The Exhibitions

Inventing Change: The Whitney Legacy

On September 17th 1798, Eli Whitney purchased the land around the museum. He sought its water rights. East Rock and Mill Rock form the first practical site north of New Haven to harness waterpower. There had been grain mills here for the first 150 years since New Haven’s founding. Whitney came here to build a factory.

Mr Gilbert's Railroad : 11/23/07 - 1/06/08

A.C. Gilbert purchased, redesigned and produced American Flyer trains relatively late in his career. It was also relatively late in the history of American railroads. Airports and highways were reshaping American geography. Gilbert’s trains recollected past power and glory of rail. Gilbert's trains recollected the power and glory of his life. Our Holiday Train Exhibit will follow that journey.

Leonardo and the Exploring Mind (1992)

Discovering the Age of Discovery

On September 13th 1992, the Eli Whitney Museum opened Leonardo & the Exploring Mind, an exhibition of drawings and models created to put visitors in touch with Leonardo, Columbus, and the Age of Discovery.

The Leicester Codex (1996) 

In the demonstration room, visitors were guided through re-creations of some of the observations and experiments that Leonardo himself either described or illustrated in the Codex Leicester. Designed in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History these demonstrations reveal Leonardo as a keen observer who was strikingly ahead of his time.

The Leonardo Challenge (1995-present)

Leonardo demonstrates the origins of invention in the playful application of their imagination.The annual Challenges have engaged over 300 artisans and artists and have produced stunning variations on clothespins, buttons, matches, springs and wooden ice cream spoons.

Champion of Champions (2006)

A.C.Gilbert and the German Shepherd: 1922-1929

Alfred Gilbert was born in 1884 in Salem, Oregon. About the same time, in Western Germany, Max von Stephanitz began to standardize a breed of yellow and grey wolf-like working dog that would become the German Shepherd. It became an icon of a simpler, purer time.

Eye Contact (2005)

A.C. Gilbert graduated from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School in 1909. Gilbert trained to be a physician just as modern scientific medicine ...and the microscope ... displaced 19th century practical medicine. Gilbert added microscope kits to his popular lines of Erector and Chemistry sets in 1934.

Learning Power:  small motors, ...big ideas

1913 was the threshold of the electric age. A.C. Gilbert, age 29, had just conceived a steel construction set. His Erector Set's girders modeled the new trestles and skyscrapers. Almost as an afterthought, Gilbert added the parts to construct a small battery-powered motor. That began a line of experimental motors that would become the heart of the Erector Set.

Classical Blocks

Blocks from the Gilbert Company, from the Gilbert Era, from before and after Gilbert. Explore the evolution of materials, styles of connection, styles of instruction. Artifacts from the Museum's collection; the Collections of Steve Olin, Keith Rancourt and others.

Gilbert & The Radio

1920, Marconi would broadcast opera on England's first commercial station. Within months, A.C. Gilbert would install a transmitter at his New Haven factory. He was the sixth American to hold a commercial licence. His career in radio was brief and yet his radio tower became an enduring passion for technology.

The Kastor Kit:  Coming of Age

A. C. Gilbert sold toys to boys. The boys who received Kastor Kits were most likely 13 to 15 year olds. America had not yet accustoms itself to store-bought toys. As Gilbert's Erector Set had promised to make a hundred toys, the Kastor Kit was a tool.

Trains to the Future (1999)

The year that Eli Whitney began to construct his Armory here, and English man, Richard Trevethick, sent a steam powered locomotive the size of a tea kettle sputtering across the kitchen floor. When Thomas Davenport built the first electric motor a few years later, he built a table top train track and sent the engine round and round. His invention promised locomotives that would arrive in the next century.

Erector:   A.C. Gilbert and the Tools of Learning

Alfred Carlton Gilbert shared his dreams with America's children. He built a world of learning tools. He encouraged active inquiry and adventurous discovery. The Hall of Science was both a place and an idea: give children the right tools, the children will educate themselves. The Eli Whitney Museum celebrates that vision and achievement.

Flyer at 50

1946: The world began to rebuild itself after the devastation and destruction of the second world war. At an age when other men might have begun looking to retirement, A.C. Gilbert set out to add to his immensely popular line of pre-war learning toys, a line of trains redesigned so completely that they bear only the name of the company he purchased in 1983: American Flyer.

Yesterday and Tomorrow:  

The Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden Reaches back to the 1939 World's Fair for it's 14th annual train exhibition. "Yesterday and Tomorrow" boasts scale replicas of some 60 buildings from the famous fair as well as four trains that visitors can control. There are also trains running overhead on a hanging display.

Whistles

Lin Chapman collects whistles: some small, the size of your thumb, some that tower over a tall man. On June 18th, a display of his collection will open at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden. Mr. Chapman's fascination with whistles began a dozen years ago. He was completing a model of a steam engine. His wife asked "where's the whistle?" and the pursuit was begun.