Government

This excellent site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles documenting Thomas Edison's corporate impact on the history of American entertainment. Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)—prolific inventor, manufacturer, and businessman—patented 1,093 inventions, including the phonograph, the kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer). All are searchable by keyword, title, or subject; movies are presented in QuickTime, Mpeg and RealMedia formats and a capsule description of each film is provided. Special pages focus on the life of the great inventor and histories of Edison's contribution to motion picture and sound recording technologies. Part of the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, drawn from collections in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

The National Park Service's online presence for the Edison National Historic Site is a repository for a large amount of Edisonia. This site is geared to be accessible to children, a resource for students, and also an engaging experience for adults. It makes available several of Edison's early sound and motion picture recordings, as well as hundreds of images, both personal and professional. A biography about Edison, and essays about his laboratory, inventions, and life away from science, written by NHS staff, provide compelling secondary material. A bibliography is posted for those interested in further research, and the site contains a list of Edison's astonishing 1,093 patents. A fun and interesting activity is a recreation of the "Edison Mental Fitness Test," which anyone hoping to be a manager in Edison's lab had to pass. An excellent site, useful for a variety of people and purposes.

This Library of Congress site is devoted to Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the early developement of telecommunications. The site is divided into two sections. The first section provides access to a selection of the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers. The selection includes 4,695 items dated from 1862 to 1939. The Bell Family Papers are indexed by series, subject, and name, and the collection is searchable. However, the second section dealing with Samuel F. B. Morse, remains in the preview stage as of 09/08/2004. It gives a brief overview of the life of Morse, but it is not yet searchable and makes no reference to Morse's career as a nativist.

A web presence for the American Experience's documentary about the telephone. Online resources include capsules on Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas A. Watson and their relationship to the development of the telephone; accounts of significant events in the development of the telephone; and gallery of phones from different eras. The site also has a more general "Technology Timeline," a page devoted to forgotten inventors, and links to other American Experience sites.

This site briefly recounts a history of the USS Nautilus, including a list of the ship's Commanding Officers and Medal of Honor winners. Virtual tours of the submarine and museum are available, and feature several QuickTime Virtual Reality movies. Information concerning the Submarine Force Library and Archives, with a selected bibliography, are posted. A number of submarine-related sites are linked.

This site mostly offers information about the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum itself. It does not offer online archives or histories. Exploring the site one can view a number of photographs of naval content.

This site features a brief history of the USS Salem, as well as its specifications, photographs, and images of crew artwork.

The Historical Archive of the Kennedy Center provides historical overviews of NASA, rocketry and aeronautics. More in depth examinations of NASA'a space flight missions are available. These include not only accounts of the mission objectives and results, but primary documents, images, video and audio files. An excellent research source, with links to many other NASA sites of historical interest.

This site developed by NASA contains information on current projects (International Space Station etc.) as well as histories of previous NASA projects. Some of the interesting features are the extensive image galleries, mission summaries, descriptions of past project goals and outcomes, and news releases about future plans. The history pages contain large amounts of detailed historical information including several full-length books.

Excellent resource for historians, students, and those with a curiosity about the history of the United States Navy. The site contains numerous primary documents, bibliographies, biographies, and narrative accounts. Holdings are particularly extensive with regards to naval conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the present. Additionally, information is available on source holdings available outside the Naval Historical Center (organized by state). Easily searchable and well organized by topic and chronology.