Interesting Objects From the Smithsonian's Collection

 By Bruce Shawkey

The Smithsonian Institution holds approximately 154 million objects, spread across 19 museums and galleries. Here are just a few, with notations about why I find them particularly interesting.

Teleprinters were used in a variety of applications, from wartime communications to monitoring the stock market. But my primary interest was their use by newspapers to monitor national and international news. When I worked for the Wisconsin State Journal in the 1980s, Teleprinters were already obsolete. News and photos came to the copy desk via "dumb terminals" where we had to "code" the headline size, column width of the story, and so forth. We would then "send" the story to a large photographic printer. Pasteup personnel would then wax the printouts, cut them with X-Acto knives and place them into page mock-ups.

Here is a sample image of the type of dumb terminal I used:

 I'm sure the whole procedure is very different from the way we did it back in the '80s.

Wurlitzer Juke Box

Had a shirt-tail relative (Jerry Ewert) who actually owned on of these in working condition.  Sold it for $5,000 at auction. Also knew a lady (Jeri Pearson) who worked as a secretary for David Rockola (his actual name!) and the Rockola jukebox company, founded in 1927. Here are a couple of his machines:

Typically wall mounted in a diner
booth with a master unit located
elsewhere in the diner.

 

Unit from the 1930s

Also, there was the Seeburg Jukebox Company that launched their jukebox in 1927.