American Magazine, July 2015

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE TRACES NEARLY 250 YEARS OF BUSINESS HISTORY
THROUGH MORE THAN 600 OBJECTS, IMAGES, AND VIDEOS. FROM ALEXANDER
GRAHAM BELL’S 1876 TELEPHONE TO A 2009 BLACKBERRY SMART PHONE, HERE’S
THE BUZZ ON THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY’S NEWEST EXHIBIT.
MERCHANT ERA, 1770s–1850s
GLOBAL ERA, 1980s–2010s
WANN DEEJAY “HOPPY ADAMS BROADCASTING FROM A STOREFRONT WINDOW, ANNAPOLIS, MD, 1953; COLONEL SANDERS WEATHERVANE, 1950S–1960S,
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE EXHIBITION
Founded in 1948, WANN Radio served the African
American market in Annapolis, Maryland. “The
groundbreaking station’s story is about connecting
not just musicians but also businesses to a new,
recognized market. Before the 1940s and 1950s,
most businesses didn’t recognize African Americans
as having enough money to be worth advertising to.
Radio stations like this one, and magazines such as
Ebony, changed that.”
Harland David Sanders is better known to the world
as Colonel Sanders. In the 1950s and 1960s,
weather vanes in the image of the Kentucky Fried
Chicken founder symbolized the reach of the
franchise to all points of the compass.
The United States was born in the Merchant Era,
a time of market revolution. The old colonial
mercantile system, in which raw products were
shipped abroad and finished goods were imported,
gave rise to physical and social marketplaces,
where people could buy or trade goods from
around the globe. Artisans, peddlers, farmers,
and merchants flourished.
One of the most lucrative businesses of the
Merchant Era was the most appalling. “Slavery
was one of the biggest businesses in the United
States in the nineteenth century,” Franz says.
“We show the business behind buying and selling
people: insurance documents, tax documents,
transportation costs.” Slavery ranked among the
largest and most capital-intensive enterprises in
the United States until it was abolished in 1865.
CORPORATE ERA, 1860s–1930s
The Corporate Era saw widespread economic
growth, innovation, and entrepreneurship, as
America’s founding values—individualism and
egalitarianism—gave way to individual consumption
and the Industrial Revolution. By the 1920s, half of
all Americans had fled farms for factories and
offices in cities like New York, Detroit, and Chicago.
Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric lightbulb,
was among the icons of the Corporate Era.
With nearly 1,100 patents to his name, Edison built
a full-scale power station in his adopted hometown
of New York City (the location near Wall Street
allowed him to wow and woo investors). But not all
of his inventions were a hit. Edison’s talking dolls—
his “little monsters”—were expensive and didn’t
work well, and he got stuck with a warehouse full
of them. “It’s his biggest failure in some ways. The
exhibition shows that even people who ultimately
succeeded had failures.”
CONSUMER ERA, 1940s–1970s
Following World War II, production boomed and
consumption became the engine driving the
nation’s economy. Diminished global competition,
high rates of union membership, Cold War
spending, and expanded consumer credit fueled
prosperity, opportunity, and the rise of the middle
class. But by the 1970s, the economic engine
began to slow.
The nation’s recent history saw a spike in global
production and trade. More workers became
involved in a wide range of services, and
consumers and producers alike had to adapt
to rapid change driven by computers; robust,
complex data; and smart devices. The decline in
manufacturing and the rise of the retail, service,
and financial sectors created opportunity for
some and eliminated safeguards for others.
Artifacts include one of Google’s first servers
from the Menlo Park, California, garage where
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their now
$367 billion tech firm, and Nobel Prize-winning
economist Milton Friedman’s briefcase.
THE EXCHANGE
The Wallace H. Coulter Exchange is a hands-on
learning center, where museumgoers are invited
to exchange, compete, barter, broker, market, and
innovate. Visitors can try their hand at running a
cat food business or a modern-day farm.
The learning center also features a state-ofthe-art,
oak-and-brass booth from the New York
Stock Exchange. Trading booth No. 13 was
installed in 1929, just before Black Tuesday—the
most devastating stock market crash in US history
that plunged the country into the decade-long
Great Depression. The booth now features a video
monitor with infographics produced by the History
Channel to help visitors understand the workings
of the stock market.
BIOGRAPHY WALL
People are at the heart of American business.
American Enterprise is framed by a wall dedicated
to innovators such as Eli Whitney, Estée Lauder,
and Steve Jobs. “We want visitors to see people
taking risks, succeeding, and failing,” Franz says.
The biography wall includes a new, interactive
take on Christian Schussele’s Men of Progress. The
1862 painting, which hangs in the National Portrait
Gallery, features the most distinguished inventors
of the nineteenth century, including Samuel Colt,
Samuel F. B. Morse, and Charles Goodyear. Visitors
can select an inventor—Elias Howe, creator of the
sewing machine, or Joseph Henry, the man behind
electromagnetic design—and learn how their
innovations continue to impact our daily lives.
FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 33