The Smithsonian was founded in 1846 after a 10-year fight

The Smithsonian Institution was founded on 10 August 1846, when President James K. Polk signed the act creating it, more than ten years after the United States learned it had been left a fortune by James Smithson, a British scientist who never visited the country.

Smithson, a chemist and mineralogist, died in Genoa in 1829. His will left his estate to a nephew, with a condition: if the nephew died without children, everything would go “to the United States of America” to found, in Washington, “an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The nephew died childless, and the news reached America in late 1835. Turning that news into an institution took ten years:

• 1836: A House committee chaired by John Quincy Adams recommended collecting the gift, and Congress authorised it. Diplomat Richard Rush was sent to London.
• 1838: After two years of legal complications in England, Rush sailed home with 11 boxes holding 104,960 gold sovereigns, plus Smithson’s minerals, library and notes. Melted down, the gold was worth well over $500,000.
• 1838 to 1846: Congress argued. Adams wanted an astronomical observatory; others pushed a national university or an agricultural institute; some doubted the gift was even constitutional.
• 29 April 1846: The final bill passed the House by just 85 votes to 76.

“We have no more right to put off … the appropriation of such a fund, than we have to direct it to our own private purposes.” (Rep. Robert Dale Owen, 1846)

The act placed the new institution under a Board of Regents, which today includes the Vice President and the Chief Justice, and told it to choose a site for a building. Its “Castle” headquarters on the National Mall opened in 1855.

The result is an unusual hybrid. The Smithsonian is not an ordinary federal agency but a “trust instrumentality of the United States”, outside laws such as the Freedom of Information Act. It now runs 21 museums, several research centres and the National Zoo.