Description: On the evening of October 1, 1847, while using a small telescope on the roof of the family home, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) spotted a comet where one had not been before. Word of this achievement spread quickly through the scientific community. The American Journal of Science declared her “the first American entitled to the honor of the original discovery of a comet.” Some
Description: Spencer F. Baird and George Brown Goode used their diverse, and sometimes quirky, contacts from the U.S. Fish Commission to fill exhibit cabinets in the U.S. National Museum.
Description: Unidentified man on deck of ship with hatching equiment (pump and distribution tank) and blocks of ice, United States Fish Commission, MAH-2725.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="408" caption="Physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe (1906-2005) is shown being interviewed by John O’Neill (science journalist, New York Tribune), and William Laurence (science journalist, New York Times) at the George Washington University Conference on Theoretical Physics, January 1939, by Fremont Davis, Photographic print, Smithsonian
Description: We all screamed for ice cream at the old-fashioned ice cream parlor at Smithsonian's National Museum of American History between 1981 and 2006.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Construction of the Pension Building, Designed by Montgomery Meigs, c. 1883, by Unknown photographer, Albumen print, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Image ID: AFS 182."][/caption] One of the first collections that I encountered during my travels through the photography collections of the
Description: In November 1938, Science News Letter published a story on Enrico Fermi winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, running a headshot of the professor. It's the kind of photo found in a passport—Fermi is looking forward with not much of a smile. The next question a historian would ask is did Science Service, the publisher, hire one of its photographers to take the photo, or acquire
Description: Stereoscopic photograph of seine fishing on shore of unidentified body of water, United States Fish Commission, circa 1890s, Image Number: MAH-3042.