Description: The United States National Museum Curators’ Annual Reports will be added to the Smithsonian Transcription Center, beginning the first week of June.
Description: This philanthropist’s passion for research and adventure inspired him to join a series of collecting expeditions with the Smithsonian in the 1950s.
Description: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, some of Dr. Waldo LaSalle Schmitts field books are worth tens of thousands of words.
Description: With the help of digital volunteers, we will make over a century’s worth of Smithsonian Board of Regents Meeting Minutes searchable, via the Smithsonian Transcription Center.
Description: As a teenager, Robert Ridgway was tapped by the Smithsonian’s Assistant Secretary to be an expedition zoologist. In 1881, when the US National Museum opened its doors, he was the curator of Birds. Download and reuse some of bird illustrations today through Smithsonian Open Access.
Description: The 19th century was a transformative time for the natural sciences. New discoveries didn't just happen in an armchair. Scientists adventured into unfamiliar territory by land and sea on expeditions, and their new findings fed new theories. Groups like the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences formalized America's place
Description: It can be so frustrating to put great effort into something, and then to have your work and achievements called into question. I can't begin to imagine how frustrated Samuel Pierpont Langley was in 1903. By that time, he had spent over forty years studying astrophysics and aerodynamics. His work on astronomically-derived time measurement in the late 1860's is the heart of the
Description: From the point in 1838 when the United States Congress accepted James Smithson’s bequest, it was recognized as a cultural resource, a public trust held by the federal government. Smithson had stipulated that the funds be used for an “establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Being a cultural resource set aside for public use, the government bore the