OCR Text |
Show toreiioii se of Man Story Tie Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C, gites wsifors a thrilling glimpse of man's journey through the ages. classified. English nobleman, and never saw the United States. have visited the museum in the past 50 years, and the microscopic larval fish not yet for the Besides all these, there is an oil painting on a cob- Yet when he died, in 1829, he left over $500,000 Smith-sonannual number grows regularly. 's needle with the Lord's prayer engraved in institution that now bears his name. In 1904 Yet, oddly enough, there's little chance that even web and a remains were brought to Washington, and today and one visitor will see everything that the Smithsonian the eye, plus the gowns of America's First Ladies, his tomb may be seen in a small room near the has to show. There are more than 30,000,000 items in a dinosaur named Gertie! museum's main entrance. The Smithsonian's oldest building is its most colorits constantly growing catalog, and it has been estiSo much for the past. As for the museum's future, This was because mated that if a person spent only one minute glancing ful, with towers and battlements. a former secretary of the Smithsonian, Dr. Alexander who beat every exhibit, those on display and in warehouses, it the architect thought that James Smithson, establishment for Wetmore, has declared: "The Smithsonian had a would take him 200 years to see it all. And by then, the queathed his fortune to found "an definite beginning, but has no. foreseeable end. Its number of items would have expanded greatly, of the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," looked like a castle. purpose has no time or space limits, and it will go on course. By then, too, he would be dead, and perhaps would have liked a building that In fact, the first museum building was called "Smith-son- 's through the centuries, changing with a changing his skeleton would be on display! world and so adjusting itself that it may fill a useful Castle." The Smithsonian is more than a museum: it is a of mankind." Strangely enough, Smithson was the son of an role in the upward struggle center for worldwide exploration. Under its sponsorship, scientists have worked on every continent and on every known island group in the world. They have tramped across deserts, glaciers, jungles; they have roamed high mountains and explored an underground river 260 feet below the surface of the earth. If you are looking for anything ancient or modern you are liable to find it, and more, at the Smithsonian. On display are the first telephone, the first telegraph, the first phonograph, and the Kitty Hawk, the first airplane to fly. Its collection of airplanes includes the Spirit oj St. Louis, in which Lindbergh soloed the Atlantic; the Winnie Mae, flown around the world by Wiley Post and Harold Gatty in 1931; the Polar Star, in which Lincoln Ellsworth crossed Antarctica in 1935; General Billy Mitchell's Spad; a Japanese suicide plane of World War II; the first jet plane ever made in America; and the plane from which the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. You can also find in the Smithsonian a stage coach, a shay, all kinds of old bicycles and tricycles, and the oldest automobile, the Duryea, built in Smithsonian's collection Has grown to more than Washington's original As man's knowledge increases, Springfield, Mass., and driven there in 1893. There, earliest giant dinosaurs. uniform is on display. 30,000.000 items, including a skeleton ol one of the too, you will find a uniform wom by George Washington; the tattered flag "whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight" waved over Fort McHenry when Francis Scott Key was inspired to write our national anthem; the mahogany "writing box" on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and a tomahawk that belonged to Davy Crockett. If your taste runs to jewelry, you can find in the Smithsonian's Hall of Gems the Cullinan, the largest diamond ever found (3,100 carats) and the Koh-i-no(which means "mountain of light") whose many owners have met unusual deaths. The Smithsonian has more than half of all the meteorites known to have fallen to earth in the history of mankind. Its Division of Fishes alone has more than a million and a half items, ranging from a minnow caught in the icy waters of a Swiss lake by Louis Agassiz,,the great naturalist, in 1814, to a visit it annually. sea bass. This doesn't include almost two million Today the Institution is more popular than ever. More than 3,000,000 persons one-hor- se or 337-pou- nd i Family Weekly. September 1957 21 |