The husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames created special exhibits and educational films. One of the most well-known was the interactive exhibit Mathematica: A World of Numbers … and Beyond—that continues to charm schoolchildren and adults into embracing math.
Starring the Selectric
Set at an advertising firm in 1960s Manhattan, New York, the contemporary hit television drama Mad Men offers a lush portrait of mid-century modern style, replete with IBM Selectric typewriters.
Mathematica: A World of Numbers … and Beyond
Charles and Ray Eames’s interactive exhibition delighted audiences by playfully showcasing concepts from different branches of math, including probability, Boolean algebra and logic. Created when the California Museum of Science and Industry requested a contribution from IBM for its new science wing, Mathematica opened at the museum in 1961, and remained until 1998 as the longest running corporate-sponsored museum exhibition in history. The exhibit remains on display today at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York, and at the Museum of Science in Boston.
The Films of Charles and Ray Eames
Powers of Ten (1968)
The most celebrated of all Eames films, Powers of Ten offers a stunning visual demonstration of the concept of orders of magnitude. In 1998, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, an honor reserved for films of great cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.
The Information Machine (1957)
Created by the Eameses for the IBM Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, The Information Machine is a cartoon exploration of the history of storing and analyzing information.