The Unremarkable Battery Operated Wall Clock

Rick Sanford, of Boscobel, WI, created and donated this exhibit.

Alexander Bain of Scotland is generally credited with the first electrically impulsed pendulum clock around 1839-40. He is often referred to as the "father of electric horology". On January 11, 1841, Alexander Bain along with John Barwise, a chronometer maker, took out another important patent describing a clock in which an electromagnetic pendulum and an electric current is employed to keep the clock going instead of springs or weights.

Later patents expanded on his original ideas.

The Unremarkable Pop Top Exhibit

Now showing in the Museum of Unremarkable Objects...pop top tab ornaments. Make one yourself and donate it to the Museum. We would love to feature one of your creations!!

The Unremarkable Tic Tac Toe Exhibit

The metallic ink painting was created and donated to the museum by Anna Zach, who lives in Kenmore, Washington. @annazachart on Instagram *framed in an recycled shadow box by Elegant Decay by Martha

Unremarkable Tic Tac Toe

Unremarkable Tic Tac Toe Games played on three-in-a-row boards can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where such game boards have been found on roofing tiles dating from around 1300 BC. An early variation of tic-tac-toe was played in the Roman Empire, around the first century BC. The early Roman version was known as terni lapilli, or three pebbles at a time. In the mid-1800s, Britain used the name noughts and crosses, with nought referring to the O’s (or zeros) used in the game. The phrase tick-tack-toe wasn’t used until the late 1800s, and there’s some findings that report it might have been used to describe a completely different game. Evidence of these games were found chalked all over Rome, proving how even in ancient times, humans passed the time with games of all kinds. Outside of Rome, similar Tic Tac Toe-like games appeared in ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern civilizations as well as Native American civilizations. The United States officially adopted the name tic tac toe in the 20th century. Historians aren’t completely clear about the origin of the game’s name, but it could be referring to the noise of repetitive ticking or writing that goes along with the game’s play. Tic Tac Toe was brought to the digital world in 1952 as a game called “OXO.” Produced by Sandy Douglas, a British computer scientist, OXO became one of the first known video games that pit human players up against a computer opponent capable of playing perfect games.

Unremarkable Dice

Dice are implements used for generating random numbers in a variety of social and gambling games. Known since antiquity, dice have been called the oldest gaming instruments. Archaeologists can’t pinpoint the first human who threw dice, but they do know this: Unlike many customs that started in one place and then spread, dice-throwing appeared independently all across the populated world. The oldest known dice -dating back at least 8,000 years- consisted of found objects such as fruit pits, pebbles, and seashells. But the direct precursors of today’s dice were bone: the ankle bones of hoofed animals, such as sheep and oxen. These bones -later called astragali by the Greeks- were chosen because they are roughly cube-shaped, with two rounded sides that couldn’t be landed on, and four flat ones that could. Which side would be facing up after a toss, or a series of tosses, was as much a gamble to our ancestors as it is to us today. Evidence found in Egyptian tombs has suggested that this civilization used them as early as 2000 BC. Other data shows that primitive civilizations throughout the Americas also used dice. These dice were composed of ankle bones from various animals. Marked on four faces, they were likely used as magical devices that could predict the future. The ancient Greeks and Romans used dice made of bone and ivory. The dice of most of these early cultures were made in numerous shapes and sizes. The modern day cubical dice originated in China and have been dated back as early as 600 BC. a recent study of dice reveals that truly balanced dice did not really exist until the Renaissance. In the pre-colonial Americas, dice were typically just two-sided, painted on each side. According to archaeologists Warren DeBoer and Barbara Voorhies, native people throughout North America and Mesoamerica constructed dice of a wide variety of materials, such as fruit pits, shells, or teeth, or even split reeds or sticks. The typical die was curved on one side and flatter on the other. Six-sided dice came into use later and may have been introduced by Europeans. On dice, pips are the small dots on each face of a common six-sided die. These pips are typically arranged in patterns denoting the numbers one through six. The sum of opposing faces traditionally adds up to seven. Dice are thousands of years old, yet as popular as ever.