Beautiful Things · Pre-visit reading

Before we go: 130 years in six leaps.

Read together in class (or at home) before visiting the Beautiful Things exhibition. Every object named here is real — you'll stand in front of it soon.

1. Made by hand and by muscle (1850s–1890s)

Before electricity, everything at home took muscle: washboards and hand-cranked washing machines for laundry, hand-cranked churns for butter, foot-powered sewing machines. Washday meant hauling the water, turning a heavy flywheel by hand, and feeding every piece through a roller wringer.

Look for: Wooden spinning wheel · Hand-crank washing machine and wringer · Wheeler & Wilson hand-crank sewing machine · Hand-crank butter churn

2. Recorded sound: the phonograph (1900s–1910s)

The phonograph let families hear music without a musician in the room: a needle rides the groove of a spinning disc, and a big metal horn makes it loud — no electricity at all. Early telephones sent voices down wires for the first time.

Look for: Victor III disc-horn phonograph · Phonograph horns · Kellogg wall-mount telephone

3. Radio: the world comes home (1920s–1940s)

Radio brought news, music, and stories into the home instantly and for free. Families arranged living rooms around big wooden radios the way we arrange ours around screens — until radios shrank into bright plastic portables you could carry anywhere.

Look for: Atwater Kent cathedral radio · Zenith console radio · Zenith Trans-Oceanic portable shortwave · Sentinel red Bakelite portable radio

4. Movies and cameras (1920s–1950s)

Film turned pictures into moving stories: cameras caught the images, and theater projectors pulled film past a bright lamp fast enough to trick your eyes. Cheap box cameras like the Kodak Brownie meant ordinary families could finally photograph their own lives.

Look for: Ampro Paramount 20 film projector · Paillard Bolex C8 movie camera · Kodak Brownie Hawkeye box camera · Framed movie poster, 'Daniel Boone'

5. Television arrives (1950s)

Television stacked every earlier invention — recorded sound, broadcasting, moving pictures — into one glowing living-room box. Every family needed a rooftop antenna to pull the picture out of the air.

Look for: Early television in a wooden cabinet · Rooftop television antennas

6. The computer age begins (1980s)

The Atari 2600 brought video games home, and the Commodore VIC-20 was one of the first computers a family could afford — with less memory than one phone photo today. The world you live in starts here, a few steps from the spinning wheel.

Look for: Atari 2600 game console · Commodore VIC-20 personal computer

Three things to talk about

Every object in this museum was once brand new — somebody saved up for it, unwrapped it, and showed it off. What do you own that might be in a museum in 100 years?
Machines kept getting smaller, cheaper, and easier. Find one example of that on this sheet (hint: compare the radios).
The worn, shiny spots on old objects are called patina — they show where real hands touched them for years. Wear is evidence.

Words worth knowing

antique: — an object more than about 100 years old
artifact: — an object made by people that tells us about the past
exhibition: — a collection of objects and art put on display for visitors
curator: — the person who chooses and arranges what goes in an exhibition
phonograph: — an early machine that plays recorded sound from a spinning disc
gramophone horn: — the big metal funnel that makes a phonograph loud
broadcast: — one signal sent out to many listeners at once, like radio or TV
Bakelite: — one of the first plastics, used for radios, telephones, and TVs
projector: — a machine that shines light through film to show movies on a screen
mechanical: — worked by gears, springs, and cranks instead of electronics
archive: — a saved collection of old photographs, papers, and records
colorized: — a black-and-white photo that has had realistic color added later
patina: — the soft wear and shine an object earns from years of use
restore: — to carefully repair an old object so it works or looks as it once did

1. Made by hand and by muscle (1850s–1890s)

Look for: Wooden spinning wheel · Hand-crank washing machine and wringer · Wheeler & Wilson hand-crank sewing machine · Hand-crank butter churn

2. Recorded sound: the phonograph (1900s–1910s)

Look for: Victor III disc-horn phonograph · Phonograph horns · Kellogg wall-mount telephone

3. Radio: the world comes home (1920s–1940s)

Look for: Atwater Kent cathedral radio · Zenith console radio · Zenith Trans-Oceanic portable shortwave · Sentinel red Bakelite portable radio

4. Movies and cameras (1920s–1950s)

Look for: Ampro Paramount 20 film projector · Paillard Bolex C8 movie camera · Kodak Brownie Hawkeye box camera · Framed movie poster, 'Daniel Boone'

6. The computer age begins (1980s)

Look for: Atari 2600 game console · Commodore VIC-20 personal computer

Three things to talk about

Every object in this museum was once brand new — somebody saved up for it, unwrapped it, and showed it off. What do you own that might be in a museum in 100 years?

Machines kept getting smaller, cheaper, and easier. Find one example of that on this sheet (hint: compare the radios).

The worn, shiny spots on old objects are called patina — they show where real hands touched them for years. Wear is evidence.

Words worth knowing

antique

— an object more than about 100 years old

artifact

— an object made by people that tells us about the past

exhibition

— a collection of objects and art put on display for visitors

curator

— the person who chooses and arranges what goes in an exhibition

phonograph

— an early machine that plays recorded sound from a spinning disc

gramophone horn

— the big metal funnel that makes a phonograph loud

broadcast

— one signal sent out to many listeners at once, like radio or TV

Bakelite

— one of the first plastics, used for radios, telephones, and TVs

projector

— a machine that shines light through film to show movies on a screen

mechanical

— worked by gears, springs, and cranks instead of electronics