<p><strong>This study investigates the mid-19th century influences on American art by individuals associated with the United States Army and the Smithsonian, both federal institutions. The differences between scientific art and fine art are examined to understand their uses in publication imagery such as the report of the U.S. and Mexican Boundary expedition, which served the purposes of the federal government and which in fact directed and controlled American art.</strong></p>

<p>The “funnies,” or newspaper comics, published across the United States beginning in the 1890s, became a popular form of entertainment for individuals who had access to any one of the many newspapers that included those works; roughly 300 comic works were being printed periodically in 1000 newspapers across the country during the mid-1960s. The comics offered several styles of fictional and dramatic works, such as short, cheerful subjects, more serious episodic dramas, and historical and environmental documentations.</p> <p>From the beginnings of comic art production in the United States, newspaper comic art writers and illustrators, as well as newspaper publishers, tended to be men, white men. The data shows that even today more men read comics than women, and publishers have tended to produce works that resonate with their (male) readers. Additionally, the understanding that women were turned away from comic art professions, at least into the later 1900s, helps us understand the contemporary theme-leanings and characterizations represented in the comics more fully.</p>

<p><strong>Printing Presses in the Graphic Arts Collection: Printing, Embossing, Stamping, and Duplicating Devices</strong><br></p> <p>The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, includes in its collections about one hundred printing devices. Many are full scale models of presses produced in the United States and Europe during the eighteen and nineteenth centuries. </p> <p>The following introduction to and descriptions of the collection are copied and re-edited from sections of the publication: Elizabeth M. Harris, Printing Presses in the Graphic Arts Collection (Washington, D.C.: The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1996). The original publication was illustrated with line drawings can be seen at the following address: https://amhistory.si.edu/docs/Harris_Printing_Presses_Graphic_Arts_1996.pdf. This version of the publication offers color and black and white photographs of the machinery to further assist researchers. </p> <p><strong>Contents</strong></p> <p>Type presses:</p> <p>     wooden hand presses </p> <p>     iron hand presses </p> <p>     platen jobbers </p> <p>     card and tabletop presses </p> <p>     galley proof and hand cylinder presses </p> <p>     printing machines </p> <p>Lithographic presses </p> <p>Copperplate presses</p> <p>Braille printers </p> <p>Copying devices, stamps</p> <p></p> <p>Introduction<br><br>This Smithsonian Learning Lab collection introduces the viewer to the variety of printing apparatuses in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. <br><br>The Division of Graphic Arts was established in 1886 as a print collection with the purpose of representing “art as an industry.” For many years collecting was centered around prints, together with the plates and tools that made them. The unit began to collect printing presses systematically in the middle of the twentieth century. Shortly afterwards, the scope of collecting was broadened to include printing type and type-making apparatuses.<br><br>The press collection today has its greatest strength in wooden and iron hand presses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with some unique and important specimens. There are also a few larger, more recent machines. A component of the more recent acquisitions are “boys’ presses,” as they were called, from the end of the nineteenth century. Supporting the press collection are some 350 patent models covering all aspects of the nineteenth-century printing trade. The patent models are cataloged in a separate publication and can be seen online represented by an object group on the museum’s website: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/patent-models-graphic-arts. <br><br>In this listing each machine includes a description together with its catalog number, source, measurement in inches, citations of published references to it, and Smithsonian photographic image numbers. The term “found in the collections” is used when the immediate source of a press is obscure: it may, for example, have been transferred without records from another part of the Smithsonian. <br><br>Although many of the presses were on long-term public exhibition in the National Museum of<br>American History for many years until about 2000, most are now stored offsite and will see the light of day in various exhibits and with the use of this web display. Researchers interested to reproduce images shown in this collection, or to request additional imagery, should consult the Museum’s Rights and Reproductions statement and contact information at: <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/rights-and-reproductions">https://americanhistory.si.edu...</a>.</p> <p></p> <p><br><br></p> <p></p>