Featured Collections

This collection contains a series of interviews conducted in 2015 and 2016 on the business of craft brewing in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The collection includes interviews with brewers and brewery owners from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Additionally, interviews were conducted that cover packaging (canning), distribution, retail sales, and the politics around regulating the alcohol business. The project was developed by Gregory Hargreaves, Hagley's former Oral Historian. Mr Hargreaves also conducted the interviews for the project. Image: A page from a souvenir album for the F.A. Poth Brewing Company in Philadelphia, 1890. Learn more in our digital exhibit Beer & Brewing History at Hagley Museum & Library

22 items.

Better Living was a Du Pont employee magazine created and published by the company's public relations department. The magazine, which began publication in 1946, featured the company's popular advertising slogan "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." In keeping with this branding, its issues featured photojournalistic essays celebrating Du Pont products' contribution to improving American standards of living, features depicting Du Pont employees at work and at leisure, updates on Du Pont activities at home and abroad, and articles extolling free market values and the role of citizen consumers in postwar America.

148 items.

This digital collection includes issues of Business Screen Magazine, a publication for industrial filmmakers, from 1938 to 1973. Hagley would like to thank Rick Prelinger for his generosity in making this resource available to us. Image: Main studio from the control room at Motorola's Semiconductor Products Division in Phoenix, Arizona, from "The Case for Kines" by Ralph Costlow in the September 1969 issue of Business Screen.

275 items.

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America formed in 1912 with the purpose of advising the government on issues facing industry and business throughout the country. The majority of images in this digital collection are photographs that were taken for the Chamber’s publication, Nation’s Business. Published from 1912 to 1999, the monthly magazine proved invaluable in communicating the Chamber’s messages to business and government, and the magazine featured images by many of the country’s most prominent photographers. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety. To learn more about the photographs from Nation’s Business, visit our online exhibit, 100 Years of Picturing the Nation's Business.

1818 items.

Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Cully (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company and producer on many Cinecraft films until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations.

97 items.

Selection of materials from the David Sarnoff Library including photographs, RCA Annual Reports, Broadcast News, and technical journals and newsletters produced by RCA. Additionally, the collection includes advertisements from RCA and the Victor Talking Machine Company. This digital collection is a very small sample of the entire David Sarnoff Library at Hagley. For more information visit the David Sarnoff Library Project site.

875 items.

This collection of films and commercials documents the research, development, training, safety measures, products, and promotional aspects of DuPont Company history. The moving images include commercials, short films, feature films, and television programs. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

205 items.

Based in Wilmington, Delaware, Frank Earle Schoonover (1877-1972) was a prolific commercial illustrator, artist, and avid photographer. Over the course of a six-decade career, he completed more than twenty-five hundred works, primarily illustrations for magazines and books but also landscapes, portraits, murals, book plates, sculpture, and stained-glass windows. This collection consists of negatives taken by Schoonover, largely for use as source material for his artwork. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

3792 items.

MCI Communications Corporation (MCI) was a large telecommunications company. It was organized in October 1963 in Joliet, Illinois as Microwave Communications, Inc. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

1781 items.

The publication of the United States Chamber of Commerce. All issues from 1914 to 1999 have been digitized.

1114 items.

Organized in Ohio in 1895 with the goal to protect American goods from foreign competition and to promote trade expansion, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) continues today as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. This digital collection contains a selection of images primarily dating to the 1960s and 1970s. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. Read more about the collection on the NAM Project News site.

1962 items.

A collection of approximately 200 interviews conducted between 1953 and 1990 with people who lived and worked in New Castle County, Delaware. The recollections of the subjects cover a period from about 1900 to 1960. While the majority of the interviews are with those who have a connection with the DuPont Company or du Pont family either as employees or inhabitants of the area surrounding the company's operation on the Brandywine River, the collection also includes interviews with those who worked in other industries in Delaware during this era such as Hodgson Woolen Mill, Lobdell Car Wheel Company, Hoopes Brother & Darlington, and Joseph Bancroft & Sons. In addition to documenting work and labor during this period, the interviewers delve deeply into the social and cultural lives of their subjects. Issues related to domesticity, gender, education, childhood, ethnicity, medicine, etc. are among the topics covered in the interviews. Also of note are interviews with a journalist (Fred Reybold) and an early broadcaster (Willard Wilson) who worked in Delaware. Image: Vance Mitchell during 1968 interview.

501 items.

Incorporated in 1846, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company became the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. This collection of more than 5200 negatives from the official Pennsylvania Railroad files largely depict PRR trains, tracks, equipment, and facilities. The collection also contains numerous views of similar facilities and equipment on other railroads, of nearby buildings and properties, or of standardized equipment and accessories that were collected by the PRR for reference. The negatives were digitized to positives for online access. Most of the digital images seen here are black-and-white, low resolution copies produced from the original negatives. Image: Locomotive 3535.

5397 items.

A selection of items from a collection that documents Sperry's UNIVAC Division and predecessor organizations including the Remington Typewriter Company, the Rand Kardex Company, and the Sperry Gyroscope Company. The content of the digital collection primarily includes product images of computers from the 1950s to 1970s. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. Image: UNIVAC 9300 system.

370 items.

‘Sponsored film’ defines a variety of motion picture productions funded by businesses, organizations, or governments that dictated the point of view, audience, and intent of the film. Industrial or business films are a sub-genre of sponsored films with content that marketed products and ideas, touted a particular company or industry, trained employees, and explained manufacturing or transactional processes around the creation and sales of products and ideas. The Sponsored and industrial motion picture film collection at Hagley is an artificial collection compiled by curators that includes single motion picture films or small sets of films acquired via purchase or donation. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety. Image: Still from "Fountain of Happiness" sponsored by the Weber Dental Manufacturing Company, circa 1950.

35 items.

A leading American interior designer of the mid-twentieth century, William Pahlmann (1900-1987) was well known for his use of bold colors, textures, and tendency to mix antique with modern furnishings. Pahlmann played a major role in organizing and elevating the status of interior design as a profession. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety. The online collection primarily consists of interior design drawings and photographs. Image: Design for Columbus Hotel in Miami.

274 items.