Stanley for the National Museum of American History’s robot collection. I feel responsible for Stanley’s safety and the safety of everyone involved with wrangling such a big, heavy car. On moving day, it turned out, there really was no cause for worry. Everybody—the National Museum of American History’s experienced vehicle mover Shari Stout, the skilled riggers from the artifact handling company, and the welcoming National Air and Space Museum staffers—knew exactly what to do to put Stanley in just the right spot for long-term display.

Now that Stanley is securely in place, though, there’s a moment to reflect. It’s worth thinking more deeply about the car’s place in “Time and Navigation” and the reasons for collecting contemporary objects for the Smithsonian in the first place.

Stanley moves into the National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Mark Avino.

Stanley moves into the National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Mark Avino. 

Some have already wondered: what’s a car doing in the National Air and Space Museum? In “Time and Navigation,” we link Stanley directly to satellite navigation, a subject clearly within the museum’s scope. The car’s ability to drive itself is a new application for satellite navigation, made possible when computers combine GPS coordinates with other kinds of data to construct an image of the road ahead, complete with obstacles. And there’s another connection: Stanley operates on the ground in much the same way that UAVs, that’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, operate in the air. Stanley moved into the museum right under the UAV exhibition on the west end.

When Stanley won the off-road DARPA race in 2005, the achievement was a giant technical step forward for autonomous vehicles, the vehicles like Stanley that drive themselves. Now, seven short years later, numerous car makers and Google are testing self-driving cars. Three states—Nevada, Florida, and California—have passed legislation permitting them on state roads. Advocates foresee a future where such cars will relieve congestion on highways, reduce traffic accidents, and provide transportation for those who otherwise cannot or do not want to drive. No point going to the showroom to shop for your robot car just yet, but insiders predict the technology will be commercially available soon.

Nevada license plate issued for testing autonomous vehicles on the state’s public roads. Photo by Wayne Wakefield.

Nevada license plate issued for testing autonomous vehicles on the state’s public roads. Photo by Wayne Wakefield. 

Predicting the future, like moving Stanley, makes me nervous. My training and interests make me passionate about the past. I’m a historian and a curator, not a soothsayer. Making decisions about what to collect from the long-ago past, a curator stands on pretty solid ground. Often there’s a body of existing research and documentation that verifies the importance of an object from long ago. That’s collecting from inside a comfort zone.

But collecting contemporary objects like Stanley comes close to predicting the future. It’s a risky business. Curators have to make educated guesses that today’s technical innovation will be tomorrow’s historic milestone. Curators who do contemporary collecting take the risk that an object making headlines today will remain representative of some important event or illustrative of how Americans absorbs new technologies. Such an object might even carry material evidence that inspires our successors to dig deeper into research we haven’t even imagined yet. Or maybe collecting such an object won’t have any of those useful outcomes. Maybe it will simply lie fallow forever after in storage. As I say, it’s a risky business.

An important indicator of an object’s historical worth is whether it yields rich insights. So far Stanley does not disappoint. On display at the National Museum of American History, Stanley represented the latest in a long line of wheeled robots, a history that can be traced back to Renaissance automatons. At the Air and Space Museum, Stanley’s technologies let us see inside the “black box” of navigation and consider emerging technologies that are likely to change the ways we get from here to there. Whether there will be more insights down the road, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Carlene Stephens is a curator at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. She is currently working with a team of curators, designers and restoration specialists at the National Air and Space Museum to develop the “Time and Navigation” exhibition.

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Behind the Scenes at the Political Machines symposium

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On Nov 2 & 3, 2012 the Lemelson Center hosted Political Machines: Innovations in Campaigns and Elections—the latest edition of our annual symposium series, New Perspectives on Invention and Innovation. By all accounts, the weekend was a great success!  If you weren’t able to make it, here’s an inside look at some of the events and talks…

Friday Nov 2 – Final preparations and “The Political Party”

If you had been in the Lemelson Center offices on the afternoon before the symposium, you would have seen a flurry of activity as we made final preparations – setting up banners, printing name tags, confirming the food order, etc. At 3pm, the team assembled in the Warner Bros. Theater for a final tech run-through with Keith Madden, the projectionist, and Robb Rineer, our technician from Meridia, who gave us a preview of our audience response system. When we broke at about 4pm, the team sprung into action – setting up tables, placing banners around the Museum, escorting C-SPAN’s camera crew to the theater, and generally gearing up for the arrival of our guests.

The Political Party, outside "The American Presidency" and "The First Ladies" exhibitions. Photo by Jaclyn Nash.

When we welcomed our symposium speakers to “The Political Party,” a kick-off reception held, appropriately, right outside two of the Museum’s most popular exhibitions: The American Presidency and The First Ladies, they found the 3rd floor atrium transformed into an elegant reception with an election motif. One side, lit in blue, featured Chicago-style hot dogs and other treats reminiscent of Barack Obama’s “Windy City.” Across the atrium, lit in red, were shepherd’s pie, New England clam chowder, and Boston cream pie from Mitt Romney’s “Beantown.” Several of our invited speakers—trained as political historians, campaign workers, etc.—took a few moments to enjoy the collections in The American Presidency, before heading down to the theater for the symposium’s opening act.

David Schwartz. Photo by Jaclyn Nash.


Friday Nov 2, 8pm – Ghosts in the Machine, but David Schwartz is a Pro

David Schwartz, chief curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, opened the symposium with his talk on the history of presidential campaign ads. I began to feel slightly ill as the Museum’s Internet connection decided to bonk just as David began clicking on streaming video links from his online exhibition, The Living Room Candidate. But being a consummate pro, David stayed cool and used the temporary glitch to describe the genesis of the site in the late 1990s. In particular, he noted how innovative it was at that time to stream videos back in the days of dial-up connections before (…tongue planted firmly in cheek…) “the blazingly fast speeds of today’s Internet.” That drew lots of laughs and by then, the goblins that temporarily interrupted the Internet connection departed and left David to click freely and finish his wonderful talk. Disaster averted!

Saturday Nov 3, 10:30-5pm – Symposium Saturday

The symposium continued with a full day of panels and talks by our amazing symposium speakers. There’s no way I could capture all of their smart ideas in a short blog post.  However, our intrepid communications team—led by Erin Blasco, Kate Wiley, and Michelle DelCarlo—live-Tweeted the event so you can get a flavor of the proceedings.  Check out http://twitter.com/amhistorymuseum or http://twitter.com/SI_Invention or search for #PoliticalMachines for the full blow-by-blow.

Keynote speaker Darrell West. Photo by Jaclyn Nash.

Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite moments from the symposium:

  • Our keynote speaker, Darrell M. West, described the trend in campaign technologies from broadcasting to “nano-casting”…
    • Broadcasting—building ads with broad appeal for the three TV networks
    • Narrow-casting—creating ads for cable TV, tailored to a particular regional service area or a particular channel’s viewership, e.g. young men watching ESPN
    • Micro-casting—using targeted emails with links to YouTube ads to reach VERY specific groups, e.g. conservative blacks in Cincinnati, Ohio, that oppose  gay marriage
    • Nano-casting—using mobile phones, geo-location services, and consumer information to send text messages or emails with precise, individually-tailored messages—e.g. “Dear Sally, please vote today, your polling place is 123 Elm Street.”
  • Jon Grinspan explained the innovative role of alcohol in elections during the mid-1800s. Westward expansion into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio meant more access to grains like wheat and corn, which created bumper crops of hard liquors like bourbon. Saloons were among the biggest buildings in frontier towns, so they served as party headquarters and polling places. Party operatives traded booze for votes—but not too much, otherwise, passed-out voters would never make it to the polls!
  • Zephyr Teachout explained how the emergence of the Internet challenged the traditional power structure of campaigns, previously ruled by a triumvirate of political, finance, and communications directors. Eventually campaigns made room for a fourth director—the Director of Internet Organizing, a role she pioneered in Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign—and we’ve never looked back.

Vanderbilt’s Sarah Igo, who has studied the history of George Gallup and the birth of modern opinion research, chats with Gallup’s modern-day counterpart, Jon Cohen, the chief pollster at The Washington Post. Courtesy of Eric Hintz.

  • Sarah Igo explained that we used to call public opinion researchers “pollers.” However, sometime during the 1940s, a newspaper columnist, skeptical of their methodology, called them the “pollsters” because it sounded like “hucksters.” The name stuck…
  • Jon Cohen, polling director at The Washington Post, said that there is still skepticism about the methods of today’s pollsters, but that sampling—and the bias that inevitably creeps in—is unavoidable. To illustrate the point he said: “Next time you go to the doctor and they ask for a blood sample, tell them ‘No—take the whole thing!’”
  • Thad E. Hall wondered aloud why we could buy airline tickets and do our banking via the Internet, but we have yet to implement Internet voting. The key difference is that, with online purchases, the identity of the purchaser is tied to the transaction. However, with voting, the trick is to maintain security while separating the identity of the voter from his or her vote—and we are still figuring out that trick.
  • David Becker described many of the problems with our present system of election administration, but quickly brought things back to proper perspective. He doubted whether any corporation (or nation besides the United States) could get nearly 117 million people to all do the same thing (in this case, vote) on one given day, and do it in an orderly fashion absent any riots or violence. There are always a few problems, but they are minor relative to the overall achievement that is Election Day. His final charge was classic: “On Tuesday, go out and hug your local election worker!”

Photo by Jaclyn Nash.

Meanwhile, out in the Lefrak Lobby, visitors were treated to an up-close and personal view of dozens of historical campaign buttons, posters, and fliers from our museum collections dating as far back as the 1860s. It was fun to see an Abraham Lincoln-Andrew Johnson ticket from 1864 on the table next to a Spanish-language poster supporting JFK and LBJ from 1960! Plus, over the lunch break, our visitors got an up-close and personal audience with speakers Sarah Igo, Thad Hall, and Zephyr Teachout, who graciously signed copies of their books.

Photo by Jaclyn Nash.

Monday Nov 5, 9am – Reflections and Thank You Notes

After a well-earned day of rest on Sunday, everyone came back to work on Monday and chatted around the water cooler about the symposium. We all agreed that we’d had some very high-caliber speakers, all of whom were smart, funny, and engaging in describing the role of “political machinery” in the realms of Advertising, Campaigning, Polling, and Voting.  Thanks again to our tremendous speakers!

Wednesday Nov 7 – The Day After the Election

On November 7, the day after Obama’s re-election to a second term, some prognosticators had already begun speculating about who would run for President in 2016. No rest for the election-weary, I guess. Similarly, my teammate Michelle DelCarlo innocently asked me—“So what do you think will be the theme for next year’s symposium?” COME ON ALREADY!! Let’s enjoy this one for a few weeks, before we start speculating about 2013.

We’ll start brainstorming for our 2013 symposium in the New Year—maybe exploring Civil War military technologies, or sports inventions, from safer football helmets to instant replay. Then again, in the tradition of participatory democracy—what do YOU think would make a compelling theme for the 2013 symposium?

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