Communications & Trade in the Science & Technology Collection
Artifacts relating to all types of merchandising and communication are also held within the Science & Technology Collection.
Trade
The Louisiana State Museum has a significant number of items related to trade in the state. The museum has a growing collection of store signs from various businesses around New Orleans and merchandising equipment from businesses around the state. Highlights of these items include a cash register used in Riseman Men’s Clothing Store in Opelousas, LA in 1911, a K&B drugstore shopping basket, and a sign advertising Pontchartrain Beach amusement park from 1939.
Exchange Medium
The Museum’s currency collection is quite extensive with coins and bills from all over the world. Of particular interest are early bank notes from Louisiana, the United States, and the Confederate States of America. Local banks represented include the Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana and the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company. The museum also maintains an extensive collection of U.S. coins minted in the Old U.S. Mint in New Orleans and elsewhere. Now home to the New Orleans Jazz Museum, the Old U.S. Mint itself is a monument to the coining of currency that went on throughout the second half of the nineteenth century in Louisiana.
Transportation
The Transportation collection can be divided into artifacts related to land, air, and water travel. Notable land items include stirrups from the Battle of New Orleans, leather saddlebags from the Spanish-American War, and a horse-drawn ambulance from WWI. Of particular note is a modified 1956 Ford Thunderbird driven by Louisiana native L.W. “Knot” Farrington at the 1959 Nationals at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. This record-breaking car is now on display at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame & Northwest Louisiana History Museum in Natchitoches, LA.
Air Items include several airplanes on display at the Wedell-Williams Aviation & Cypress Sawmill Museum in Patterson, LA. The Wedell-Williams Aviation Collection focuses on the legacy of Louisiana aviation pioneers Jimmie Wedell and Harry Williams who formed an air service in Patterson in 1928.
Water items include various models of famous steamboats and lesser-known sailing vessels that traveled through Louisiana waters, a ship’s wheel from the steam towboat C. D. O’Conner, doors from the U.S.S. New Orleans, and several Louisiana dugout canoes. On display at the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge is a submarine that was found submerged in Lake Pontchartrain in 1878, and is believed to have been used by Confederate troops during the Civil War.
