This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Researchers interested in accessing audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Betty Parsons Gallery records and personal papers, 1916-1991. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Walton Family Foundation.
12.49 Cubic feet (consisting of 24 boxes, 2 half boxes, 4 folder, 18 oversize folders, 3 flat boxes (partial), plus digital images of some collection material.)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Business ephemera
Ephemera
Date:
circa 1860-1967
Summary:
A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Automobile Industry forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana
Scope and Contents note:
This material dates from the late nineteenth and early twentith century and consists primarily of catalogues, scattered correspondence on letterhead stationery, printed advertisements (particularly from Town and Country), instruction manuals, periodicals, newspaper clippings, handbooks, pamphlets, company histories, photographs, caricatures, road maps, tour guides, tickets, membership cards, and articles and books--mostly from manufacturers and dealers of automobiles. A large amount of the material is from pioneer manufacturers including Ford., Reo, Duryea, Packard, Auburn, Studebaker, Hupmobile, Franklin, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobiles, and Buick.
There is a substantial amount of material from manufacturers and dealers of parts and accessories for automobiles which include horns, tires, windshield wipers, paints, autometers, springs, automobile tops, telephones, chains, clocks, heaters, transmissions ' carburetors, engines, spark plugs, anti-freeze, license plates and gasoline. Samples of permits, operator's licenses, titles, registrations and traffic rules and regulations are also documented. Companies that provide services such as car rentals, garages and maintenance of automobiles are also included. There are a number of images of automobiles, including photographs and illustrations in catalogues which document the developement of automobiles. Images include: Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, John Jay Gould, John Jacob Astor, the Vanderbilts and their cars.
Series 1: Manufacturers and Dealers of AutomobilesandSeries 2: Manufacturers and Dealers of Automotive Parts and Accessoriesare arranged alphabetically by name of company.Series 4: Related Publicationscontains periodicals which relate directly to the automobile industry and are arranged alphabetically by name of publication. The images inSeries 5: General Worksare arranged by type (i.e. photographs, caricatures). This series also includes applications for operators' licenses and permits, titles for automobiles, registrations, traffic legislation, traffic rules and regulations, patents, information from insurance, car rental, taxi service, and limousine service companies, schools, various clubs and associations, museums, and shows. The general materials are arranged by type and clubs and associations are organized alphabetically by name.
Series 4: Related Publications, ca. 1896-1950, contains publications including pamphlets, reports, books and periodicals of general interest. Articles from Town and Country are numerous, and other magazines are represented. The articles cover a variety of topics including automobile racing (1906), the development of the automobile (1903), women as motorists (1906), types of imported automobiles (1907), legal rights of automobilists (1904), automobiling as a sport (1926), insuring automobilists (1907), building motor parkways (1908), closed automobiles for winter traveling (1909), winter coats for motoring (1904) and taxi cabs replacing the hansom (1907). The articles are arranged alphabetically by name of magazine and then chronologically by date. Business cards, blotters, trip passes, fabric samples, stock cuts, newspaper clippings, abstracts of papers, reports, guide books, miscellaneous correspondence and pamphlets are also well documented. Handbooks, manuals and books covering mostly the history of the automobile but also maintenance and tour guides and maps are arranged alphabetically by location.
Scope and Content Note on Oversized Material:
The oversize materials primarily consist of printed advertisements and other promotional materials, including in-house publications, brochures, and catalogs for automobile manufacturers and dealers. Some material was created by dealers of automobile parts and accessories, including motor clothing. Several general images of automobiles, articles, and printed ads for automobile publications are also available as well as some correspondence and periodicals related to automobile clubs and correspondence associations. Materials are arranged alphabetically by company or by publication and follow the same order of the vertical file materials.
Arrangement note:
The collection is divided into five series:
Series 1, Manufacturers and Dealers of Automobiles
Series 2, Manufacturers and Dealers of Automotive Parts and Accessories
Series 3, Miscellaneous Materials, undated
Series 4, Related Publications, circa 1896-1950;
Series 5, General Works, circa 1680-1965.
Brand name index:
The following is a list of the brand or trade names for various automobiles. The names that appear in this list are a compilation of those found on materials in the vertical document boxes.!It is not a complete list of all the names for automobiles. The list is intended to assist researchers locate desired materials when only the brand name is known. The names of automobiles are arranged in alphabetical order. The following information is included for each product when available: (1) the brand name and (2) the manufacturer.
Missing Title
Brand Name -- Manufacturer
33 -- Hudson Motor Car Company
Airflows -- Chrysler Corporation
Alco -- American Locomotive Automobile Company
Ambassador -- Nash Motor Company
Auto Meter -- Warner Instrument Company
? -- Beacon-Little Paul Rubber Company
Berliet -- American Locomotive Company
Chadwick -- Fairmount Engineering Works
Chau Phone -- Western Electric Company
Columbian -- Electric Vehicle Company
Commer -- Wyokoff, Church & Partridge
Continental-Mark IV -- Ford Motor Company
Cord -- Auburn Auto Company
DKW -- Mercedes Benz
DeSoto -- Chrysler Corporation
Detroit -- Anderson Electric Car Company
Electrette -- Lansden Company
Elk-Hart -- Crow Motor Company
Emco -- Emery Manufacturing Company
Essex -- Hudson Motor Company
Everitt 30 -- Metzger Motor Car Company
Fairlane -- Ford Motor Company
Falcon -- Ford Motor Company
Flurd Drive -- Chrysler Corporation
Galaxie -- Ford Motor Company
Golden Airflyte -- Nash Motors
Hupmobile -- Hupp Motor Car Company
Jeep -- Will-Overland Company
Jenny -- Homestead Value Manufacturing
Jericho -- Randall-Faichney & Company
La Salle -- Cadillac Motor Company
Lambert -- Buckeye Manufacturing Company
Lancia -- Adama-Lancia Company
Lancia -- Hol-Tan Company
Leak Proof -- McQuay-Norris Manufacturing Company
Leavitt -- ?
Lincoln -- Ford Motor Company!Unras Specialty Co.
Little Six -- Locomobile Company
Mack -- International Motor Company
Menominee -- D.F. Poyer Company
Meritasstandard -- Textile Products Company
Model F -- Ford Motor Company
Model K -- Ford Motor Company
Model N -- Ford Motor Company
Model S -- Ford Motor Company
Neverout -- Rose Manufacturing
New Yorker -- Chrysler Corporation
Old Sol -- James Bailey Company
Orient -- Walth Company
Overland -- Willys-Overland Company
Plymouth -- Chrysler Corporation
Pungs-Finch -- Sintz Gas Engine Company
Queen -- C.H. Blomstrom Cars
Rambler -- Nash Motors
Rambler -- S. Thomas B. Jeffrey
Rockne -- Studebaker
Royal -- Chrysler Corporation
S.G.V -- Gotham Motor Company
Schluter -- E.F. Elmberg Company
Silent Six -- Matheson Auto Company
Snow Bird -- Arps Corporation
Snow Bird -- F.S. Manufacturing Company
Speed-Wagons -- Reo Motor Car Company
Stepney -- Spare Motor Wheel Company
Stewart -- Stewart-Warner Speedometer Company
Terraplane -- Hudson Motor Company
The Marmon -- Nordyke & Mormon Company
Thuderbird -- Ford Motor Company
Truffault-Hartford -- Hartford Suspension Company
Twenty-Two -- Metz Company
V Belt -- Graton & Knight Manufacturing
Valiant -- Chrysler Corporation
Victor -- Overman Auto Company
Waverley -- Indian Bicycle Company
Whiz -- Hollingshead, R.M. Company
Windsor -- Chrysler Corporation
Yale -- Kirk Manufacturing Company
Materials in the Archives Center:
Archives Center Collection of Business Americana (AC0404)
Forms Part Of:
Forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
Series 1: Business Ephemera
Series 2: Other Collection Divisions
Series 3: Isadore Warshaw Personal Papers
Series 4: Photographic Reference Material
Provenance:
Automobile Industry is a portion of the Business Ephemera Series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Accession AC0060 purchased from Isadore Warshaw in 1967. Warshaw continued to accumulate similar material until his death, which was donated in 1971 by his widow, Augusta. For a period after acquisition, related materials from other sources (of mixed provenance) were added to the collection so there may be content produced or published after Warshaw's death in 1969. This practice has since ceased.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Some items may be restricted due to fragile condition.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Genre/Form:
Business ephemera
Ephemera
Citation:
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Automobile Industry, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
The collection documents the inventive career of physicist and engineer Robert W. Kearns. Kearns invented and patented in 1967 the windshield wiper system with intermittent operation (US 3,351,836), among other inventions. The papers include notebooks, correspondence, reports, memoranda, photographs, patents, drawings, and trade literature.
Scope and Contents:
The collection includes notebooks, correspondence, reports, memoranda, photographs, patents, drawings, and trade literature. Kearns held patents related to circuitry which are integral to electronic intermittent windshield wipers. The windshield wiper documentation consists of patents, correspondence, and a set of drawings from November 16, 1967 for Tann Company. Other documentation includes Kearns's work with the engineering firm Kearns and Law (brochures, shop orders, agreements); his National Bureau of Standards work, which consists of his personnel file and notebooks detailing his highway skid resistance research; and subject files that cover a range of topics that interested Kearns, such as radar, speed control, and electric cars. At the heart of the collection are 32 invention notebooks (1963-1986) belonging to Kearns as well as engineers he worked with including John Quan, Brian Ivan Brown, and Timothy Kearns, son of Robert Kearns. Bound, paginated, and dated, the notebooks contain sketches, schematics, calculations, data, telephone numbers, and details about materials, costs, testing data, and descriptions for many of Kearns's projects. The notebooks present a comprehensive overview of his ideas and are significant to understanding his creative process and how his ideas changed or did not change over time. The majority of the notebooks are arranged in chronological order and therefore researchers can see Kearns's work unfold. Many of the notebooks are stamped with a "PO" to indicate a "protective order" followed by a number, and many of the notebooks were used during court proceedings. The protective order restricted access to notebooks which were filed with the court, or to be filed with the court at a future date.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into ten series.
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1957-1991
Series 2: Notebooks, 1954-1994
Series 3: Patents, 1957-1985
Series 4: Kearns and Law Engineers, 1957-1962
Series 5: Kearns Engineers, 1967-1985
Series 6: National Bureau of Standards, 1967-1972
Series 7: Ford Motor Company (Engineering Technical Education Program), 1964-1966
Series 8: Windshield Wiper Materials (Kearns vs. Ford Motor Company), 1962-1993
Series 9: Subject Files, 1965-1999
Series 10: Correspondence, 1989-1999
Biographical / Historical:
Robert William Kearns was born in Gary, Indiana on March 10, 1927 to Martin W. Kearns and Mary E. Kearns. One of three children, Kearns grewup in the Detroit area, graduating from the University of Detroit, Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (1952); Wayne State University, Masters of Science in Engineering Mechanics (1957); and Case Western Reserve University, Ph.D. in engineering (1964). Kearns also earned certificates in nuclear reactor control from Argonne National Laboratories (1958 and 1959). He was a Corporal in the United States Army, assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Strategic Services Unit (SSU); the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.) from July 31, 1945 to November 29, 1946.
Prior to joining the military in 1945, Kearns worked at Mercury Engineering Company (1943-1945) in Detroit as a draftsman preparing engineering shop drawings. After the war, Kearns joined the H & A Tool and Die Company (1946-1947), also in Detroit, as a draftsman preparing engineering shop drawings for the manufacture of the individual parts for machinery and special dies. Through the University of Detroit Cooperative Program with the National Bureau of Standards, he participated in an engineer in training program (1949-1952) where he executed a variety of standardized tests on engineering materials. He held a variety of engineering positions: designer/draftsman with Peerless Design Company, Detroit (1952); junior engineer with Burroughs Corporation Research Laboratories, Philadelphia (1952-1953); and engineer with Bendix Aviation Corporation, Detroit (1953-1957) where Kearns supervised and directed of a group of engineers responsible for the design of computer components, servomechanisms, control systems and related devices. Other duties included planning, liaison with other Bendix divisions, establishing test equipment requirements, as well as technical specifications and reports. In 1957, Kearns joined the faculty of Wayne State University, Department of Engineering Mechanics, as an assistant professor (1957-1963), later becoming an associate professor (1963-1967).
Kearns also established two independent businesses, the engineering firms of Kearns and Law (1963-1976) and Computer Central (1965-1976). Founded with partner Kenneth J. Law, an electrical engineer, Kearns and Law provided industry with consultation, research, design, and development services in the fields of computers, automatic controls and instrumentation. Computer Central manufactured a series of control components such as the Linear Range Comparator, Sign or Equality Binary Comparator, Identity Comparator, Dual Brush V-Scan Encoder Electronics, Gray Code to Binary Code Encoder Electronics, and Digital Difference to Analog Converters. Kearns served as Detroit's Commissioner of Buildings and Safety Engineering (1967-1971), where he acted as an administrator, overseeing professional engineering activities such as building inspections. Kearns moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1971 to become principal investigator for the highway skid resistance program at the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (1971-1976).
In 1967, Kearns invented and patented an electronic windshield wiper system with intermittent operation (US 3,351,836). Previous wiper systems were controlled by vacuum tubes. He installed his device on his 1962 Ford Galaxy and met with Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation in 1963 with the goal of manufacturing his idea and being a supplier to the auto industry. Kearns tried to commercialize the wiper through the Tann Corporation. In 1969, Kearns's intermittent windshield wiper was installed on Ford cars without his knowledge. He ultimately filed suit against Ford for patent infringement in 1978 (representing himself as Kearns Associates), seeking $141 million in damages (a figure eventually raised to $325 million). Kearns's purpose in pursuing litigation was not a cash award. Rather, he wanted the rightful ownership. In all, he filed lawsuits against 26 car manufacturers and other companies concerning the same patent (US 3,351,836). In July 1990, a federal jury ruled that Ford had unintentionally infringed on Kearns's patent and awarded him $10.2 million. In June 1992, Kearns was awarded $11 million from Chrysler. Kearns held over 30 patents, with the majority relating to windshield wipers.
Kearns died in 2005. He married Phyllis Hall (1932-2013) in 1953, divorcing in 1989. The couple had six children: Dennis Kearns (b.1954); Timothy Kearns (b.1956); Patrick Kearns (b.1958); Kathleen Corsetty (b. 1961); Maureen Kearns (b. 1964); and Bob Kearns (b. 1967).
Provenance:
Collection donated by the Estate of Robert W. Kearns, through Dennis Kearns and Maureen Kearns, 2016.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
