Digital Collections

The PQ Company is a manufacturer of silicate-based industrial chemicals. It was founded in 1831 as the Elkington Company, a Philadelphia candle and soap shop. In the 1840s, the company developed a synthetic detergent using a silicate base. By the end of the century, the firm had expanded and begun manufacturing lye, fertilizers, oils, greases, adhesives, fiber, and wall board. In 1888, the company name was changed to the Philadelphia Quartz Company. The name was changed again in 1973 following the relocation of the corporate headquarters to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The PQ Corporation photographic collection (Accession 1984.258) has not been digitized in its entirety. This digital collection is a sample of selected items, largely consisting of images of unidentified employees dating from approximately 1860 to 1940.

38 items.

Incorporated in 1882 as the Virginia Coal & Iron Company, the Penn Virginia Corporation began as a large south Appalachian coal and land company. From 1902 to 1966, the company was primarily a receiver of dividends, rents, and royalties. The company leased portions of its lands to other coal operators, sold timber, operated sawmills, and maintained a limestone quarry, owned the Interstate Railroad, created Cumberland Water Company, and built the First National Bank of Appalachia. It was renamed Penn Virginia Corporation in 1967. The Penn Virginia Corporation photograph collection (Accession 1993.261) cover a broad range of the company's activities, but has not been digitized in its entirety. This online collection is a curated selection of items dating from approximately the 1890s to the 1930s, and consisting largely of glass plate negatives which depict the McCorkle Lumber Co. and its activities, a limestone quarry, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, and the Interstate Railroad in Andover, Virginia.

43 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. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company published The Pennsy for its active and retired employees. First published in June of 1952, the magazine contained updates about updates to equipment and news related to the railroad in addition to personal and professional news about employees, employee outings, cartoons, and educational essays about the company's history. Hagley Library's holdings of the publication are call number f TF1 .P4 in our collections; it consists of 162 copies of The Pennsy dating from volume 1 in 1952 to volume 13 in 1964.

162 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. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company published The Pennsy for its active and retired employees. First published in June of 1952, the magazine contained updates about updates to equipment and news related to the railroad in addition to personal and professional news about employees, employee outings, cartoons, and educational essays about the company's history. The Pennsy magazine negatives (Accession 2017.206) collection consists of photographs, mostly negatives, that appear to have been taken for magazine. When possible, details about the issue associated with the photograph have been included in the metadata accompanying the image.

93 items.

The Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trusts was a financial services company that was founded by Charles Lipshutz and Maurice L. Wurzel as a railroad and steamship ticket agency. In 1915, the firm shifted to banking and became People's Bank. Both the ticket agency and early bank catered to a client base that, like the company's founders, came from the region's Jewish-American and Jewish immigrant community. Multiple mergers and name changes followed; a 1923 merger with the People’s Trust Company to become People’s Bank and Trust, then a name change to the Colonial Trust Company after a 1927 merger with that company, followed by a 1930 merger with the The Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities and a name change to The Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trusts in 1947. In 1955, a merger with the First National Bank of Philadelphia eventually led to the new name of First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust Co, later abridged to First Pennsylvania Bank. This digital collection consists of annual reports issued by the company between 1947 and 1959.

12 items.

The Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. is an energy utility and transmission distributer based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Arising from a business merger, the company was founded on June 4, 1920, and soon after began providing energy to eastern and central Pennsylvania. Renamed PP&L Corporation circa 1995, the company continues to operate as an energy provider within northeastern Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Power & Light Company photographs (Accession 1983.246) collection consists primarily of photographs that depict sites of various PP&L subsidiaries and those directly operated by the company. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. This digital collection is a selection of sound recordings from the collection; some of these recordings describe power generating plants and infrastructure, while others are records of supervisors' meetings about corporate management and policies.

35 items.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the decline of the northeast's and midwest's dominance of manufacturing. The records in this collection provide nearly comprehensive coverage of corporate matters for the entire time span and reasonably complete coverage of the functional departments from 1920 to 1950, with less coverage from 1893 to 1920 and from 1950 to 1968. This digital collection primarily offers a guide to accessing these records onsite. It also includes some incidentally digitized material from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company records (Accession 1807) collection.

14 items.

In preparation for its 1946 centennial, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company commissioned the engineering firm of Coverdale & Colpitts to prepare a comprehensive history of the company. The commission involved the creation of two products. The first was this detailed four-volume history of the PRR System as it existed in 1946 for the use of management only. The data collected was subsequently utilized to produce the second product, Centennial History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, which was mass distributed. The former work was printed in a limited edition of 100 copies which were strictly controlled and issued only to certain corporate officers, making it an essential but extremely rare source for PRR history. As its title indicates, this is not a narrative history, but rather a statistical compilation which accounts for the construction, financing and corporate succession of every segment of the PRR System to 1946. As very little mileage was added after that date, it practically covers the entire railroad. The volumes are arranged in the form of a chart of corporate succession, with the successor company followed by all of its predecessors in chronological order. This publication is part of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company records (Accession 1807).

4 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. The Pennsylvania Railroad negatives (Accession 1993.300) collection contains 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 in this digital collection 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.

5404 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, until the decline of the Northeast's and Midwest's dominance of manufacturing. The Pennsylvania Railroad photographs (Accession 1988.231) collection primarily depicts the Pennsylvania Railroad itself, but also includes numerous views of similar facilities and equipment on other railroads, of nearby buildings and properties, and of standardized equipment and accessories that were collected for reference. Almost all of the photographs are the work of commercial photographers hired on short term contract, but some are prints from the company's own negatives. The collection has been arranged by subject and organized into three series: Equipment, trains, and personnel; Structures and right of way; and Company magazine photographs. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

46 items.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was chartered in 1846 to completing an all-rail road across the state. Between 1855 and 1874, the PRR underwent rapid expansion and emerged as one of the two largest railroad systems in the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. The Pennsylvania Railroad women workers' oral histories (Accession 1998.234) collection consists of two interviews conducted in 1998 in West Chester, Pennsylvania with five women who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. They describe how they acquired their positions and their experiences working for the company. Topics discussed include wages, uniforms, sexism in the workplace, and the working environment during World War II.

3 items.

Pew Charitable Trusts is a major philanthropic organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Now America's second largest private foundation, Pew has traditionally concentrated their resources in the Philadelphia region, assisting secondary schools, libraries, seminaries and hospitals. In recent years, however, they have adopted a proactive approach to grant-making. They now initiate programs and identify agencies capable of implementing them. In the 1980s, Pew launched two new programs, the Health Policy and the Biomedical Scholar Programs. These initiatives have funded important work in medical education, biochemistry, AIDS research, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. This digital collection represents a small selection of materials from their records in the Hagley Library's Manuscripts and Archives Department.

20 items.

The Philadelphia Commercial Museum (PCM) was a museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its collections were focused on worldwide manufacturing and trade, with an emphasis on domestic and foreign commerce relations. The museum operated from 1897 to 1994 and was also known as the Philadelphia Museums and the Philadelphia Civic Center Museum. Curatorial areas of note include extensive African, Asian, and South American collections, as well as a large ship model collection. PCM also served as a location for conventions and trade shows through the 1990s; it was affiliated with the Port of History Museum in Philadelphia. The bulk of the Philadelphia Commercial Museum records (Accession 2469) material dates from the 1910s to the 1990s. This collection includes photographs, diagrams, object inventories, financial ledgers, board minutes, advertisements, brochures, and trade publications. The collection would be useful to researchers interested in Philadelphia museums and the history of trade and commerce. The collection has not been digitized in it's entirety.

13 items.

The Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad was a rail line connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburgh via Harrisburg. It is still an important cross-state corridor, composed of Amtrak's Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line, SEPTA's Paoli/Thorndale Line and the Norfolk Southern Railway's Pittsburgh Line. The Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Main Line bridge photographs (Accession 2012.237) collection consists of photographs of thirty-nine bridges on the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. The photographs were taken by or for the company as a form of property documentation. The photographs show the Main Line suburbs before they were built up when the roads and streets were much more rudimentary. The original photographs were digitized and the scans donated to Hagley Museum and Library by Stephen J. Agostini, a former employee of Conrail and webmaster for the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society.

40 items.

Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS), the nation's first mutual savings bank, was founded in 1816. In 1927 the Society commissioned Howe and Lescaze, a local architectural firm that had previously designed traditional style banks for the institution, to draw up plans for a new building to be constructed at the corner of 12th and Market Streets. The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) photographs (Accession 1993.302) collection is composed of materials from two Philadelphia mutual savings banks which date from the first half of the nineteenth century. The collection has been divided into two series: Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) and Western Savings Fund Society (WSFS) which was merged with PSFS in 1982. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. This digital collection offers a small selection of materials from the collection associated with the construction of the PSFS building at 12th and Market Streets; images of the building's design, construction, and interiors, along with articles and promotional materials about the building.

878 items.

The Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company was the country's largest producer of anthracite coal from 1871 through the 1920s. At one time it controlled over 40 per cent of the country's anthracite reserves and owned the world's largest anthracite breaker. The Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company photographs (Accession 1980,318) collection consists of two volumes of photographs that portray in detail the process of mining and processing anthracite coal. The first concerns the mine interiors, miners, and their machinery. The second covers the coal once it reaches the breaker. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. This selection of material primarily shows the company's operation in Locust Summit near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, and comprises 86 photographs that detail the steps of mining and processing anthracite coal.

86 items.

The Philadelphia railroad stations, Red Arrow Lines trolley track and bus photographs (Accession 1995.238) collection documents some of the activities of the various public and private transportation agencies that were active in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs in the years between 1927 and 1965. These include the Pennsylvania Railroad (1846-1968), the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company (1936-1970), the Passenger Service Improvement Corporation (1960-1965), the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Compact (1961-1965), and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA (1963- ). The majority of this small collections consists of photographic materials depicting transportation centers, buses and trains, and other mass transit infrastructure, including Philadelphia's Suburban Station, 30th Street Station, and the Penn Center complex. Other photographs document promotional activities conducted by transit agencies. There is also an undated rental brochure for the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Building and promotional material from the Laclede Steel Company.

28 items.

Incorporated in 1884, the Phoenix Bridge Company specialized in railroad bridges, both long-span truss bridges and movable bridges of the swing, bascule and vertical lift type. The company also produced and erected structural iron and steel work. In the early 20th century, Phoenix built a number of very large bridges, the most notorious of which was the Quebec Bridge over the St. Lawrence (1900-1907). The company declined during and after World War II; the works closed in June 1949 and the company became a Barium Steel Corporation subsidiary until being shut down entirely in 1962. The Phoenix Bridge Company photographs (Accession 1971.916) collection is largely composed of 20th century photoprints of bridges and construction projects. There are numerous photographs of railroad bridges and of highway bridges, which composed the majority of the company's work in its last decades. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

30 items.

Pierre A. Gentieu (1842-1930) was a long-time employee of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. He began working for DuPont in 1877 and remained a loyal employee until his retirement in 1911. Drawing and photography were among Gentieu’s favorite pastimes. The du Pont’s allowed Gentieu to photograph the DuPont Co. plant, property, family members, and their homes, creating an invaluable photographic record of the company's Brandywine Mills at the turn of the century. The images in the Pierre A. Gentieu Brandywine River Valley photographs (Accession 1970.001) collection include the DuPont Powder Yards on Brandywine Creek and other company buildings on that site, du Pont Family homes (including Windmar, Rokeby, Pelleport, Swamp Hall, and Eleutherian Mills, which was converted to a workers' club during Gentieu's years of employment), DuPont Company workers and their homes and families, Delaware School Districts twenty-three and seventy-five, Wilmington-area churches (including Mt. Salem and St. Joseph's), and probably the only extant images of the aftermath of late nineteenth century black powder explosions on the Brandywine.

356 items.

Pierre A. Gentieu (1842-1930) was a long-term employee of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company who created an invaluable photographic record of the company's Brandywine Mills at the turn of the century. He was born in southwestern France in 1842, and emigrated to the United States around 1859. Gentieu began work in the Hagley Powder Yard in June, 1877. In 1881, he was appointed yard clerk by Francis Gurney du Pont, who took Gentieu with him when he established the smokeless powder plant at Carney's Point, N.J. in 1890. Gentieu also developed an amateur interest in photography, and between 1889 and 1910 he produced several hundred views of the Hagley Yards and their immediate surroundings. He was serving as the company's chief storekeeper at his retirement in 1925. The Pierre Gentieu papers (Accession 0503) collection offers correspondence with du Pont family members and coworkers, an account book of powder packed at the Hagley Yard (1858-1902); a record book with lists of explosions (1882-1909); time work sheets of powdermen during the 1890s; and a list of the principal events in the powder yards from 1882 to 1911. This document describes the work process to manufacture black powder at Hagley and several accidents that took place during this period.

10 items.

The Plymouth Cordage Company of North Plymouth, Massachusetts, was founded in 1824 by Bourne Spooner (1790-1870), an ardent abolitionist whose commitment to free labor ideology led the company to implement generous employee benefits and facilities for its workers. By the late 19th century, the company had become a major international manufacturer of rope and twine. Its products were in heavy use within shipping and fishing industries, though its binder twine was also in widespread use on farms. After serving as the largest employer in Plymouth for over 100 years, the company went out of business in 1964. Its assets were purchased by the Columbian Rope Company in 1965. The Plymouth Cordage Company album (Accession 1982.231) documents the company's operations in the years around 1900. It contains sixteen photographs of plant interiors showing machinery and manufacturing processes, and two exterior views of the building.

16 items.

Hagley Library's Postcards of motels, roadside attractions, restaurants, etc. in the United States (Accession 2007.214) collection comprises 130 postcards dating from approximately 1930 to 1960. The postcards depict motels (including motor courts and cabins), restaurants, roadside attractions, and scenic views from thirty-ones states across the United States. The postcards depict famous and notable destinations like Hollywood Boulevard and the Lincoln Memorial as well as well as regional attractions and small tourism-based businesses.

130 items.

This collection features nearly 500 aerial photographs of the Brandywine valley taken in 1970 in a project conceived and sponsored by Ellice and Rosa McDonald. A project dedication states that the photographs are "for all of the people who have lived or worked on the Brandywine and for those who have loved it." These images feature aerial views of Brandywine River valley locations in southeastern Pennsylvania and Delaware including factories, cities and towns, historical sites, natural landmarks, bridges, neighborhoods, and other places of importance.

495 items.

The items in this collection offer a selection of the promotional comic books held in the Hagley Library's collection. These works were generally, though not always, produced by corporations and other business entities for the purposes of advertising a product, managing a company's public image, or providing consumer education. A number of these works were also produced with the goal of influencing public opinion regarding socioeconomic political issues such as organized labor and government regulation of businesses. This digital collection does not include all of the Hagley's holdings of promotional comic books. New items may be added periodically.

78 items.

This digital collection of twenty-five pamphlets dating from 1936 to 1956 contains the Hagley Library’s holdings of the publications of the Public Affairs Committee. Founded in 1936, the Committee’s editorial and publishing mission was to synthesize and summarize contemporary research on social and economic problems in the United States for popular public consumption in the form of accessible, affordable pamphlets. Between 1936 and 1986, the Committee published over two hundred pamphlets on topics ranging from industrial policy, war and society, medical science, income distribution, consumer protection, economic policy, gender inequality, the social sciences, and more. While its approach to these topics sometimes led to accusations of socialist or un-American sympathies, its most controversial publications addressed race relations, particularly ‘The Races of Mankind’ (1946), which was banned from use in the U.S. Army for its rejection of biological theories about racial hierarchy.

25 items.

The Pusey & Jones Corporation built ships and machinery in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1848, Joshua L. Pusey (1820-1891) and John Jones (1818-1897) formed the partnership of Pusey & Jones, with machine shops and a factory for the building of engines. In its initial operations, the firm built general machinery and steam engines and did a variety of repair work. In 1853, it entered the field of shipbuilding. In 1867, the firm expanded into the manufacture of papermaking machinery; by the 1890s the company was one of the largest manufacturers of such machinery in the world. This digital collection includes more than 2,100 of the approximately 6,700 images in the Pusey & Jones photograph collection; it has not been digitized in its entirety.

2222 items.

The Radio Corporation of America was incorporated in Delaware on October 17, 1919, and changed its name to RCA Corporation on May 9, 1969. For over fifty years it was one of the country’s leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The RCA Victor Camden/Frederick O. Barnum III records (Accession 2069) collection consists of three series: Secretary's files; B.L. Aldridge files; and the Camden Technical Library files. The collection is largely RCA technical reports, standards, engineering notebooks, manuals and miscellaneous publications. These records were salvaged by company historian Frederick O. Barnum III from the RCA Camden Plant's photo lab after the plant had been vacated by successor company Martin Marietta Corporation in April 1993. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

3 items.

The Victor Talking Machine Company was a Camden, New Jersey company founded in 1901 by Eldridge Reeves Johnson (1867-1945), a former machinist for the Berliner Gramophone Company. It quickly became a leading U.S. manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records by many of the leading musical artists of the day.. In 1926, Johnson sold controlling interests in the company to a banking firm, who, in 1929, sold the company to the Radio Corporation of America. Successive name and management changes would include the Radio-Victor Division of the Radio Corporation of America, the RCA Manufacturing Company, the RCA Victor Division and, in 1968, RCA Records. The records in the Radio Corporation of America, RCA Victor Division secretary's records (Accession 2658) collection come from the Camden administration building. There are ten volumes of corporation committee minutes dating from 1912 to 1931, which cover a wide range of corporate activities. Additional volumes consist of reports from the President to the Board of Directors and production contracts from 1945-1946.

16 items.

While postcards were in existence as early as 1840, postcard collecting became popular in the early twentieth century. It was an accessible and inexpensive hobby, as postcards were plentiful. Collectors of railroad memorabilia often also collected postcards. Railroad postcards generally picture stations, engines, bridges, route scenery, railcar interiors, and accidents. Some collectors sought specific railroads. The Railroad postcards collection (Accession 1995.299) is an artificial collection assembled from a variety of donors and contains over a thousand postcards related to railroads. It has not been digitized in its entirety. Most of the postcards from this collection date from 1900 to 1940 and depict railroad station exteriors, although some show waiting rooms, lobbies, or terminals. Many of the postcards identify the railroads serving the station depicted as well as the station itself.

1036 items.

This collection consists of four films showing a selection of motion and time studies that were managed or designed by Ralph Mosser Barnes (1900-1984). These experiments measured and rated an employee's efficiency while performing a repetitive task. After the study was complete, recommendations were made to management staff on what could be improved to increase productivity, such as employee body movement or position, equipment design, or time allowances. The Ralph Mosser Barnes motion and time study films (Accession 2022.203) collection consists of four films showing a selection of studies that were managed or designed by Barnes. Three films are specific studies that Barnes conducted in 1949 showing people performing various tasks at different speeds. The fourth film, The Ratings of Time Studies, shows the machine operator performance of three manufacturing jobs: forming rug cups, cutting cork tube, and deburring.

4 items.

Ralph S. Yourison (1898-1988) worked as the Power Consultant at E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Spruance Plant in Richmond, Virginia, from the 1940s through the early 1960s. The Spruance Plant had been in operation since 1927, when it was established to produce rayon. In 1935, it was renamed the Spruance Plant in honor of rayon pioneer and Dupont executive, William C. Spruance. Over the decades, it continued to expand. By the 1950s and 1960s, it was producing cellophane as well as new products such as Tyvek, Nomex, and Teflon. During this time, Yourison was named the Spruance Plant's Power Consultant, largely spearheading an effort to reduce energy use through the evaluation of coal by utilization cost. His efforts led to the modernization of the plant's power facilities. Yourison retired from the Dupont Company on March 31, 1963. The Ralph Yourison Dupont Company retirement scrapbook (Accession 2729) contains photographs of the Spruance Plant, Yourison, and other employees. It also includes congratulatory retirement letters, a program outline, and a list of attendees for Yourison's retirement party, as well as a signature list of friends, acquaintances, and coworkers.

17 items.

This digital collection offers a small sample of the approximately 8,000 rare books, catalogs, pamphlets, and other materials held at Hagley Library. In addition to works from our general collections of rare books and pamphlets, this digital collection also features a number of works collected or written by various members of the du Pont family over generations. These include our Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours books and pamphlets, selected from the nearly 300 works in our collections that have been identified as having been brought to the United States by the family during their emigration from France in 1799. Other du Pont family collections, like the Lammot du Pont, Jr. Collection of Aeronautics, are maintained, in part, elsewhere in the Digital Archives, with only the rare materials being featured here. Other materials in this digital collection have been selected from our John Margolies Collection of Travel Ephemera and Penrose R. Hoopes collections.

50 items.

Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) was a French-born American industrial designer that became one of the most well know industrial designers during the middle decades of the 20th century. His work included logos and packaging design for major corporations like Exxon, Coca-Cola, and Lucky Strike, as well as product design for corporations like Studebaker and International Harvester, and the redesign of Air Force One for the John F. Kennedy administration. This digital collection offers selections from two physical collections at Hagley Library. The Raymond Loewy archive (Accession 2251) contains personal papers, business records, and materials generated and maintained by Loewy's New York Public Relations Department. The Raymond Loewy collection of photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 2004.255) contains images of design work Loewy and his firm conducted for corporate American and foreign clients, Loewy's personal photographs, and his speeches and interviews.

303 items.

Chartered in 1871, Reading Company was the holding company for the system of railroads, canals and coal mines assembled by the predecessor Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company between 1833 and 1896. The Reading Company records (Accession 1520) collection consists of the corporate records of the Reading Company (1871-1976), the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company (1833-1896), the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company (1896-1923), and 159 predecessors and subsidiaries. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. The materials here are a selection of records generated by Pinkerton detectives employed by Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, on three different missions. This includes the Molly Maguire materials in Hagley Library’s collection of Reading Company records (with the exception of 8 volumes of stenographic reports of trial proceedings)

104 items.

Red Arrow Lines was a division of the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, a company formed in 1936 by the merger of two transportation companies, the Philadelphia & West Chester Traction Company and the Philadelphia & Garrettford Street Railway Company, both owned by Merritt H. Taylor, Jr. (1922-2010). Over the 1960s, Taylor's unwillingness to allow the company to join competing companies in public-private regional transportation compacts that consolidated services or accepted public regulation in exchange for public subsidies and other benefits led to increased expenses, revenue losses, and reduced ridership. In 1970, the Red Arrow division was sold to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The Red Arrow Lines photographs (Accession 1972.438) collection contains photographs dating from 1899 to 1970 that document transit vehicles, infrastructure, and routes for the Red Arrow Lines and its predecessor transit lines. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

62 items.

Chartered in 1869, the Wilmington & Western Rail Road Company formed to create a rail line connecting Wilmington, Delaware, with Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Over time, however, its footprint shrank. Passenger service was discontinued in 1930, and the company abandoned much of its track in the 1940s and 1950s. A non-profit organization, Historic Red Clay Valley, Inc. (HRCV)., formed in 1960 and today operates the line as a heritage railroad. The Robert E. Wilhelm, Jr. collection of Red Clay Valley materials (Accession 2017.238) includes digital access copies of eight valuation maps created by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1918 for the Wilmington & Western Railroad, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Landenberg Branch. The V-8.3 sheets cover the railroad from the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line to Landenberg, Pennsylvania. The V-9.4 sheets cover the railroad from the west end of Wilsmere Yard (Route 141) to the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line. Also included in the collection are two publications authored or edited by Robert E. Wilhelm, Jr., concerning the history of both the Wilmington & Western Railroad line and Historic Red Clay Valley, Inc. (HRCV). Wilhelm was been a member of Historic Red Clay Valley Inc. since the mid-1980s, serving at times as a board member and as the organization's Director of Administration.

10 items.

The Robert K. Austin picture file on the history of the automobile in America (Accession 1979.262) This collection consists of a picture reference file of American automobiles built between 1877 and 1979. Most pictures are illustrations clipped from magazines and other publications, but there are also some postcards, photographs, and ephemera items. More than 300 American auto-makers are represented in the collection, with particularly good coverage of early automobiles manufactured in the first decades of the twentieth century. The collection is arranged alphabetically by auto-maker; most files contain only one or two images of a single car model, though the files of larger firms such as Ford and Pontiac contain dozens of images of many different vehicle models. Some files contain brief company histories, presumably researched and written by Robert K. Austin. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

41 items.

S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company was founded in 1844 by Samuel Stockton White (1822-1879), a dentist from Philadelphia. By the 1850s, the company was one of the world’s leading manufacturers of false teeth and dental appliances, with sales offices and representatives operating across the globe. Over the course of the 20th century, the company continued to expand. A subsidiary division was founded to apply its patented flexible shaft technology to clients in aircraft, automotive, and other industrial markets. The S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company merged with Pennwalt Corporation in 1968. Following this purchase, the company was restructured, first as the S.S. White Industrial Division in 1972, then to S.S. White Technologies, Inc. in 1988. The S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company photographs (Accession 1972.244) collection has not been digitized in its entirety. Many of the photographs of company personnel, company buildings, corporate events, dental equipment, dental offices and schools in the United States and abroad, and trade shows and exhibitions have been reproduced here. The collection also includes many portraits of identified and unidentified dentists, as well as other unidentified locations, most of which have been excluded from digitization.

158 items.

The Hanford Engineer Works in Hanford, Washington, was constructed between 1943 and 1945 to create the plutonium 239 and uranium 235 used in the atomic weapons needed for World War II. The construction and operation of the facility was sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers, but E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company acted as the prime contractor tasked with constructing and running the Works. During the war, the Hanford Engineer Works employed about 51,000 people worked at the site. Many lived in Richland, a government town established nearby specifically to house employees of the project. In 1946, with the conclusion of World War II, the Hanford Engineer Works was removed from military control, though plutonium production periodically continued, with General Electric replacing DuPont as the primary contractor. The Sage Sentinel was the weekly publication for employees of the Hanford Engineer Works. It contained coverage of work at Hanford, news about World War II, human interest stories, news about upcoming and recent company-sponsored social events, and classified ads for area businesses.

The Saul Zalesch follection of American ephemera is a collection of over trade catalogs, cookbooks, and other printed ephemera from the late 1870s through the 1940s originally collected by Saul Zalesch, an art historian that became interested in the genre while working as a research fellow at Winterthur Library in the 1990s. Zalesch's collection is split between Winterthur and Hagley. Winterthur, whose collections focus on America's artistic, cultural, social, and intellectual history, retained items from the collection concerning the decorative arts. Hagley received the items concerning business history. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. By Zalesch’s request, no fees are charged to scholars for the publication of images from his collection.

9 items.

The Bronfman family of Canada acquired the Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Co. of Waterloo, Ontario, in 1927. By the 1950s, Seagram was one of the world's largest alcoholic beverage firms. "The Seagram Spotlight" photographs (Accession 1996.310) collection is composed of photographs used as illustrations in The Seagram Spotlight, a monthly magazine published by the staff of Seagram Distiller's Corporation and which targeted Seagram's national salesforce and Seagram distributors. The magazine targeted Seagram's national salesforce and Seagram distributors who were collectively addressed as "Seagramerica." The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. The materials here are a small selection of images from the collection depicting the design and construction of the Seagram Building in New York City. Some of the images feature the building's architects, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Phyllis Lambert, and Philip Johnson.

11 items.

Selby, Battersby and Co. was once one of the nation's leading manufacturers and installers of marine decking and industrial flooring. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by George W. Selby (1886-1967) and Edward Battersby (c.1887-1959). In 1978, the company became a subsidiary of Quaker Chemical Corporation; its name was later changed to SB Decking, Inc. The Selby, Battersby and Co. employees photographs (Accession 2008.202) collection documents a celebration held on the occasion of receiving the U.S. Maritime Commission's "M" award for production excellence. The award was bestowed for the company's work in supplying and installing deck flooring for over 400 merchant marine vessels during World War II. The company was the first firm in Philadelphia to receive this honor. The photographs in the collection show the "M" pennant and labor merit badges awarded to all employees of the company. This is a digital-only collection that was provided to the library on a loan for copy basis, and has been included in its entirety.

17 items.

Sewing Machine Times was a bi-monthly trade journal published from 1882 to 1924, during the height of sewing machine manufacturing. The journal provided space for sewing manufacturers, retailers, marketers, and other related professionals to discuss changes and advancements in home and factory sewing machines. A typical issue of the journal contained news stories and articles about about new products, employment notices, advertisements for sewing machines and related home goods, and descriptions of sewing machine retail locations. Hagley Library's holdings of the publication are call number f TJ1501 .S4956 in our collections. The collection comprises seventeen volumes spanning 1891 to 1911, and does not include the entire run of the journal.

404 items.

Before the rise of phonographs and radio, publishers of sheet music dominated the American music industry. The biggest music publishing houses were those of ‘Tin Pan Alley’ in New York City. But throughout the United States, publishing houses, lyricists, arrangers, and composers, often working in partnership with local musical instrument stores, emerged to serve both national and regional consumers. As the American middle class grew during the mid-19th century, musical instruments and the ability to play them (and pianos in particular), became widespread signifiers of respectable middle-class status, and publishers responded to meet this emerging market. By the early 20th century, however, as phonographs became more commercially popular, sheet music was replaced by recorded music. This decline was further hastened by the public’s embrace of radio within the home in the years after 1920. The scores assembled here have been drawn from a variety of collections within the Hagley Library. New items may be added as they are scanned.

49 items.

Shell was formed in 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom. Over the years, it has grown to become a vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, with operations in nearly 100 nations. The company began issuing stainability reports about its environmental performance in 1997. The reports contain information about the company's activities in worker and public safety, environmental impact and sustainability, impact on communities, shareholder reports, and other similar performance data. Hagley Library's collection of sustainability reports from Shell are digital-only copies and date from 1998 to 2020

24 items.

<ol>Simon Bolivar Camacho (1859-1906) was a traveling sales representative for the American Bank Note Company, a dominant American producer of bank notes, stock and bond certificates and similar commercial paper. The Simon B. Camacho papers (Accession 2704) collection includes his diaries between 1892 and 1904. Included with the diaries are typed transcripts made by his grandson. Additionally there are loose papers of both Camacho and his father, Simon Pablo Camacho y Clemente (1824-1883). Camacho's diaries record his business travels in Latin America, but also contain information on daily events in the New York City area, and news of the day. The entries also record domestic, personal and religious reflections, particularly regarding 1903 death of his wife from pneumonia while he was traveling in the Mediterranean.

29 items.

The Sperry Corporation was an electronics company; its UNIVAC Division manufactured the first commercial digital computer. The Sperry UNIVAC division had its origins in the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), founded in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly (1907-1980). In 1950, Eckert and Mauchly sold their firm to Remington Rand, Inc, a major manufacturer of business machines, who continued development of the UNIVAC system. In 1955, Remington Rand merged with the Sperry Corporation, and the UNIVAC Division was retained as part of the newly formed Sperry Rand Corporation. The Sperry Corporation, UNIVAC Division photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 1985.261) collection documents predecessor organizations to the Sperry Corporation. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety. The materials here are a selection from the collection, and primarily include product images of computers from the 1950s to 1970s.

388 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 (Accession 2018.222) 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. The collection is comprised of sponsored films produced for businesses (industrial films) and those produced for organizations promoting business interests. Additionally, it contains educational films with the intent to teach consumerism, energy production, career training, and similar topics with a pro-business message. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety.

120 items.

Stephanie Louise Kwolek (1923-2014) was an American chemist best known for her role in inventing Kevlar. Kwolek began her career in 1946. After graduating from what is now Carnegie-Mellon University with a B.S. in Chemistry, she was hired as a research chemist at DuPont's textile fabrics laboratory in Buffalo, New York. Six years later, she transferred to Wilmington, Delaware to work in the newly launched Pioneering Research Laboratory. Kwolek has been named on a total of twenty-eight patents and won a number of awards for her work, including the National Medal of Technology and Perkin Medal. Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1995 and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003. The Stephanie Kwolek photographs and videotapes (Accession 2014.248) collection contains photographs, albums, press clippings, slide,s and videotapes related to Kwolek's career and achievements, including her work on Kevlar. It has not been digitized in its entirety.

13 items.

Longwood Gardens is a series of formal display gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, that was developed by Pierre S. "P.S." du Pont (1870-1954) after he purchased the site from the Peirce family in 1906. The Peirce family had received this 1,000-acre site as part of a land grant by William Penn (1644-1718). Interested in horticulture, they ornamented the land with trees and plants that were not native to this area. P.S. du Pont and his wife, Alice Beliln du Pont, built a series of formal gardens with fountains on the site. They opened the garden to the public in 1921. In 1937, P.S. created the Longwood Foundation. When P.S. du Pont died in 1954, the property was transferred to the Foundation to operate as a public garden. The Stereo photographs of Longwood Gardens (Accession 1984.246) collection consists of 103 autochrome color glass stereo photographs. The images, dating to circa 1922, depict interiors and exteriors of the garden, conservatory, and residence. The collection has been largely digitized, but has not been digitized in its entirety.

94 items.