This weekend Rob and I went to the National Museum of American History, located right about where you would probably expect it to be. I had never been there before. They re-opened last year after being closed for two years for remodeling.
Look, it's Infinity! It rotates once an hour.
When entering the building from the National Mall, this flag sculpture is the focal point of the lobby.
We were there for about 3 hours but definitely saw less than 25% of the exhibits. We went through the General Motors Hall of Transportation for trains, Car Talk, and adorable kiddie cars. Notice the name on the kiddie car. Reminds me of the John Deere AMTeeny!
We saw more historical history too while we were there. This is a very old and special drum from the Lincoln exhibit. The sign reads "On this drum Maurice A. Graves of the Tenth Veteran Reserve Corps sounded the first call to arms following Booth's attack on President Lincoln. Just a few days later, Graves attached a black crepe ribbon to his drum and participated in the funderal events held in the capital."
The Smithsonian also has over 8,000 antique musical instruments in their collection, making it one of the largest collections in the world. Some of them are on display in the American History Museum. This is a flute from 1770. Since tuning of musical instruments had not been standardized at that time, the center section of this flute could be changed out with a longer or shorter section to enable the player to more easily adjust to local pitch. Thank goodness
someone decided that A above middle C is 440 Hz!
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