Posts Tagged 1980s
1989 Honda Accord
Inline 4-cylinder engine, overhead camshaft, 119 cubic inches displacement, 98 horsepower
Using a front-wheel drive layout in a front-engine car allows for a compact design, but it requires some clever packaging under the hood. The Accord’s automatic transmission is combined with a differential into a single unit called a transaxle, mounted on the passenger side of the engine. The transverse-mounted engine has three valves per cylinder – two intake and one exhaust.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
1980s, 20th century, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
Engines Exposed: 1985 Mazda Wankel Rotary Engine
Two rotors, turbocharged, fuel-injected, 80 cubic inches displacement, 182 horsepower
This cutaway brings new meaning to “Engines Exposed!” Felix Wankel’s motor eliminated up-and-down pistons, developing its power directly in rotating motion. Fewer parts, less weight and a smaller package were advantages of the design. Imperfect seals, poor fuel economy and dirty emissions were drawbacks. Mazda put rotaries in several production models in the 1960s and 1970s, but the fuel-hungry Wankels are now largely relegated to performance vehicles.
Asia, 20th century, 1980s, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars
It’s an old museum-related joke: You don’t feel old until you see your toys exhibited as historic artifacts. Okay, so I felt a bit aged the first time I saw that Star Wars lunchbox in Your Place in Time, but I never questioned its right to be there. For us Gen X types, few things are so much of our time as Star Wars.
While I was around when all three of the original films were in theaters, most of my viewings came via videotapes recorded from HBO airings. (Heh, a Star Wars viewing still doesn’t feel quite right to me unless it starts with this.) Not until Return of the Jedi arrived in 1983 was I old enough to see one of the movies on the big screen. I still remember being thrilled by the sarlacc pit battle and the speeder bike chase, being saddened at Yoda’s death, and being generally grossed out by Jabba the Hutt. Disgusting or not, it was satisfying to finally see that vile gangster after hearing his name dropped ominously in the first two movies. All in all, it was a magical experience, and the reason that I don’t personally rate Jedi as a lesser work than its predecessors. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, 20th century, 1980s, 1970s, toys and games, space, popular culture, movies, childhood, by Matt Anderson
The 1946 Lamy's diner, as it appears today in Henry Ford Museum. THF77241
Back before diners were considered revered icons of mid-20th-century American culture, Henry Ford Museum's acquisition of a dilapidated 1940s diner raised more than a few eyebrows. Was a diner, from such a recent era, significant enough to be in a museum?
Happily, times have changed. Diners have gained newfound respect and appreciation, as innovative and uniquely American eating establishments. A closer look at Lamy's diner reveals much about the role and significance of diners in 20th-century America. Continue Reading
Massachusetts, 1980s, 1940s, 20th century, restaurants, Henry Ford Museum, food, entrepreneurship, Driving America, diners, by Donna R. Braden
Unearthing the Atari Tomb: How E.T. Found a Home at The Henry Ford
Every year, as we plan for Maker Faire Detroit behind the scenes, The Henry Ford’s curators think about what items from their collections might be brought out for special display during the event. At this year’s Faire, a new acquisition will make its public debut—items retrieved from the infamous “Atari Tomb of 1983” in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
As any good folklorist will tell you, urban legends usually prove to be fabrications of truth that have gone awry and gained their own momentum, spread by word of mouth and media publicity. But sometimes—urban legends turn out to be true. In April 2014, excavations at the Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill unearthed every video game fan’s dream: physical evidence that the legend of the “Atari Video Game Burial” of 1983 was indeed a very real event. Continue Reading
New Mexico, video games, technology, Maker Faire Detroit, events, by Kristen Gallerneaux, 21st century, 20th century, 2010s, 1980s
As we gradually work our way through digitizing the vast collections of The Henry Ford, we tackle many projects our staff enjoy: evening gowns, mourning jewelry, and Dave Friedman auto racing photographs, for example, all pose logistical challenges, but we generally look forward to the undertaking. The less glamorous side of digitization, though, is working with objects that are potentially hazardous or unpleasant to handle, like the metal corrosion found on many of the objects we’re remediating as part of our IMLS grant, or a collection of food packaging that had to be emptied and cleaned of decades-old contents. One such project we’ve just completed is material related to the Atari Video Game Burial, in which a struggling Atari, Inc. buried hundreds of thousands of video game cartridges and gaming equipment in a New Mexico landfill in 1983. The Henry Ford’s collection contains photos and other material documenting the excavation of the landfill in 2014, as well as recovered cartridges (like E.T., shown here) and equipment—and even some of the dirt from the landfill. We can now vouch that material recovered from a landfill continues to smell like a landfill for quite some time. View our digitized Atari Burial collection (sans the unpleasant odor) on our collections website now, and watch for an upcoming blog post by Curator of Communication & Information Technology Kristen Gallerneaux to learn more about this material.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
New Mexico, video games, technology, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, 21st century, 20th century, 2010s, 1980s
Remember “New Coke”? April 23, 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of its celebrated—and controversial—introduction. This soft drink lasted less than three months but its legacy lives on as a cautionary tale of marketing and branding. Was this attempted innovation a great marketing blunder or did it turn out to be a great marketing success? It depends on how you look at it.
On April 23, 1985, The Coca-Cola Company introduced “New Coke” as a replacement to the old Coke that had been around for almost 100 years. The sweeter, more syrupy taste of New Coke—based on the company’s Diet Coke formula but without the artificial sweeteners—was intended to compete successfully with Pepsi. Over the years, more and more people—especially young people—had come to prefer the taste of Pepsi over Coke. Now, in numerous blind taste tests among consumers, New Coke successfully beat out Pepsi time after time. Coca-Cola spent over four million dollars developing, testing, and marketing New Coke. The company was sure they had a winner on their hands. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, 20th century, 1980s, popular culture, by Donna R. Braden, beverages
"Adequacy is sufficient: everything else is irrelevant."
Adam Osborne, founder of the quintessential boom-and-bust Silicon Valley tech company, built the first portable computer in 1981. The Henry Ford holds examples of the few products the ill-starred Osborne Computer Corporation ever developed. What can Osborne’s innovative products and boom-and-bust company history tell us about computing and the high-tech economy? Continue Reading
California, 20th century, 1980s, technology, entrepreneurship, computers, by Suzanne Fischer
In October, we announced that The Henry Ford has acquired a functioning Apple-1, a major milestone in the history of computing. However, in September, we acquired another significant computer, and we’ve just added it to our collections website. When Pixar began as a department within Lucasfilm in 1979, it started developing its own computer system to support graphics and visualization. The Pixar Imaging Computer became commercially available in 1986, and was adopted by other organizations with intensive graphic arts and animation needs, such as the Walt Disney Company and the United States Departments of Defense and Forestry. Curator of Communication & Information Technology Kristen Gallerneaux notes about the P-II: “One of our goals at The Henry Ford is to document computing as applied to creative and expressive activities. The Pixar Image Computer II (P-II) is of particular interest not only as a graphics rendering tool … but also as a hugely significant element in the thread that connects the Apple-1 computer to the finely designed and engineered computing devices we all carry with us every day.” See the P-II, as well as the rest of our digital collections related to computers, on our collections website.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
California, 20th century, 1980s, technology, movies, Disney, digital collections, computers, by Ellice Engdahl
Conservators at The Henry Ford have begun to work on the second group of figurines belonging to Polish Mission in Orchard Lake, Mich.
The figurines, which are part of a Panorama created by architect Zbigniew Baran, have educated and entertained audiences, both young and old, for more than 30 years. It’s the only historical Polish Panorama in North America. The 106 characters of the panorama, which dramatizes the history of Poland, are drawn from the struggles of writers, peasants, saints, statesman, soldiers, and artists to remain faithful to the ideals of Christianity and the Polish nation.
Baran, together with THF Head Conservator Mary Fahey and her staff, are working to clean, conserve and restore missing elements of the figures in addition to developing a plan for their long-term care and preservation.
Missing elements such as the sword and crucifix for the Mieszkol I (the first king of Poland) figurine were fabricated using historical images as references. Check out the images (below) of the figurine before and after conservation.
To see the panorama in action, take a look at this video from WDIV Detroit in 2011. To learn more about the efforts to continue the conservation work of the figures, take a look at this site.
Report by Mary Fahey
20th century, 1980s, 21st century, 2010s, Michigan, conservation, collections care, by Mary Fahey
