For this book, the author researched ten museums founded prior to 1870, using primary sources. Those chosen comprised a geographically diverse sample of pre-1870 American museums and covered a range of disciplines, among them art, history and natural science. Orosz demonstrates that the early museum curators had worked out the basic form of the American museum by 1870 - that is, institutions that simultaneously promote scholarly research and deliver popular education. He also shows that many innovations in museum practice that have been thought to be developments of later years - such as habitat groups and school tours - were actually devised in the pre-1870 era.