The Lutron materials will join other artifacts in the museum’s Electricity Collection, including experimental light bulbs from Thomas Edison, dimming light sockets from the 1910s, theatrical lighting controls from the 1920s and many types of light switches.

“The Lutron objects help to fill a hole in the museum’s collection of lighting controls,” says Hal Wallace, associate curator of the Electricity Collections. “These objects span the period from 1964 to 2009 and bring our collection up to date.”

Several of the more recent pieces show how computer technology has been incorporated into lighting controls. For example, two of the objects are remotely controlled dimming units – one is a wireless device, the other operates with an infrared control. From a cultural standpoint, these devices raise interesting questions about our changing ability to control our interior environments, and the means by which we do so.

Image right: The Lutron Skylark eco-dim light switch.

“American homes changed significantly during the 20th century as people adopted electricity for any number of tasks, including illumination,” says Wallace. “Objects such as those being donated by Lutron fit in nicely with the switches and control devices we preserve that date back to Edison’s day. Studying the tools of everyday life, such as light switches, helps us to understand our ever-changing technological society.”
--Jessica Porter

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Called an omnimetre, it is the 1891 invention of Philadelphia engineer Albert Sexton who created its prototype using a piece of tracing paper and a suspender button. As its name suggests, the omnimetre was designed to carry out numerous operations of arithmetic and trigonometry, says Peggy Kidwell, curator of mathematics at the Smithsonian. “It has scales for multiplication, division and common logarithms, as well as squares, cubes, and fifth powers of numbers.” In his own words, Sexton called his circular invention a “quite useful and inexpensive slide rule.”

The omnimetre sold successfully in America for some 60 years yet was never widely popular. Still, this device and other 19th century “aids to arithmetic,” Kidwell says, helped “shape and reshape engineering and the activity of mathematicians” at a critical time in American history.  

In the late 1800s, the growth of American professional engineering, new manufacturing techniques, European precedents, and the innovations of people like Sexton combined to encourage much wider use of aids to computation. Arithmetic, once considered as a purely intellectual activity, increasingly became a mechanical task. Mathematical analysis also played a larger role in business, engineering and the social sciences. Ownership of computing devices, especially slide rules, came to be seen as a symbol of technical competence.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is home to a collection of several thousand mathematical instruments that includes not only a few hundred slide rules but numerous calculating machines, drawing instruments, geometric models and teaching devices. Sexton’s slide rule is an invention that tells an important story about the rise of mathematics and engineering  in America.

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Donated to the Smithsonian by the Wellness Center of Providence, R.I., FluMist joins the ever-growing collection of vaccines in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s Division of Medicine and Science.
“The Museum has a significant collection of vaccines covering about 120 years of development – from our earliest specimens of smallpox vaccines and diphtheria antitoxin of the late 19th century to the FluMist of the 21st century,” says Diane Wendt, associate curator in the Division of Medicine and Science at the museum. 

Photo: This image of the newly identified H1N1 influenza virus was taken in the Influenza Laboratory. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

FluMist is not only the first intranasal administered influenza vaccine in the United States, it’s also the first live virus influenza vaccine approved in the United States. What does this mean? Basically, the flu vaccine most of us have received in the past via injection is a “killed” virus, one that cannot multiply but can still trigger an immune response to prevent future infection. FluMist works by exposing you to a small dose of a very weak form of the virus, which helps your body to develop immunity to the disease.

“FluMist represents a new development in the influenza vaccine,” Wendt explains. “It is a great addition to our collection of vaccines.” —Jessica Porter

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 The vehicle represents the work of a team of nearly 100 students, engineers and professionals from a variety of fields – the Stanford Racing Team, who nicknamed the robot “Stanley.”

Stanley is one of the first autonomous robotic vehicles to enter the Smithsonian collection.  This blue 2005 Volkswagen Toureg is equipped with custom drive-by-wire system, a sensor rack and a computing system that enables Stanley to navigate without a human in the driver’s seat.

Photos: Stanley racing in the Mohave Desert, above, and below, on exhibit in the National Museum of American History.

How did Stanley beat 22 other robot vehicles in this demanding race? The vehicle gathered course information from a map expressed in about 3,000 points of latitude and longitude, utilized stored memory and collected new info about the road ahead from rooftop laser sensors, video cameras, radar and GPS navigation. By adeptly navigating mapped terrain and unmapped obstacles in real time, Stanley was able to take the lead.

“Stanley represents a critical stage in the development of robots,” says NMAH curator, Carlene Stephens, “the vehicle isn’t the first or the last, but an intermediate step on the way to autonomy.”

Stanley’s win showcased the technology needed to master long distance travel across difficult terrain. DARPA’s wish is that the Grand Challenge programs fosters the development in driverless vehicle technology that will some day help save lives not only on the battlefield, but also on American highways.

 “Stanley demonstrates advancement in artificial intelligence,” Stephens says. “It is a fantastic addition to our collection.” –Jessica Porter

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Image right and below left: These two images show measurements of wood thickness on the top board of two different violins used in the study. Red indicates a thickness of 4 millimeters or higher, green a thickness of 2 millimeters or less. Yellow is a mid point between the two thicknesses. 

In a pilot study that used seven Stradivari violins made between 1670 and 1709, the researchers scanned each violin with a CT scanner then used the data to create digital, 3-D images of each violin. Using the scanner they recorded exact digital measurements of the dimensions of each instrument; recorded the volume of material used to build each instrument; recorded the volume of air inside the body of each violin; and measured variations in the thickness of the thin layer of wood that makes up the top board and back board in each instrument. A number of the violins used in the study are from the collection of the Division of Musical Instruments of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The project was a collaboratin between the American History Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Many intricate and previously unseen details were revealed in the digital images, such as repair patches in a violin’s interior, the exact yet subtle slope of each back and front board, and the location of ivory and ebony inlays. Most importantly, when the data for each violin was compared, the researchers could see how the manufacture of the violins changed over time.

“The use of the scanner has improved our access to research data which otherwise would be inaccessible,” says Bruno Frohlich of the Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Obviously, we cannot take these instruments apart and study how they were made. Yet the digital models made with the scanner are factual representatives of the original objects and allow us to study how the instruments’ general architecture and other features have changed over time.”

One discovery the team made was that the volume of wood made in the construction of the violin bodies varied by 41.6 percent from 1670-1709, yet, the volume of air inside the violin bodies varied by only 8.2 percent. “Stradivari tried to keep the air volume in his violins as constant as possible, even as the trend of construction over time moved in the direction of a thinner wood board,” Frohlich says. The thickness of wood used in the construction affects the weight of the instrument, the strength and possibly tone.

With the success of the pilot study, the researchers now plan to analyze and compare data collected from scans of 47 other old instruments made by Stradivari, Nicolo Amati, Joseph Guarneri and other luthiers. When compiled this data should tell an interesting story of how violin making has changed, or remained remarkably the same, in the last 350 years.

Image: This 3-D model reveals the shape and volume of the air mass located inside the body of a Stradivarius violin.

The research team included Bruno Frohlich, Gary Sturm of the Division of Music, Sports and Entertainment at the National Museum of American History; Janine Hinton, of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History and Else Frohlich of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Boston University. Support for the project was provided by Siemens Medical Solutions in North Carolina and Materialise in Belgium and Ann Arbor in Michigan.

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