Philadelphia astronomer and surveyor David Rittenhouse made this telescope for his observation of the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun. He used the transit telescope, mounted on protrusions called trunnions so that it could rotate in a vertical arc, to monitor the passage of the sun over the meridian, thus determining solar noon. The telescope helped Rittenhouse maintain the accuracy of his astronomical clock both in his observatory and in the field.

This device, presented to the APS in 1850 by one of Jefferson’s law students (and husband of his granddaughter), was reportedly owned and used by the president. This ”polygraph,” meaning ”writing of many,” helped relieve the tedium of copying documents by hand. As the author of the original document moved one of the polygraph pens, the other moved simultaneously, producing an exact copy. John Isaac Hawkins patented the device in 1803, and Thomas Jefferson and Charles Willson Peale promoted its use. Jefferson, who wrote thousands of personal and professional letters, was a particularly enthusiastic endorser of the polygraph. 

The APS holds two Wedgwood anti-slavery medallions, one of which was likely owned by Benjamin Franklin. Depicting a chained, kneeling slave, and inscribed ”Am I Not a Man and a Brother?,” these medallions were most frequently seen in black on white jasper dip. Other colors (such as the blue and white seen here) may reflect the desire for the medallion to be a fashion statement as well as a political one. English ceramics manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, who was also a committee member of the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, sent a package of medallions to Benjamin Franklin in 1788 for distribution in the United States. Franklin, a former slave owner turned fervent abolitionist, realized the power of such an image for the anti-slavery movement. He replied to Wedgwood, ”I am persuaded it may have an Effect equal to that of the best written Pamphlet, in procuring Favour to those oppressed People.”