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Get ready to take a step back in time and rediscover long-forgotten tools that most American families used every day during the 19th century as part of the Museum on Main’s newest exhibit, “Gadgets Galore! Transforming the American Household”.
The traveling exhibit — which is on display in downtown Pleasanton now until Jan. 11 — will be showcasing early appliances and tools that might be considered strange today but at the time were considered the latest, greatest item and how those tools were inevitably used as blueprints for today’s gadgets, according to museum officials.
The exhibit also created thanks to Exhibit Envoy, a nonprofit that helps provide museums with meaningful and diverse exhibits. According to the Museum on Main, the exhibit is also based on the initial display iterations at the Hayward Area Historical Society and Los Altos History Museum.
“A wide variety of gadgets, both recognizable and strange, will be on display in Gadgets Galore!, illustrating how industrialization transformed every American household in the 19th-century,” museum officials said in a recent press release.
“Some of the most fascinating gadgets on display are almost unrecognizable today,” officials added. “However, as Gadgets Galore! demonstrates, each gadget we use today can be traced back to the inventions and technology from this period of industrialization.”
Some of the items on display include a 1930s Kenmore washer that was originally owned by a Pleasanton family, as well as a variety of flat, steam and electric irons.
Other novelty gadgets featured in the exhibit include a Roomba, a 1930s Sunbeam toaster and a variety of classic telephones — all of which were lent to the museum by various people and range from a 1920s candlestick model to early-2000s flip-phones.
Museum curator Ken MacLennan noted in the press release that the exhibit was originally developed for historic homes, but that the museum was able to adapt the show for the museum’s exhibit galleries.
He added that the most difficult part about curating this particular exhibit was integrating the scavenger hunt aspect of the exhibit in the adapted display context.
“The historic-home version invites you to find the predecessors of modern gadgets in the home’s own furnishings,” MacLennan said. “Without an actual dining room, kitchen and so forth to present that context, we grouped the items in cases and themed displays that would make the items too easy to find — but our permanent Pleasanton history exhibit displays several appropriate items without giving the game away so quickly.”
If you’re not in the mood for a scavenger hunt, there is also another event happening this month in downtown Pleasanton for history lovers.
Next Tuesday (Nov. 19), a scholar-actor portraying Benjamin O. Davis Jr. — a World War II U.S. Air Force pilot — will be speaking at the Firehouse Arts Center as part of the Museum on Main’s Ed Kinney Speaker Series.
The monthly program brings in people who portray historical figures and answer questions about those figures during the event.
According to the National Museum of the United States Army, Davis played an integral role in getting the Air Force to open its doors to African American and Black soldiers. He was a commander of the Tuskegee Airmen — an all-African American squadron of fighter pilots — and a four-star general, according to the museum.
He died in 2002 at the age of 89.
“Benjamin O. Davis Jr had a massive impact on expanding opportunities for African American soldiers by helping to integrate the Air Force,” Rachel Brickell, director of education for the Museum on Main and the coordinator for the speaker series, said in a press release. “He fought racism and discrimination during his entire military career while also being a brilliant pilot and commander during WWII.”
“An Afternoon or Evening With … Benjamin O. Davis Jr.” featuring James Armstead will have two showings on Nov. 19 at the Firehouse, one at 2 p.m. and another at 7 p.m. There will also be a virtual showing on Nov. 26.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit museumonmain.org.
