Description: For six seasons, beginning in 1984, the television series Smithsonian World opened new windows on the research and scientists at the Smithsonian Institution.
Description: On July 20, 1969, television broadcasters and Smithsonian visitors joined in watching history in the making when astronauts stepped onto the Moon.
Description: Spectacular natural events, like eclipses, have long been the bread-and-butter of science journalism. Science Service, too, succumbed to the lure of combining colorful, firsthand descriptions with technical explanations.
Description: In a Presidential election year, political news coverage can sometimes seem almost too instantaneous and continuous. Thanks to smartphones with cameras and microphones, journalists and citizens can relay images and sound from almost anywhere inside campaign activities. There was a time, however, when live broadcasting from political conventions and rallies was novel.Starting
Description: Long ago and far away, before gray hairs and creaky knees, before history became my passion, I was an undergraduate physics major. Physics seemed fascinating and beautiful, if difficult. Later, after career paths led into history and science policy, I learned that physics, however elegant, did not reside in a cultural vacuum. Its people and discoveries coexisted with
Description: Everyone loves a parade – especially one followed by a banquet. When scientists and politicians met in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1936, to celebrate the centennial of the U.S. patent system, they listened first to a conventional program of speeches. Then, in the afternoon, Science Service director Watson Davis arranged something different: a “Research Parade” featuring
Description: President Calvin Coolidge's second inauguration in 1925 reaches an audience of millions, thanks to a new technological innovation--the radio.