In the first, "Building A Nation," William Penn’s Charter of Privileges (1701), which granted religious liberty to all residents of Pennsylvania, a battle map of Yorktown (1781), the climatic battle of the Revolutionary War and the Treaty of Easton (1757), an agreement spelled out in words and pictograms, that specified that local Shawnee and Lenape tribes would not fight for the French in the French and Indian War, are all on view.
"Mixed Media" showcases the eclectic nature of this sui generis collection. It contains not only artist Rembrandt Peale’s color palettes but also Sumatran bamboo writing sticks, a beautifully bound Book of Death (1819), and a volume on Butterflies and Moths of North America (1900) with sumptuous plates printed from the insects’ wings.
Before there was photography, silhouettes were the easy way to grab an image of a loved one or a famous person. Some "Portrait Profiles" like those of visitors "Hannah and Phineas" from Peale’s Museum, America’s first successful museum-also located in Philosophical Hall-belong to the APS. Skull sketches and photos taken by eugenics fieldworkers are also on view, reflecting Society members’ investigations of physiognomy, craniometry, and human genetics.
Benjamin Franklin established the American Philosophical Society in 1743 to "promote useful knowledge." In 1785, Jean-Hyacinthe Magellan gave Franklin the opportunity to put money behind this idea when he donated 200 guineas to APS in order to establish a yearly scientific prize for the best discovery or useful improvement. The winner received a solid-gold plate advertised as the Magellanic Premium.
Contestants submitted miniature models for consideration by the prize committee. Many of these beautifully made and precisely detailed examples of "A Mechanical Age" remain in the collection. Models on view range from an eminently practical cheese press and a "polygraph" copy machine designed to create two copies of a written manuscript simultaneously to a fanciful model of a wind-driven carriage submitted by a Lancaster, PA, gunsmith.
The final sections of the exhibition trace the Society’s continuing interest in science and natural history. "Hands-On Science" traces science with a small "s" as practiced by professionals and amateurs alike with examples of an eighteenth-century book of geometry models, instructions on beekeeping (accompanied by humorous sketches), a Journal of Astronomical Observations (1845-1858), detailed drawings of geological strata, and sketches of the classification of orders, families, and genera of fish.
In the "Space Age," "Big Science" and "Life Science" sections, science has become the province of experts. The Lick Observatory Atlas of the Moon (1895), blueprints for ENIAC, the world’s first electronic digital computer, iconic photos of mushroom clouds over Bikini Atoll and a Patterson map, created by innovative crystallographer A. Lindo Patterson who used x-rays to discern the structures of molecules take APS to the cusp of the 21st century are on view.