Open for Business Office Success Before Computers
March 24 to August 20, 2017

This new exhibition will take you back to the workdays without computers. Experience the nostalgia of the office during the early to mid 1900s with an emphasis on business and mathematical machines that revolutionized the workplaces across America.

A plethora of office equipment will be on display, including adding machines, mimeographs, addressographs, typewriters, and office supplies that would be used by typists, office workers, bankers, secretaries and switchboard operators. This exhibition features an area of touchable artifacts. Try your hand at an adding machine, typewriter and embossing stamp.

Notable artifacts include an IBM timekeeping machine that clocked in up to 150 employees, circa 1950s, a 1892 Williams Manufacturing Co. “The Empire” typewriter, Western Union Telegraph Desk Fax, the first prototype for fax machines, and a Burroughs adding machine from 1925 that has a transparent panel to feature the sophisticated mechanisms for its time.