Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Justin Tackett

Justin Tackett is an assistant professor of English at North Carolina State University. His current book project is The Sound Era: Poetry’s Machinery in the Long Nineteenth Century, which addresses the relationships between poetry and sound technology. Tackett has appeared on BBC Radio and published work in Public Books, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books and others.

Poster of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia

Everyone Wanted Alexander Graham Bell to Debut the Telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. He Almost Avoided it Entirely

The inventor had to be persuaded to make the trip from Boston, then balked at the thought of a delay in debuting his device. But history interceded, and his American innovation got its proper accolades