Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 by an act of the United States Congress, established using funds bequeathed to the United States by the British scientist James Smithson, who left his fortune to found in Washington an institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge despite never having visited America himself. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with the physicist Joseph Henry serving as its first Secretary, the institution grew from a single building into what is now the world's largest museum, education and research complex, encompassing twenty-one museums and galleries, the National Zoo, and numerous affiliated research centres covering subjects from natural history and air and space to American art, history and culture. Its collections number in the hundreds of millions of objects and specimens, ranging from the Wright brothers' original Flyer aircraft to the Hope Diamond, and its research arm has supported major scientific expeditions and studies across fields including astrophysics, anthropology, tropical biology and paleontology since the nineteenth century. Funded through a combination of federal appropriations, private endowment income and its own earned revenue, the Smithsonian remains, like the British Museum, free to enter for the general public across nearly all of its constituent museums.