Tom D. Crouch is the author of the new book Smithson's Gamble: The Smithsonian Institution in American Life, 1836-1906. His other books include Lighter Than Air. He first joined the Smithsonian in 1974, and is now a curator emeritus at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on the 1836-1906 time period in your new book about the Smithsonian?
A: Today’s Smithsonian is a complex organization made up of 21 museums, research centers dedicated to everything from astrophysics to zoology, specialized libraries and archives, and the National Zoo.
Its scientists and scholars study everything from microscopic creatures to objects at the edge of the universe. Its collections include some 157 million objects, from 3.5-billion-year-old fossils to great works of art, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, and gowns worn by every first lady to the spacecraft that carried the first human beings to the moon and brought them home safely.
The Institution is not only an international center of research and discovery, but a media empire stretching around the globe dedicated to sharing that knowledge with the people of the world.
I have always been fascinated by origins. My question was, how did all of this happen?
Joseph Henry, the first Secretary, envisioned a very small organization run by scientists for scientists. His narrowly focused goal was to encourage research and distribute the results through scientific publications that would be sent across the nation and around the world. He regarded the iconic Smithsonian Castle as a waste of precious resources and vigorously opposed the creation of a museum or a great library.
Spencer Fullerton Baird, a young naturalist whom Henry hired in 1850, had a much more expensive vision for the future of the Smithsonian. He was dedicated to creating a collection that would define the natural and human history of the continent. He drew a generation of young scientist collectors to the institution and sent them ranging across North America, building that collection and using it as the basis for their research.
Taking a step farther, Baird, who followed Henry as the second Secretary, democratized the very notion of a scientific community, enlisting men and women across the nation to help build the collection and contribute their research.
While political pressure ultimately forced Joseph Henry to accept government collections and establish a national museum, it was Baird who took charge of the effort and created an Institution whose goal was to share knowledge with all Americans through publications, the national museums, and displays he and his staff would prepare for fairs and exhibitions across the nation.
Samuel Langley, whom Baird chose to succeed him, continued the process of expansion, establishing the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the National Zoo, and setting in motion the construction of a new national museum building and the Freer Gallery, the Institution’s first art museum. By the time of his death in 1906, the modern Smithsonian had begun to take shape.
I had accomplished what I set out to do in this first book, tracing the evolution of the Institution from its roots to 1906, by which time the foundation was in place and the march toward the future was underway.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: Smithson’s Gamble rests on the foundation supplied by the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Libraries, and the dedicated staff members who maintain and offer the treasures of their collection to researchers. Without the rich historical resources of the Institution, I could never have understood the twists and turns of Smithsonian history, or linked that story to the history of the nation.
I consulted a great many other archives for this project, including the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and a host of state and local repositories, but the SIA provided the foundation.
I wrote the book to better understand the role that the Smithsonian had played in American life. I expected to be surprised, and I was.
I particularly enjoyed getting to know the individuals who had shaped the Institution, from the Secretaries, through the curatorial staff and creative people who mined the collections, to the long-suffering African American employees whose contributions were usually ignored and who were seldom accorded the respect they deserved. Nor was the early Institution an especially comfortable place for the women who worked behind the scenes.
What surprised me? I did not fully appreciate the critical role that Spencer Baird and his strong right arm, George Brown Goode, played in redirecting the course of the Smithsonian from a purely research organization to one in which communicating the results of that endeavor to all citizens of the nation became a second primary objective.
In the process, the Institution not only helped Americans understand the nation, but their place in the natural world. The first federally supported conservation agency was born at the Smithsonian, which played a central role in calling attention to the need to conserve vanishing species.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen and what does it signify for you?
A: I love the title! It sums up so much of what the book is about. The credit goes to Carolyn Gleason, the director of Smithsonian Books, Julie Huggins, my editor, and the members of their staff who suggested the title.
The Institution is rooted in the bequest of an English gentleman with a taste for science. James Smithson was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, who refused to recognize him.
Moreover, as he was born in France, the English government insisted that he was a naturalized citizen, barred from full participation in politics or the military. Disowned by his father and regarded as less than fully English, Smithson can scarcely be blamed for feeling like an outsider. He lived comfortably on his inheritance from his aristocratic mother, which he invested wisely.
From his time at Oxford through his adult years he pursued experimental science, particularly chemistry and mineralogy. He was also an inveterate gambler, haunting the fashionable casinos and gaming rooms of Europe.
He willed his fortune to his only surviving relative, a nephew. If the young man were to die without issue, however, the money was to go to the United States to found a Smithsonian Institution in the nation’s capital to be dedicated “to the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”
Why? We can only speculate. Smithson had once remarked that his name would “live on in the memory of men when the titles of the Northumberland’s and the Percys are extinct or forgotten.”
It seems clear that his decision to select the government of the U.S. as a secondary legatee was an effort to support the research to which he had devoted his life while ensuring that he would indeed be remembered. His unfortunate nephew died young without marrying or fathering children. The rest is history. Smithson’s Gamble succeeded to a degree he could scarcely have imagined.
Q: What do you see looking ahead for the Smithsonian, especially given the present political climate?
A: The Smithsonian has faced difficult times in the past. For the first time, however, the federal government is attempting to broadly dictate the content that the Smithsonian and other agencies offer to the public. The Secretary and the Board of Regents governing the Institution find themselves attempting to accommodate political authority while defending their independent voice.
I have known and admired Secretary Lonnie Bunch for close to half a century and am confident that if anyone can navigate these treacherous waters successfully, he can. I envy the future historian who will chronicle this epoch in Smithsonian history. That will be a challenge!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My wife assumed that with Smithson’s Gamble complete, I would truly retire. That is not the case. My friend and colleague Michael Neufeld and I are working on the next volume of the Smithsonian history, which will carry the story to 1976, or so.
My portion of the project will cover the years from 1906 through the depression of the 1930s. Michael will carry it forward to the end. That, at least, is the plan. At age 80, I want to come as close to that as I can! Thanks for the great questions.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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