AN ACCOUNT OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



By Frederick W. True. 



Among the powers couferred on Congress by the Constitution is 

 authority " to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by secur- 

 ing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to 

 their respective writings and discoveries."^ A result of this provision 

 was the establishment of the Patent OfiBce and the assembling in 

 connection therewith of numerous models of inventions. 



A building for the Patent Office was erected in 1812, but it was 

 destroyed by fire in 1836, and with it the models and records it 

 contained. 



" In the Patent Office building and with it destroyed," writes Dr. 

 Goode,^ "there was gathered a collection of models which was some- 

 times by courtesy called the 'American Museum of Arts,' and which 

 aftbrded a precedent for the larger collection of models and natural 

 products, which remained under the custody of the Commissioner of 

 Patents until 1858, when it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion and became a part of the present National Museum." 



Though an assemblage of objects of more or less scientific interest 

 was thus early formed as an indirect result of the policy pursued by 

 the Government, the establishment of a national museum was earlier 

 in the minds of many American statesmen, especially in connection 

 with the educational institutes which it was thought the Government 

 should found for the intellectual advancement of the people. 



In the plan for a Federal university published in the Pennsylvania 

 Gazette in 1788, and commonly credited to Madison,^ section 8 relates 

 to natural history, and in connection therewith the remark is made : 



To render instruction in these branches of science easy, it will be necessary to 

 establish a museum, and also a garden, in which not only all the shrubs, etc., but 

 all the forest trees of the United States should be cultivated. 



' This article is reprinted from the recently published volume commemorating the 

 close of the first fifty years of the existence of the Smithsonian Institutiou, entitled 

 "The Smithsonian Institution, 1846-1896: The History of its First Half Century," 

 Edited by George Brown Goode. City of W^ishington, 1897.— F. W. T. 



2 Article 1, section 8. 



^ Goode, G. Brown. "The Origin of the National Scientific and Educational Insti- 

 tutions of the United States." Aunual Report of the American Historical Associa- 

 tion for the year 1889, page 7. 



^ See Goode, ibid., pp. 66, 126, who believed Benjamin Eush of Pennsylvania to have 

 been the author of the plan. 



NAT MUS 1)6 10 ^89 



