Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8206,size=350,right]Born around 1815, James Thomas Gant was one of twelve children born to free parents on a plantation a few miles northeast of the Washington DC-line.1 As a free black man who lived through nearly the entire nineteenth century, he would see the Civil War, the destruction of slavery, the rise and fall of an all-too-brief period of
Description: When curators at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History looked at seven radiometers in storage, they learned the instruments had been at the Smithsonian for nearly one hundred fifty years.
Description: Patent models and baskets occupy shelves in storage space at Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, Image Number: 2000-11186-06.