and was concerned that it would give way to fascist movements in the united states. he wanted to see >> has your research raised any additional questions for you? work -- my own research on this book has illuminated me the extent to which 1933 is really a vital turning point in history of the world. that is something i want to go forward and work a little more on in a broader context. an important point in history in terms of monetary policy, adoption of the new deal, in the history of american can -- of american conservatism, and the fate of fascism and anti-fascism in the world. >> thank you very much. >> you are watching american history tv.

all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. artifactsek, american takes you to museums and unique places. next, we tour the innovation wing of the national museum of american history in washington dc. museum director john gracias us some of his favorite objects, including an 1896 bicycle and gold,t gold, server -- silver, and jewels by the tiffany company. we also hear historical kathleend from curator franz. john: welcome to the smithsonian museum of american history. we welcome you to our new floor which is looking at innovation and invention in america.

to start, we have some extraordinary path and models and examples of early invention and technical invention. up heree apple one which is extraordinary. invention is one of the most important parts of our country. let's walk through. as you come through, you start to see all these exhibitions that are focused on ways in which we have developed a new way of thinking. here we have the value of money, which has the most extraordinary collection of gold and silver coins, paper. all of them are oriented in a way to understand the role of money. we end up with the bitcoin. so you can see over time how we understand value, trade, exchange as we go forward.

now we walk into part of the , show where we have american enterprise, talking about the social and cultural history which is really your history, of , capitalism, business, the common good. before we get to that, here is one of my most favorite objects, the tucker car, in mint condition. when it came out in 1948 and it 1949, was a total innovation. the centered front light that goes out, to the way in which it was styled and operated. you can see within this the role of invention. you can also see within this the stories where some people were very successful and created a market and some people weren't. so, it is an important item to understand in america, the ways in which we, as people, have

dominated how we understand one another. in this cart, what is called the red river cart it is an , extraordinary story of women out of canada bringing and help -- bringing in pelts to the area around st. paul to trade. what they were doing were circumventing the hudson bay monopoly. the hudson bay monopoly didn't like that so there was a lawsuit , and ultimately the women prevailed. here we start out the show about american enterprise, talking about women who came across the border, which was undefined back then, in order to create their own livelihood. you can start to see the ways in which we can tell the stories of american business. and as we continue to walk through here, we start with the section that is called the merchant era. you start to realize how global trade existed from a time

immemorial, and in america, the start of the country had an enormous amount of trade going on. it started with native people, into our colonial area -- colonial era and past that. ,on this side we have our , advertising wall, which shows from a period of time to today, when we developed the idea of how to promote products and how to cook -- how to promote, really consumerism. , and it start with some things that are stereotypical, then you go to the way identities developed. you then come into the corporate era, which is quite extraordinary, because you see the development of unbelievable businesses, some of them based on consumerism. this was on a fence post in iowa. you started to see how we promoted our own products. coming through here, we walk

into the consumer era, and here is where we identify our current lives, the way cars are developed, the ways in which energy got exploited and had a greater impact. and after that, we go into the global era. as part of this, there are numerous areas in which you can learn more about the country and things that have really affected us. one of the most popular objects is right here. the laffer curve. we see the concept that lower taxation can increase everyone's income. what is fascinating about this, when he drew this out, he was with dick cheney and rumsfeld. a vibrant part of our history. politics, economics decisions today, this is represented right there.

and behind that is milton friedman's briefcase. as you come through this extraordinary exhibition, you can learn more about not only the country, but you can let about what affects you every day. we leave american enterprise and we go into an educational area , and we call it object project. these objects literally changed the way people live and behave. and there are numerous ones, from a refrigeration unit, that change the way we eat and how women could behave because they , could prepare food and put it in there. bicycles. a real constructive way is to think of the innovation of bicycles because it changed mobility for everybody, particularly for women, and it changed the way that they dressed and were able to navigate a different kind of world. and one of the most beautiful objects, certainly something

everyone will want to come see, tiffany, with silver and jewels, decorated this bicycle, that then became symbolic for women in their quest for mobility and how they could identify their own independence that developed over a period of time. here we have spark lab. the reality of invention is people doing the actual work. our spark lab takes children of all ages and actually can teach them and have them experiment where they developed the understanding of how to invent. whether it is around sound, electricity it, , is an enormous place of creativity for us. you have to think about what it means for you to be an inventor and who are these inventors? we have a studio, a workshop, of ralph baird, who actually

invented pong, which was the first interactive tv program. and look today how many interactive programs there are. through this, you can learn about how you preserve your intellectual rights through patents, and you can learn about how technology started in one place, and then grew, and grew. -- grew and grew in america. what i love most is this sweater. he was a real human being who escaped from germany, came and found himself as one of the great inventors of all kinds of things in his america. what we are trying to do here is explain how america, and actually the world, has seen innovation and invention and how it has been captured from the start of this country into today and continues to be a major component of how we think, live, and act. now you really get the excited , privilege of listening to

curators about individual objects. it is the kind of experience you will have when you visit this wonderful wing of innovation. kathleen: i am the business history curator at the national museum of american history at the smithsonian institution. we are here in the object project today, looking at some of the amazing objects that have come out of storage and that you can interact with. i here with the tiffany bicycle, super-blingy example of a safety bicycle that was introduced in 1895 by tiffany and company, for the holiday market and for the very , distinguished and wealthy buyers. this was not a common bicycle. but the form that it is, two two wheels of about the same size, is something that was new on the market, but aimed at a

more middle-class consumer. objects can tell us different stories. and this bike is full of stories. i will share couple of them. one is that biking was a craze in the 1880's and 1890's. so, bikes come first, then automobiles. and they overlap a little bit, but bicycles really paved the way, literally to better roads , in the u.s. they formed clubs and groups and they go out in their spare time and bike across the countryside and they realize that the roads in the 1880's leave something to be desired. so they form good road clubs. that eventually developed into highway systems and paved roads, so that comes out of bicycling. that areo these bikes innovation from the earlier version which was the high wheel ridercle, where the

basically sits on top of one big wheel with a small supporting wheel. those were ridden by men, mostly for sport and mostly to test themselves. when these come along, it opens up biking to both men and women. that is another one of the important stories that we tell. this was a moment in the 1880's and 1890's, where middle-class women are starting to embrace this idea of suffrage and moving outside the boundaries of the home and taking on new roles in public. and the bike really allows for that and it becomes a symbol of women's independence. just to get on this bike, you had to wear shorter skirts, sensible shoes. it was an instrument in helping to change women's fashion. it made them more mobile as well. it also becomes a symbol for women's suffrage. people leaving that movement point to the bicycle as one of

the things that gives women a new kind of mobility and independence. lastly, if we look closely at the object itself, why is it so fancy? tiffany is trying to cater to a market of very wealthy people. the 1890's is a moment in wantcan history when they -- when a lot of wealth becomes concentrated into the hands of a few americans and they have a , lot to spend. the vanderbilts the carnegies, , those folks. and they are buying lavish things to show off that wealth. this was bought for a wealthy woman in montgomery, alabama. it has a lot of decoration. you can tell it this is not an average bike. we are in the corporate era of american enterprise and thinking about inventors and innovation, and i am here with thomas edison

and what the curators call the creepy baby doll. these are two of edison's inventions. one is the lightbulb which , really made his career. it is the thing we know most about edison. the incandescent bulb was invented in 1879 and really changed the landscape of american cities and life. this doll was a real failure. one of the interesting things about edison, a man known as the wizard of menlo park for his more than 1000 patents and his many successes, he also had a tremendous failure along the way. and it was this doll, which was remarkable for its time because it was a talking doll. when it was invented in 1890's, it is one of the first applications of recorded sound in children's toys.

you can see here, this is basically a very small phonograph with a wax cylinder. edison and several other people's inventions. to fit shrunk down inside the dall. -- the doll. a child would crank this from the back and it would sing one nursery rhyme. you can hear it through the perforated chest of the dall. these dolls would have had hair. they would have had clothing on. ours is a little bit stripped down. -- problem with this actually, there were several. one of them was it was incredibly expensive. it was $10 to $20, which was more than the average family or average consumer could spend. it was a very high-priced item. but the worst thing was it just did not work. when it was launched on the market the crank fell off, or

, the sound did not work. and if the sound did work, it was a very shrill, screaming nursery rhyme. not a very pleasant -- something that would put you to sleep at night. the sound was recorded by a woman worked in the edison factory in new jersey. the recording technology is not at all like we would have today. they would have to sing the nursery rhyme at a very high volume for the wax cylinder to pick it up and record it. it was a screaming baby doll. ♪ kathleen: unfortunately, he only sold a very small number of these and ended up with almost 2000 in a warehouse in new jersey. he called them his little

monsters, because they were one of his greatest failures and sort of plagued his dreams. but he bounces back. that is why we have this story, to show you success and failure, so most entrepreneurs or inventors experience failure, it is just how they overcome it. this is a nice parallel with the inventor of tupperware that you will hear about later in the collection. he had a lot of failures and one big success, which was tupperware. we are standing in front of the 1960 refrigerator, a beautiful aqua blue. it contains some brightly colored tupperware. i am here to tell you a little bit about the back story on its namesake. earl tupper is a classic, independent american inventor.

he grew up thinking that he would become famous through inventions and that they would make him a millionaire. he was born in new hampshire and then he moved to western massachusetts, which was really a hub for inventors. his parents were small farmers and they lived a sort of hard life. this is his diary, from the 1930's. he graduates from high school in 1925. he has a very active imagination and mind. he could not afford to go to college, but he thinks about becoming an inventor and he keeps a notebook, actually several notebooks and we have , them in the museum. so this is an invention diary and sketchbook where he is recording ideas. earl tupper, massachusetts. and i think this is fascinating.

the first page starts with, "my purpose in life." he outlines his goals for his career as an inventor and then goes on and on. this is from the 1930's, as i said. and it really is -- he is inventing and trying to start a business inventing and probably the worst moment in american history, 1933, when 25% of americans are out of work. there are dozens of inventions in here. he tries all sorts of things, from personal care products like pocket combs to core sets -- to corsets to a rumble seat , protector. so he is doing add-ons to cars, something that would keep you dry when you are in your car. and that is one thing that he tries to patent, he protects the

idea, and he tries to market it. and he runs into the same problems that most independent inventors faced, the capital to produce the invention and manufacturing, but then also the money and knowledge to market it, to bring it to the markets so that people would buy it. and you see him struggle with those things throughout the diary. so let me put this underneath. and i am going to bring out some of the other objects we have in a very large earl tupper collection. this is his patent, much later, for tupperware for the sealable , bowls. 1957, so now we have moved forward in time. this is a product shot that would have been done by the company of their early products, when the tupperware was all

white. it was not in color yet. and then this is a pretty unusual and rare photograph of earl tupper, talking to probably an engineer about the production of tupperware and the many different forms it would come in. they did not just make these bowls that we are probably mostly familiar with but he , really expands into a line of specialized containers. some of which are actually behind me. a salad dressing container. my favorite, the millionaire drink shaker, so you can make cocktails and put them in the fridge without spilling. plastics are really a 20th century material, they are new. so he has an early encounter

with dupont, the big plastics -- and dupont makes a lot of things including gunpowder during this period. and they have a subsidiary in massachusetts, and he works there for about a year. after world war ii, he gets a which ispolyethylene, a much more flexible plastic and , he actually invents, from that, an even more flexible and translucent plastic. this is all post-world war ii, just as the consumer market is really taking off. he sort of enters that market with this new product and with a new material. american consumers, housewives and the women who did most of the buying for the home, they were really skeptical about plastic containers. even after world war ii they , were much more inclined to use glass. it was easier to clean and they

thought about plastics is fragile or brittle, or stinky, because the plastic itself had in odor. or that it was not easy to clean. and glass is all of those things. faced not just an invention challenge but a marketing challenge. how to get women to buy the plastic containers over the glass containers. product,er had a great but he did not have a great way to sell it. a lot of independent inventors and companies struggle with how to market goods, especially if they are new on the market. if the consumers have not seen them before. so what he does is he tries a number of selling venues. one's department stores. he places his product there and it falls flat. people are not buying it, because there is no one to tell you what the benefits of the

product are. and then there is a direct to consumer sales with somebody who knocks on your door and says come and you want to buy these products, and demonstrates them for you. these are salespeople that were really moving tupperware. one of them was brownie weiss, a woman who was a gifted salesperson and a big personality. she came out of world war ii where she worked in an airplane factory and then took up home sales as a way to support herself. earl tupper hears about her and eventually makes her vice president of the company, in charge of sales. and she moves the sales wing to florida. she does several things that are innovative. she sells with women to other women and she incorporates this stay-at-home, domestic woman who is a mother and a wife, or just a wife.

as a way to make extra money on the side for things they might want to buy. and that gives women a tremendous incentive to sell. aps into that. she also creates other incentives. an annual conference where the top sellers get fabulous prizes like new close and new cars. it really gets the sales force into the culture of tupperware. a lot of fun. these things were themed. they were like landing on the moon, space themed party. she makes it really, really fun. we have a couple of other sales literature things that were given out to the saleswomen. here is a demonstration. this all hinged on the demonstration. again, women, who were the main shoppers for the home were not , necessarily sold on plastic

containers, but if they got why they could keep food fresher longer in a sealed container and why plastic had benefits, then they would buy. here is another piece of sales literature in our collection. it has a great color palette. here are the fabulous products. and here is the millionaire drink shaker in the refrigerator. you can own them in different colors, which was also a sales technique. that is why this story is in the consumer era section. this is an area that is about 1945 to the 1970's, and it is a moment when americans really have more money. there is a middle-class again. from the late 1920's through the 1930's, the depression, and through world war ii, americans did not have a lot of money to

spend on consumer purchases. in the depression, people are out of work. during the war there is , rationing. people have more money but there are fewer things to buy. finally after world war ii, , americans have a little more money in their pockets and they are spending it on houses, on appliances, and on things to fill the appliances and live the good life in america, which they associated with consumption. so you have seen only a small part of our innovation wing today. it is a permanent exhibition. there are more stories, more objects in american history to come down to visit us. thank you very much. >> you can watch this and other american artifacts programs by visiting our website, www.c-span.org/history. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> monday on the communicators, we spoke with the chair of the commerce committee and bill shuster from pennsylvania, the charity transportation and infrastructure committee. we also interviewed executives about new technologies, spectrum issues, and the upcoming spectrum auction. >> look where we are today in terms of communication, job creation. we are working on legislation that has already passed where we will see the fcc free up more spectrum, which can enable these devices to be built, to be used, to communicate. putting in the legislation and encouraging those states to start to look at, how do you build a road in the future? dealing with the companies that are here today, what do you need for your technology to work even better? >> from the very first generation of things that we

lost about a decade ago, our focus has been making your device as useful as possible in your car in a way that allows you to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. >> ford understands that there is great demand for more spectrum for unlicensed use. we are working with our colleagues to come up with a sharing solution. we are working with our colleagues at an tia, the department of transportation, and most importantly, the federal communications commission. >> watch the communicators c-spanat 8:00 eastern on two. >> c-span.org is a video rich complement to your c-span viewing. most of our government programs like the house, senate, and congressional hearings stream on the site. if you are away from television, you can watch on your desktop, laptop, even your smartphone or tablet. and c-span archives all of its programs online in the c-span

video library so if you miss an , episode of washington journal, book tv, or any program, you can find it online and watch at your convenience. in fact, the c-span video library contains more than 200,000 hours of programs and engineerful search helped find and watch programs -- helps you find and watch programs going back many years. to watch on television, c-span publishes the schedule for all three networks and its radio station. just click on the schedule. c-span.org is a public service of your cable and satellite provider, so check it out. it is on the web at www.c-span.org. >> secretary of state john kerry served in the vietnam war as a u.s. navy swift boat commander and received a silver star, a bronze star, and three purple heart. he later became a vocal proponent of the war and testified in 1971 before