SYNOPTIC SERIES OF OBJECTS IN THE UNITED 

 STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM ILLUSTEATING THE 

 HISTORY OF INVENTIONS. 



By Walter Hough, 

 Acting Head Curator of Anthropology, United Staies National Museum. 



HISTORY. 



Fifty years ago the United States National Museum was being 

 rapidly and steadily enriched by a stream of ethnologic material 

 poured in by explorations and expeditions carried on in the United 

 States and in foreign lands. Among the first results of the classifica- 

 tion of the collections was the recognition of similarities and differ- 

 ences in the material culture of races. This observation was to bear 

 fruition in the exhibits of the Museum. There also arose at this 

 period the germs of ideas as to the relative inventiveness of races, 

 which is seen to have been a natural inquiry among a nation of 

 inventors. 



The study of certain common tools whose use extended among 

 many different tribes was taken in due course. One of the early 

 anthropological works published by the Smithsonian was Dr. 

 Charles Rau's monograph on Prehistoric Fishing, which was a fore- 

 runner of numerous papers on the various industries of the American 

 Indians. These publications form a large and important literature 

 on aboriginal technology. 



Such works also show that motivated by the earlier studies there 

 arose in the analytic minds of Mason and Holmes conceptions of the 

 distribution and sequence of inventions, and their relative grades, 

 all of which gave an inkling of the progress of development by 

 which series of objects could be arranged in order in historical cate- 

 gories from simple to complex. 



While these studies were ripening almost unconsciously during 

 the handling of the increasing materials coming into the Smithsonian 

 no incentive to present these facts offered till, in preparing plans for 

 the Trans-Mississippi Exposition held in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898, 

 it wfts suggested that a synoptic series illustrating the history of In- 

 vention should be prepared for exhibit on that occasion. 



The energies of the staff of anthropology were directed to this end 

 and a series of extraordinary interest and value was prepared. 



No. 2404— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 60. Art. 9. 



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