By: Brett Zongker, ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) The building is far from finished, but Newseum curators installed their first artifact Wednesday -- an item so big they'll put up the rest of the museum around it.
The world's first news satellite truck was gingerly lowered by a crane into what will be the new home of the museum dedicated to journalism and the First Amendment.
The CONUS 1 satellite truck helped transform local television news in 1984 by allowing stations to cover national stories without depending on the major networks, said Newseum curator Carrie Christoffersen. Hubbard Broadcasting and CONUS Communications used the first satellite truck. Four years later, at the 1988 presidential nominating conventions, dozens of stations used similar equipment.
The truck will eventually be in one of the first exhibits Newseum visitors will see, along with a CNN video satellite phone and a pre-Civil War photo wagon that allowed photographers to develop pictures in the field, Christoffersen said.
The original Newseum, across the Potomac River in Arlington, Va., was open from 1997 to 2002. It closed when officials at its parent organization, the Freedom Forum, decided to build a new facility on Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol. The $400 million complex is to open in fall 2007.
Multimedia exhibits, theaters, and a broadcast studio will eventually fill seven levels, giving the museum about three times as much space as it had previously.
"The old favorites, like the old newspapers and interactive newsroom, are all coming back and will be expanded," Newseum spokesman Michael Fetters said.
The First Amendment will be etched in stone at the entrance. The Newseum's central theater is expected to be a four-dimensional experience that will have vibrating seats to enhance films including the story of Edward R. Murrow's legendary CBS radio reports from a London rooftop during the Battle of Britain.
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