Description: A daily photo highlight from Smithsonian collections. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="294" caption="Secretary Samuel P. Langley studying and photographing birds in flight from a tower on the grounds of the National Zoological Park, 1901, by Unknown photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95 Box 15 Folder 10, Negative
Description: As Director of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, I’m often asked what makes the Smithsonian photography collections interesting and unique. For me, the answer is less about size – although, the Smithsonian does have more than 13 million photographs of all types – than about function.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="410" caption="Sheila Hershey rings up a "sale" on world's first cash register, which was placed in the Smithsonian Institution on July 1, 1959, The device was invented in 1879 by James Ritty, a Dayton, Ohio, cafe owner, who sold the rights to the machine for $1,000, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="National Air and Space Museum Flight Simulator, 1978, by Richard Farrar, photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 2 Folder May 1978, Negative Number:94-8320. "][/caption]
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="430" caption="Drugs Exhibit in Arts and Industries Buildings, 1972, by Richard K. Hofmeister, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 1 Folder Summer 1972, Negative Number:72-5085-15A."][/caption]
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="422" caption="Mounted Cyanotypes, the Working Proofs for Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, Plate 55, "Walking, Turning Around, Action of Aversion" (Miss Larrigan, July 28, 1885), by Eadweard Muybridge, Cyanotype, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Division of Information Technology and Communications,