Continued… We moved on to a room called “On The Water.” The first exhibit was about Atlantic maritime trade. The exhibit about the early days of trade focused on tobacco (more on tobacco processing), sugar, rum, and the slaves who were imported to grow and process these crops.

With so much valuable cargo criss-crossing the ocean, piracy flourished, peaking at about 1720. Several of the museums that we’d visited over the last few months had mentioned that, with so many places to hide in the Chesapeake, piracy had been a problem there. The notorious pirate Black Beard was killed in 1718. But what we hadn’t seen in any of the other museums was that before he died, he had intentionally sunken one of his ships, called Queen Anne’s Revenge. In 1996, divers found the wreck. They didn’t find any treasure, so Black Beard must have walked off with it, but they did find lots of other cool artifacts. Most were basic boating items, such as lead patches to fix leaks and barrels to store food. We found out that when capturing ships, pirates would sometimes use the cannons to shoot a bunch of nails, pelting the victims with shrapnel that tore sails and harmed the people on deck.

continued… We moved on to the next gallery, called “Object Project.” It appeared to be a small traveling exhibit about innovations that transformed America. It included: the bicycle, off-the-rack clothing, electric lighting, telephones, appliances (examples were microwaves and vacuums) and computers, among other items. Christi thought the most interesting part of the exhibit was the comment that mass produced clothing led to Americans dressing alike.

Next we went to a gallery called “Change Your Game.’ It was about innovations that helped improve sports in one way or another. Most talked about methods to prevent cheating, such as drug testing, and to avoid bad referee calls, such as the “instant replay.”

Some of the items featured were revolutionary products. Most were upgrades to existing products, such as a better photo-finish camera, better tennis racket, better skis, better skateboard wheels, etc. One of the more interesting upgrades was a lightweight, easy-to-maneuver wheelchair that sports could be played in. Interestingly, in the category of transformational upgrades, was a controversial prosthetic called the Flex Foot Chetah. Opponents argued that this prosthetic gave users an unfair mechanical advantage.

continued... The next section was “The Corporate Era: 1860s to 1930s.” The sign said that this was when America made the turn to be a primarily urban nation. Businesses got big; so did scales of production. Working together, the US government and big businesses used military and political power to dominate world trade. They controlled sources of raw materials, secured markets for selling finished goods, controlled intellectual property through patents and regulations, and protected American manufacturing through tariffs.

One of the first big businesses was Singer sewing machines. The sewing machine was breakthrough technology. Issac Singer patented improvements to it in 1851. But what made it big was the utilization of the new business models: factories, international distribution networks, sales offices all over the world and clever marketing all came together to make Singer a household name.