The Museum of Sleep

12/08/2024

New purchase for the Museum of Sleep collections. We are excited to now own a Relaxapedic Blanket Support. Possibly Better Sleep, Inc.'s greatest innovation, it went at the bottom of a bed to elevate your blanket, for "foot-free sleep" to "end tight, confining covers".

12/02/2024

From Hayao Miyazaki's "This is the Kind of Museum I Want to Make!"

A museum that is interesting and which relaxes the soul
A museum where much can be discovered
A museum based on a clear and consistent philosophy
A museum where those seeking enjoyment can enjoy,
those seeking to ponder can ponder, and those seeking to feel can feel
A museum that makes you feel more enriched
when you leave than when you entered!

To make such a museum, the building must be...
Put together as if it were a film
Not arrogant, magnificent, flamboyant, or suffocating
Quality space where people can feel at home,
especially when it's not crowded
A building that has a warm feel and touch
A building where the breeze and sunlight can freely flow through....

This Kind of Museum.... A museum that is interesting and which relaxes the soul A museum where much can be discovered A museum based on a clear and consistent philosophy A museum where those seeking enjo....

11/30/2024

In an effort to combat sleep deprivation, Anirudh Mepperla, a student at VCU in Richmond, Virginia, led a project for the university to purchase four nap pods so that students could take naps on campus. The pods came from three companies: GoSleep, PodTime, and MetroNaps.

A VCU junior wanted to fix an eternal problem -- how to help college students get more sleep. He may have found the answer.

11/26/2024

We are starting to research the products of Better Sleep, Inc. of New Providence, New Jersey. Founder William Mills Emery (1897-1970) patented this back rest in 1961 (US Patent D190,806), and it was still for sale in their 1973 catalog.

Photos from collectorsweekly.com

11/18/2024

In 1964, Epic Records released the 3-LP set "Soothing Sounds for Baby" by composer Raymond Scott. Originally released in collaboration with the Gesell Institute of Human Development, the volumes are split up into three age groups: Volume 1, for babies 1 to 6 months; Volume 2 , for 6 to 12 months; and Volume 3, for 12 to 18 months. The records came with a short booklet by the Gesell Institute on how to calm babies.

The set has sense been recognized for its proto-ambient music and early electronic experiments, and has been re-released several times on LP and CD, as well as being readily available on streaming music services.

11/13/2024

We are giving away 10 paperback copies of our book “A Most Sweet Sleep: A Compendium of 19th Century Perspectives on Sleep and Dreams”. Email your address to [email protected].

11/08/2024

11/07/2024

We are, indeed, excited to own two large mixed media pieces by the wonderfully talented Kiara Pelissier Studios and look forward to the day in the future when they can be on exhibit again.

10/09/2024

A new addition to the Museum of Sleep collection is something we have been hoping to find for quite some time: the catalog of the exhibit "Dreamstage: An Experimental Portrait of the Sleeping Brain". This landmark exhibition was curated by J. Allan Hobson, a giant of sleep and dream science, along with the photographs of Ted Spagna. It originally was exhibited at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Art, April 23-May 22, 1977, then traveled around the U.S.

10/07/2024

We are excited about this new gift for the Museum of Sleep library: "Headrests of Southern Africa: The Architecture of Sleep" by Bruce Goodall and Frederic Zimer (5 Continents Editions, 2021).

10/01/2024

Another new addition to the Museum of Sleep's Norman Dine collection arrived yesterday. A vintage UPI press photo from October 3, 1958.

"Sleep Saver. New York: Something for the traveler who dislikes sagging mattresses, this folding bed board, which fits snugly into a traveling bag, is to be presented to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as a gift. Dulles has already traveled some 450,000 miles using an ordinary wooden bed board. This model, which can be adjusted to fit under any mattress, sells for $29.95. It's being demonstrated by Norman Dine, of the Sleep Center, in New York.
Editors, FYI: The folding bed board is manufactured by the Bed Mate Co. of San Francisco."

09/30/2024

We are very interested in Norman Dine, the unsung sleep hero who ran the Sleep Center store in New York and New Jersey for decades and was the go-to guy for journalists looking for the latest in sleep gadgets. Our Norman Dine eBay alert led us to this vintage 1960 press photo with the caption "Special prismatic lenses of "Bedspecs" allow reader in bed to lie flat while enjoying book. Novel glasses were invented by Norman Dine." We decided to follow that up by purchasing a pair of the BedSpecs, manufactured by Swift Instruments, Boston. It turns out that they weren't actually invented by Dine, but instead were the creation of Clarence S. Warner of Boston.

09/24/2024

New Museum of Sleep acquisition. A vintage 1960 press photo:
"Special prismatic lenses of "Bedspecs" allow reader in bed to lie flat while enjoying book. Novel glasses were invented by Norman Dine."

09/08/2024

"The sociality of sleep in animal groups" by
Pritish Chakravarty, Alison M. Ashbury, Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin, Barbara Fruth, Roi Harel, and Margaret C. Crofoot.

"Highlights:
* Animals that live in groups do not sleep in isolation.
Research has largely divorced the study of sleep from this social context, focusing on individuals sleeping alone in laboratory settings.
* Technological advances now make it possible to quantify the sleep behavior of many animal species in socially relevant field contexts, opening a new research frontier: the social dynamics of sleep.
* Research on the social dynamics of sleep promises to reveal critical, yet underappreciated, feedback between sleep and structure in animal societies.
* By treating sleep as a collective phenomenon, we propose a new framework that leverages simultaneous monitoring of the sleep of members of social groups, combined with time-series and social network analyses, to investigate how the social environment shapes (and is shaped by) sleep."

Group-living animals sleep together, yet most research treats sleep as an individual process. Here, we argue that social interactions during the sleep period contribute in important, but largely overlooked, ways to animal groups’ social dynamics, while patterns of social interaction and the struct...

09/07/2024

"Sleeping Fisherman"
Alexandre Lafond (1815-1901)

08/28/2024

"Ocelot club" by Life Magazine photographer Al Fenn. 1961.

08/20/2024

Patent US98859A: Improved travelling- sleeping-cushion (Granted to Edward G. Fast, Jan. 18, 1870)

"I, Edward G. Fast, of Washington in the District of Columbia, have invented an apparatus, the object of which is to promote the comfort of passengers in railroad-cars, steamboats, stages, or vehicles of any description, by providing a suitable support for the head and the upper part of the spine, where the backs of the seats are too low to secure it. This comfort is especially adapted to ladies, as it precludes all danger of disarranging their hair-dresses. to secure it. In cases of emergency, this apparatus, when consisting of an air-cushion, can be used as a life preserver."

08/18/2024

It ends today, unfortunately. IKEA's immersive sleep event in New York City.

The IKEA Sleepeasy EventHey, NYC – we’re headed your way with a siesta fiesta! The IKEA Sleepeasy Event—an immersive sleep experience—pulls back the covers on how to get the best rest. New York may be known as The City That Never Sleeps, but we’re here to help change that. Take a peep at t...