Not all history is ancient.It had been forgotten down in the basement.
by Elliot Carter March 06, 2017
Then-Vice President Richard Nixon stopped by the National Archives building on June 29, 1954, to pay his respects at the unveiling of the shrine to the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. Joining him was the president of the Mosler Safe Company, the storied metalworks that built the gold vaults at Fort Knox, the blast doors for the Manhattan Project, and the Navy’s first ironclad warship.
To help illustrate the inner workings of his latest creation for the Archives, Ed Mosler Jr. pointed Nixon to a refrigerator-sized electric model. With the flick of a switch, they watched in dollhouse-scale as a tiny Constitution lowered from its display case and tucked into a subterranean armored strongbox. Lest anyone forget the master safe builder behind this unique device, the model helpfully bore the name “MOSLER,” in 72-point bold font.
Until around the year 2000, this model vault stood guard in the Archives vestibule and delighted onlookers with its twice an hour, on the half hour performance. Mosler originally built it not as an educational device, but as a means of winning the government contract to build a full-scale vault to protect the nation’s founding texts from atomic bombs. “It was a sales tactic,” says Richard O Jones of the Butler County Historical Society in Hamilton, Ohio. “They built this model as a concept and they took it to the National Archives to show them how it would work.”
More:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/national-archives-vault-model-mosler
