Saturday, July 22, 2006

Barnum's Museum #5


"This wierd looking contraption, an early model of Barnum's Talking Machine, was a popular exhibit. When the bellow was squeezed by a treadle, air was forced through a series of flaps, producing squeaky noises roughly resembling the sounds of words. The same principle is used in the talking doll".

Posted by Buckles at 7/22/2006 12:16:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this a photgraph from one of Barnum's museum's back in the 1860's?
if I rember correctly Barnum purchased the Old Scudder's museum in NYC in the early 1840's.
It caught on fire around 1864.
He spent a fortune building and collecting stuff for the New American Museum,but it was burned down in 1866.
Its believe it was burned down on purpose by people against Barnum.

27 July, 2006 16:20

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