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11. PLEASE PRESENT ANY PLANS WHICH YOU MAY HAVE IN VIEW FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR DEPARTMENT.

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^[[From the beginning of the work in this section in 1885, the arrangement has been tentative. The transportation exhibit made by the U.S. National Museum in 1888, at Cincinnati, was the first synoptical collection put on view. It covered in some degree the whole field of transportation, and was the first serious attempt made at an exposition to show the development of this important art separate and apart from all others. At the Paris Exposition of 1889 the idea was amplified, and at Chicago in 1893 a splendid exhibit was made, from which at the close of the World's Fair the Field Columbian Museum obtained the material ^[[to form]] the most important transportation collection in the world.
The seed sown nearly a decade ago having borne good fruit, the function of the section of transportation and engineering of the National Museum will in the future be to present only the more important relics relating to the early steps in the history of steam, electrical, and mechanical engineering, leaving the extension of collections showing the development of the art in detail to the department of transportation in the great museum recently founded at Chicago.]]