National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC
Visit an exhibition, based on Daniel J. Boorstin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, that will present the forward-thinking men and women who, through their inventions and innovations, revolutionized America in the decades following the Civil War. Their portraits, together with items related to their ideas, visualize what Dr. Boorstin has described as the persistent democratizing of American life.
Items on display include patent models, catalogues, diaries, newspapers, games, instruments, letters, and a silk purse made out of sows' ears.
Among the innovators whose achievements will be depicted are:
- Samuel Kier - first commercial use of Pennsylvania oil as "Rock-Oil Remedy", a cure-all.
- Abraham Lincoln - legal defense of railroads helped their westward expansion.
- Christopher Columbus Langdell - introduced the "case book" method of studying law.
- Alexander Stewart - started the fixed-price policy in department store merchandising.
- Lorenzo Delmonico - his elegant New York restaurant popularized fresh salads.
- Ida Tarbell - her investigative reporting disclosed Standard Oil's tactics against competitors.
- Herman Hollerith - his "electrical enumerating machine", used in the 1890 census, was a cornerstone of IBM.
- Arthur D. Little - founder of the largest U.S. independent commercial laboratory; in 1921 he made a silk purse out of sows' ears.
- Others include: Elias Howe, Isaac Singer, James Bogardus, John Gorrie, Clarence Saunders, Alfred Kinsey, Lillian Gilbreth, J.C. Nichols, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen.
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