76 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



Only five sj)ecimens were added to tlie collection during the year and 

 none of them were of particular importance. The total number of 

 specimens now in the collection is 6,330. 



Musical instruments. — There were three accessions of importance 

 during the year. Dr. W. L. Abbott i^resented 11 musical instruments, 

 collected during his travels in the east, and Messrs. H. A. and F. H. 

 Vinton, of Bedford, New York, presented a spinet supposed to have 

 been made about the middle of the seventeeth century. A few Chinese 

 musical instruments were collected for the Museum by Lieut. C. G. 

 Calkins, U. S. N. 



FJiotograpMc collection. — Mr. T. W. Smillie was on July 15, 1896, 

 designated custodian of the collection illustrating the history of pho- 

 tography. Although the photographic exhibit is recognized for the 

 first time in the present Report as an established section, as long ago 

 as 1888 a series of specimens showing the uses of ijhotography was 

 prepared for the Ohio Centennial Exi^osition, held at Cincinnati. This 

 collection included portrait and landscape cameras of early types, a 

 complete daguerreotyper's outfit, and examples of cameras of various 

 kinds in use at the time of the Exposition. The daguerreotype, talbo- 

 type, albumen, collodion, and gelatine negative processes were also 

 illustrated. There were examples of prints made by various processes, 

 of transparencies, and of transferotypes on paper, canvas, and porce- 

 lain. Another series was intended to show the value of photography 

 in the study of astronomy, geology, biology, and medicine, as an aid 

 to the artist and engraver and to the scientist in recording the fluctu- 

 ations of various instruments. 



Since the Exposition at Cincinnati a considerable quantity of material 

 has accumulated, especially during the past two or three years, and 

 there is every reason to believe that a valuable and interesting collection 

 can be built up. The design is to bring together an exhibit illustrative 

 of the history and uses of j)hotography, beginning with the earliest 

 authentic discoveries in the art and grouping them chronologically up 

 to the present day. 



The following statement, taken from the report of Mr. Smillie, indi- 

 cates the scope of this collection and the plans for its further develop- 

 ment: 



The collection includes a fine series of portrait, landscape, and marine daguerreo- 

 types; an original daguerreotype of Daguerre; also a panorami'c view, about 4 feet 

 long, of the harhor of San Francisco in 1852, showing the dismantled fleet of the 

 Argonauts, a remarkable piece by Shew, of California. 



There are also specimens of the ambrotype, erysotype, the asphalt process, the 

 various silver processes, the carbon process, the aniline process, etc. In fact, the col- 

 lection, although small, is so rich in the earlier processes, which are passing away, 

 that it will be comparatively easy to fill up the blanks. 



At the photographic exhibition recently held in the hall of the Cosmos Club in 

 Washington the Museum secured, partly by purchase and partly by donation, over 

 50 examples of the best work of the present day by the leading amateur and profes- 

 sional photographers of the United States. 



