These documents, which cover the period June 1876-August 1877, relate to the U.S. Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. They consist primarily of award reports from the Centennial Commission Bureau of Awards, which presented medals and diplomas to individuals with inventions on display at the exhibition. Included are reports pertaining to Edison's automatic telegraph and electric pen and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone and multiple telegraph. Among the judges were Frederick A. P. Barnard, president of Columbia University; Joseph Henry, director of the Smithsonian Institution; Julius E. Hilgard, geodesist with the U.S. Coast Survey; Emile Levasseur, geographer and professor of the Collège de France; Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow University; and James C. Watson, astronomer at the University of Michigan.