REPORT OF ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 23 



practically uuknowu except to a few of the most advanced eleetriciaus in this coun- 

 try, the subject of electric lighting was broached by Professor Seeley to Mr. Horace 

 Greeley. Mr. Greeley became deeply interested and highly amused at the idea of 

 grinding out electricity with a crank and then making light of it, as he expressed 

 his understanding of Professor Seeley's descrii^tion of an arc light operated by a 

 dynamo. Mr. Greeley suggested that Seeley should build a dynamo and other appa- 

 ratus, which were accordingly started at once. The satisfactory results of the 

 experiment led to the publication of an editorial in Mr. Greeley's paper, the New 

 York Tribune, on March 28, 1867, which foreshadowed the success that has since 

 been attained in the art of electric lighting. The Seeley dynamo and the original 

 electric motor and railway devised in 1834 by Thomas Davenport, who was the first 

 inventor of a method of applying galvanism to produce rotary motion, were received 

 as a deposit from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers through Ralph W. 

 Pope, the secretary of the organization. 



The dynamos added to the section during the year represent almost the entire 

 range of American inventions which form the basis of the practical methods of elec- 

 tric lighting, both by arc and incandescent lamps, and mark an important epoch in 

 the history of artificial illumination. Duplicates of few, if any, of these machines 

 are in existence. 



A Morse telegraph register, presented to the Smithsonian Institution by Prof. 

 Henrj' Ortmanu, of Baltimore, by direction of the late Rev, Henry Schieb, appears 

 to be of especial interest. The instrument was in the possession of Mr. Schieb for 

 many years, and is said to have been used on a private telegraph line operated by 

 him and Professor Morse prior to the building of the public line between AVashington 

 and Baltimore in 1844. 



Mr. Edward L. Morse has during the year deposited several instruments and doc- 

 uments relating to his father's telegraphic inventions. 



There have been added to the Henry collection a number of experimental electrical 

 instruments found by Miss Mary A. Henry in the possession of Miss Annie Wrightsen, 

 of Albany, from whom the apparatus was purchased. 



Besulfs of exploration. — Explorations begun during the preceding 

 year, under tlie auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology, have 

 yielded material of great value. Excavations conducted by Dr. J. 

 Walter Fewkes, near Tucson, Arizona, have resulted in the acquisition 

 of some 1,300 specimens of pottery and other classes of relics, and Mr. 

 J. B. Hatcher, collecting for the Bureau of Ethnology, has forwarded a 

 number of unique ethnological si)ecimeus from Patagonia. Explora- 

 tions undertaken in Brown County, Ohio, by Mr. Gerard Fowke, also 

 for the Bureau, yielded a limited collection of relics from stone-grave 

 burials of the mound builders. 



Exchange. — The exchanges have not been important, although col- 

 lections of considerable value have been acquired, as follows: (1) Vari- 

 ous ethnological and archaeological objects from South America iu 

 exchange for pueblo collections with the Field Columbian Museum, of 

 Chicago. (2) A series of flint nodnles, flaked flints, and flint working- 

 tools from the gun-flint factories of Brandon, England, in exchange 

 for chert quarry refuse from Indian Territory. 



Manufacture. — The department relies for many of its most interest- 

 ing and instructive exhibits upon the skill of its curators and expert 

 preparators. During the year a number of models have been prepared 

 illustrating primitive life, processes, implements, utensils, etc., and 



