George C. Maynard Outside USNM

Historic Images of the Smithsonian

George Colton Maynard (1839-1918) is seen here standing in front of the United States National Museum, now the Arts and Industries Building, with his bicycle. He began his career as a telegraph operator in Michigan and, later, Washington, D.C. Maynard worked for the U.S. Army Telegraph Service during the Civil War and in the 1870s for the U.S. Signal Service. He entered the new telephone industry in the late 1870s. Maynard came to the National Museum in 1885 from these developing telegraph and telephone industries, and he amassed a fine collection documenting those technologies during his curatorship. He also served as superintendent of the first telephone company in the District of Columbia while he worked at the museum. When he retired as Curator of Mechanical Technology in 1918, he had developed comprehensive collections documenting the work of such figures as Alfred Vail and Samuel F. B. Morse, and business associates, Alexander Graham Bell and Gardner Greene Hubbard.

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 285, Box 23, Folder: 32

Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu