Election Day inspiration – With Liberty And Justice For All

Since today’s Election Day, I figured today was a good day to stroll through our With Liberty And Justice For All exhibit in Henry Ford Museum.

With Liberty And Justice For All in Henry Ford Museum is a great way to learn about America's enduring struggle for freedom, in all of its forms.

As I walked past original copies of Thomas Payne’s “Common Sense” pamphlet and a timeline of momentous events in our country’s history, I was really excited to see so many other people – including groups of high schoolers on field trips and families with the day off from work and school – exploring and, hopefully, learning about all the different ways the United States of America has fought for freedom and this right to vote.

Families were learning more about the original 13 colonies, and where the idea for our country was born.

One of the most important artifacts in With Liberty And Justice For All is one of the original 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence, which Congress authorized in 1823 - only about 30 of these survive today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And being a woman, of course I am intrigued by the “Votes for Women” section of the exhibit – particularly the map that shows, by state, when women were legally granted the right to vote. The struggle by these pioneering suffragists is a fascinating chapter in our country’s history; if you haven’t explored this section of the exhibit, be sure to take a look next time.

It may be hard to believe, but some states didn't ratify the 19th Amendment until 1984.

I hope you’ll have a chance to explore With Liberty And Justice For All the next time you’re in Henry Ford Museum – and I hope it will inspire you as much as it did me, whether it’s Election Day or not.

What other artifacts of With Liberty And Justice For All intrigue you? Any you’d like to learn more about?

80 Years of The Henry Ford

This is a guest post by Judy Endelman.

Henry Ford may have said “History is bunk,” but he founded one of America’s premier history museums–The Henry Ford

Eighty years ago this month, as the world teetered on the brink of depression, Henry Ford hosted a grand party.  To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, he assembled an international audience of the “best and the brightest” to celebrate “Light’s Golden Jubilee” and dedicate The Edison Institute of Technology, known today as The Henry Ford.

In 1921, Henry Ford posed by a Model T, the car that changed America and made his fortune

The Model T, which first rolled onto the streets of America in 1908, had made Ford a very rich man.  By 1920, nearly half of all cars on America’s roads were Model T’s.  Ford now turned his tenacity, his attention to detail, and his fortunes to creating a museum that would “show people what actually existed in years gone by.”

The Menlo Park buildings under construction in Greenfield Village

Henry Ford had considered Edison his hero ever since he had met him at an electrical convention in 1896.   Not only did Ford dedicate his new museum to his great friend, but Ford had Edison sign the cornerstone, and the centerpiece of The Edison Institute was Edison’s lovingly reconstructed Menlo Park Laboratory, complete with seven train carloads of New Jersey dirt!

For Light's Golden Jubilee, Thomas Edison reconstructed his invention of the electric light bulb. This photo was taken during a rehearsal

As Ford’s distinguished guests dined by candlelight in the unfinished great hall of the museum–Marie Curie, Herbert Hoover, and John D. Rockefeller were some of the guests; Albert Einstein spoke to the assemblage by radio from Berlin–Ford and Edison repaired to the Menlo Park laboratory in Greenfield Village where Edison “reconstructed” his great invention of incandescent light.  As the successful “experiment” concluded, the millions listening by radio heard NBC broadcast Graham McNamee shout, “It lights! Light’s Golden Jubilee has come to a triumphant climax!”

Number please

54!  That’s how many telephones are now on exhibit in the Henry Ford Museum.  The exhibit is one of our new “collections platforms,”  a new way to spotlight some of our under-the radar-collections.

The telephones span from one of Thomas Edison’s experimental phones (a “loud-speaking” chalk phone) to a first-generation iPhone, showing the different ways people have communicated by voice in the last hundred years.

Many of our telephones are from the turn of the twentieth century, an exciting time in phone development.  Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a working telephone in 1876, and a number of key patents and discoveries were in place by 1900, so that the wall phone was a reliable but still rare and fascinating instrument.

Around 1900, the Bell Telephone system and their manufacturing company Western Electric were market leaders, but they served mostly urban areas on the East Coast.  Independent telephone systems sprang up to provide service to rural customers and customers in the Midwest.  C.J. Moore, who I’ve written about elsewhere, was a Michigan entrepreneur who both ran an independent phone company and manufactured his own phones.  Most independent phone service providers used phones from independent telephone manufacturers, like Stromberg-Carlson, a Chicago company whose “farmers’ phone” was the introduction for many rural Americans to the way telephones could shrink long distances.  Other independents used phones imported from Europe, like this Siemens-Halske phone from Germany.

Early phones included a battery, a magneto for signaling (powered by a crank), and a ringer, so though the candlestick desk phones on exhibit might look small, each would have a companion ringer box hanging on the wall, or discreetly tucked under a desk.

We have rotary phones, touch tone phones, pay phones, business phones, car phones and cell phones.  Come by the exhibit, located in the front of the museum between With Liberty and Justice for all and Made in America, and see the diversity of telephone history.