Inventing America's past.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Briefly Noted - The Great American Hall of Wonders exhibition - Brief article

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The Smithsonian American Art Museum is housed in what once was the U.S. Patent Office. By 1850 more than 100,000 innovation groupies a year were flocking to the building's Washington, D.C., exhibition galleries, chockablock with the miniature mechanical models inventors were required to submit as part of the patent application process.

An exhibit displayed late last year, "The Great American Hall of Wonders," captured that 19th-century excitement about new technology. But the decision to mix tiny models of paper bag fabricators with canvases depicting Niagara Falls and herds of bison--thus celebrating...