National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering Search this
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Work and Industry Search this
Extent:
44 Cubic feet (132 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Blueprints
Drawings
Lantern slides
Photographs
Sketches
Date:
1758-1945, undated
Summary:
A collection primarily of 19th and early 20th century lantern slides relating mostly to engineering, agriculture, railroads, mining, and extractive industries collected by the Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Scope and Contents:
A collection of 19th and early 20th century silver gelatin dry plate lantern slides acquired by the staff of the Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. These materials were collected for research purposes and relate to various subjects.
Condition of the material varies widely with some fragile or broken slides. Poor quality images also exist probably due to unstable storage environments or the processing of the slides. All slides have been digitized and moved to off-site storage to minimize handling and at the same time increase accessibility.
The collection is arranged in nine series: series 1, engineering; series 2, extractive industries; series 3, chemical; series 4, manufacturing companies; series 5, machinery; series 6, railroads; series 7, agriculture; series 8, travel photography; and 9, miscellaneous materials.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged in nine series.
Series 1: Engineering, undated
Subseries 1.1: Architecture and Structures, undated
Subseries 1.2: Bridges, Cantilever, undated
Subseries 1.3: Bridges, Concrete Arch and Beam, undated
Mechanical and Civil Engineering Glass Plate Negatives, NMAH.AC.1089
Mechanical and Civil Engineering Stereograph Cards, NMAH.AC.1090
Robinson & Steinman Collection, NMAH.AC.1562
Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering Bridges Reference Collection, NMAH.AC.1577
Provenance:
Immediate source of acquisition unknown.
Restrictions:
Collection open for research on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
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.
Papers and audiovisual materials documenting Russo's career in music.
Scope and Contents:
The collection includes Russo's original and published music scores, parts and arrangements; audiovisual materials including recordings of broadcasts of Russo's radio show, performances of Russo's compositions, including performances by Duke Ellington, and film and video recordings of Russo's productions in theater and opera; and personal papers such as correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, publicity files, contracts, etc. Among the most significant items in the collection are experimental jazz arrangements for Stan Kenton in the late 1940s-early 1950s, undated arrangements for Gerry Mulligan, Russo's original arrangement of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert, scores to his first and second symphonies, and scores and libretti to several early rock operas. The photographs include images of persons such as Ellington, Kenton, and Billy Strayhorn, and photographs by jazz photographers Herman Leonard and William Claxton. 2007 addendum includes correspondence, mostly between Russo and his family; eighteen diaries for 1946-1967 (not all years are present) with sparse entries, some in Italian; and additional music manuscripts, parts, scores and libretti.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into nine series.
Series 1: William Russo's Music
Series 2: Teaching Notes
Series 3: Correspondence
Series 4: Publicity, Programs, and Reviews
Series 5: Posters and Artwork
Series 6: Photographs
Series 7: Books and Lecture Notebooks
Series 8: Memorabilia
Series 9: Audiovisual Materials
Biographical / Historical:
William Russo, renowned American jazz composer, arranger, and founder of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, had a music career that spanned five decades and included performance, conducting and composition. During his career he worked with such diverse talents as Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Leonard Bernstein, Cannonball Adderly, Yehuidi Menuhin, Dizzy Gillespie, Seiji Ozawa, and Billie Holiday. Although critics acknowledged Russo mainly for his pioneering contributions to the big-band jazz canon, his talents extended to a far wider range of musical styles, creating groundbreaking jazz scores, rock operas, classical works, film scores, and educational textbooks on jazz orchestration and arrangement. In all, he composed over 200 pieces for jazz orchestra with more than 25 recordings of his work. In 1990, Russo received a Lifetime Achievement award from NARAS, the organization that presents the Grammy Awards.
As a young trombonist, Russo studied with Lennie Tristano, the pianist and theorist who became a leader in the progressive jazz movement. During the late 1940s, Russo led the revolutionary Experiment in Jazz band. At age 21, he became one of the chief composers/arrangers for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, one of the most innovative and influential jazz orchestras of the postwar era. In his four years with Kenton, Russo penned such classic Kenton works as "23° North – 82° West," and "Frank Speaking."
Russo made several major jazz recordings under his own name before his classical "Symphony No. 2 in C (TITANS)" received a Koussevitsky award in 1959; it was performed by the New York Philharmonic that same year under Leonard Bernstein, who had commissioned the work. This award marked Russo's "official" entry into the world of classical music. Russo continued to write major symphonic works throughout his career, including his 1992 grand opera, "Dubrovsky."
After his tenure with Kenton, in the early 1950s, Russo led his own successful bands, The Russo Orchestra in New York, and the London Jazz Orchestra, before returning to Chicago to form the Chicago Jazz Ensemble in 1065. With the Ensemble, he presented Duke Ellington's "First Concert of Sacred Music" in 1967. This was one of the rare times when Ellington allowed one of his compositions to be arranged and performed by a jazz orchestra other than his own, and was a reflection of Ellington's respect for Russo. Shortly after this performance, Russo composed a rock cantata, "The Civil War," that led him into the field of rock opera. After concentrating on classical music again in the 1970s, in the late 1980s, Russo began to re-explore the history of jazz through his revived Chicago Jazz Ensemble. In 1995, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble made history with the first-ever complete live performance of Gil Evans' and Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" in its original form. Recent Russo works that premiered in Chicago included "Chicago Suite No. 1," and "Chicago Suite No. 2," a recording that was published posthumously in the spring of 2003.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
William Russo Transcription and Arrangement of Duke Ellington's First Concert of Sacred Music, 1967-1968 (AC0406)
Provenance:
Bequeathed to the Smithsonian by William Russo. Papers collected after Russo's death in 2003. The 2007 addendum sent by Russo's sister and daughter were also part of the bequest.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but an oil painting 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.
Archival materials relating to Ryan's career as an athlete, a sports coach at Yale, an inventor, and an author. Includes photographs, the patent for Ryan's electro-mechanical football game, scrapbooks of newsclippings, Ryan's instructional books on sports, brochures, reprints of articles and other printed materials relating to Ryan's instructional films. Also included are instructional sports films Ryan created and marketed.
Arrangement:
Divided into 2 series: Series 1: Papers, photographs and printed materials; Series 2: Audiovisual materials.
Biographical / Historical:
Coach at Yale University, creator of sports training films and author of sports training books. He developed a unique bank/school community relations program wherein banks would donate Ryan's sports training films to local schools in exchange for publicity.
Provenance:
Donated to the Archives Center in 2004 by Neil Ryan (Frank Ryan's son) and Fran Ryan.
Restrictions:
Collection open for research on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
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.
The collection documents Granatelli's lifelong involvement with automobiles, from his youth through his career as an auto industry executive, and as a racing car owner, designer and promoter.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents Granatelli's lifelong involvement with automobiles, from his youth through his career as an auto industry executive, and as a racing car owner, designer and promoter. The collection consists primarily of files, photographs, scrapbooks, and drawings. Some of the earliest files relate to Grancor, a company founded by Granatelli and his two brothers in 1945, which customized cars for clients. Other things contained in the files include meeting minutes, articles of association, business and financial records, legal records and profit and loss statements. Also included are papers relating to an organization he started called the Hurricane Hot Rod Association.
A large portion of the files relate to Granatelli's term as President of STP, a division of the Studebaker Corporation, from 1961-1974. These files detail the internal workings of the company during this period, and include papers relating to such things as strategic planning, sales, marketing, advertising and competitors' products. Additionally, this portion contains STP's Board of Directors' minutes, documents on policies and procedures, papers documenting advertising campaigns, comparative sales figures, sales manuals, and Granatelli's business correspondence. The largest part of the files relate to the Indianapolis 500 race. There are detailed files on the drivers and race teams he assembled for the annual race, but these files also include design drawings, specifications, test data, lap logs, performance statistics, and reports documenting the implementation of design changes. The scrapbooks in the collection contain clippings, biographical materials, and other documents relating to auto racing in America and especially the Indianapolis 500. Finally, the collection contains a large number of photographs covering all aspects of Granatelli's career.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged into nine series.
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1946-2006
Series 2: Granatelli Corporation, 1943-1975
Series 3: Studebaker Corporation, 1935-1991
Series 4: United States Auto Club (USAC)
Series 5: Novi Engine, 1949-1971
Series 6: Product Literature, 1949-1972
Series 7: Racing Programs, Publications, and Ephermera, 1940s-2007
Series 8: Photographs, 1932-2008
Series 9: Audiovisual Materials, 1960-2001
Biographical / Historical:
Andy Granatelli (1923-2013) was an automobile racing promoter, a race car engine designer and an automotive innovator. Two of his cars, a 1967 turbine engine race car and the 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner, are in National Museum of American History's Division of Work & Industry collection. More than any other racing figure, Granatelli bridged the realms of garage tinkerers and professional motorsports, and he stimulated public interest in auto racing on a national level. His STP Corporation became a high-profile sponsor of Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR race cars, with Granatelli appearing in ads and commercials. His larger-than-life personality and flair for the dramatic made him an American cultural phenomenon. His career is well summed up in the profile written for his 2003 induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
Racer, entrepreneur, engineer, promoter, business executive. This is how one begins to describe the career of Andy Granatelli. But the title Mister 500 is the one that befits him most, for it describes a lifelong dream to conquer the famous 500-mile race in Indianapolis.
It was a preposterous dream for the scrappy kid growing up in the slums of Chicago, whose mother had died when he was twelve, and two years later, at the age of fourteen, dropped out of school to help his father feed the family. Andy Granatelli began his quest for Indy 500 fame at the age of 20 in 1943, when he and his brother pooled their meager, hard-earned money and purchased a Texaco gas station on the north side of Chicago, which he called Andy's Super Service. Andy, always the promoter, needed a gimmick to set himself apart from other service stations. His gimmick? Granatelli initiated the first pit stop service station, utilizing four or five mechanics to work on a car at one time.
Customers appreciated the true super service experience and would often wait in line for this unique treatment. With this unique service and Andy's P.T. Barnum style it was no wonder that the station was prosperous, and just two years later, in 1945, he formed the Granatelli Corporation, known as Grancor Automotive Specialists. As the head of Grancor, Andy Granatelli pioneered the concept of mass merchandising performance products and power and speed equipment to a generation of Americans who were discovering the joys of hot rodding.
Andy quickly learned that if you give the customer what he needs, you can make a living; give him what he wants, and you can make a fortune! Granatelli's racing career began in 1946, when he built the first rocket-powered car to race on an oval track. That same year, he took his first car to the Indianapolis 500--a pre-war Harry Miller--designed Ford.
When Andy Granatelli wasn't burning up tracks, he was tearing up the business world. In 1958, Andy and his brother Joe purchased Paxton Products, a failing engineering firm that made superchargers. With Andy at the helm, Paxton Products became profitable in seven months. In 1961, Andy sold Paxton Products to Studebaker Corporation and stayed on as Paxton's CEO. Two years later, Studebaker management wanted Granatelli to work his magic on an under-performing division called Chemical Compounds Corporation. Chemical Compounds had only one, little known product . . . STP Oil Treatment. With virtually no advertising budget, Andy created a four-pronged approach to turn the company around: a recognizable corporate logo (the STP oval), a product (oil treatment), a product spokesman (himself) and a reason for existence (racing). The STP logo became one of the best recognized in history. STP could be found in virtually every venue of speed: on land, on the water or in the air. Andy Granatelli once said that in the 1960s, virtually every kid in America had an STP sticker on his bedroom door, his notebook or his lunchbox, and he was probably right!
Back at Indianapolis, Granatelli entered a revolutionary race car of his own design - one with a turbine engine in 1967 and 1968. Even though the car failed to finish both years due to mechanical failure, the cars demonstrated superior speed and performance. At the end of the 1968 season, the U.S. Auto Club revised engine specifications, effectively outlawing Granatelli's turbine car. Undeterred, Granatelli returned to Indy the following year with a conventional car and proceeded to win his first Indianapolis 500 with Mario Andretti at the wheel. Four years later, in 1973, Andy won his second and last Indy 500 with a car driven by Gordon Johncock. Andy Granatelli's childhood dream of conquering Indy was fulfilled, not once, but twice.
Source
Andy Granatelli Biography, Automotive Hall of Fame (last accessed January 29, 2020 https://www.automotivehalloffame.org/honoree/andy-granatelli/)
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
Warshaw Collection of Business American, Series: Automobile Industry (NMAH.AC.0060)
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 1: Transportation (NMAH.AC.0300)
Evan Rangeloff Collection of Punchboards and Liggett & Myers Tobacco Sales Materials (NMAH.AC.0716)
Materials at the National Museum of American History, Division of Work and Industry
The Divison holds artifacts related to STP and the STP-Paxton Turbo Car. Included are key chains, trophies, STP stickers, TuneUp Masters stickers, belt buckle, and patch. See accession 2017.3043.
STP-Paxton Turbocar, 1967. See accession 1978.0418.
Materials at the National Museum of American History, Division of Cultural and Community Life
Division holds artifacts related to Andy Grantelli's racing career such as helmets, goggles, trophies, and coveralls and vests with the STP logo. See accession 2017.0092.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Vincent J. Granatelli, 2017.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Viewing film and audio portion of collection requires special appointment. See repository for details.
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.
Roebling, Washington Augustus, 1837-1926. Search this
Collector:
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of History of Technology Search this
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering Search this
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Work and Industry Search this
Extent:
18.5 Cubic feet (62 boxes, 1 map-folder)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photograph albums
Specifications
Reports
Price lists
Photographs
Newsletters
Letterpress books
Correspondence
Blueprints
Ledgers (account books)
Genealogies
Notebooks
Patents
Date:
1836-1975
bulk 1930-1950
Summary:
Collection documents the work of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company, builders of bridges. The materials consist primarily of photograph albums documenting some of the bridges, tramways, ski lifts and chair lifts that Roebling's Sons Company was involved with. The documentation also includes specifications, patents, and reference materials about the engineering process of building bridges and bridges in general.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents the work of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company, builders of bridges. The materials consist primarily of photograph albums documenting a variety of bridges, mostly in the United States. The documentation also includes specifications, patents, and reference materials about the engineering process of building bridges and bridges in general.
Series 1, Historical background materials, 1895-1958, is divided into two subseries: Subseries 1, John A. Roebling's and Sons Company materials, 1895-1949 and Subseries 2, Newsletters, 1929-1931.
Subseries 1, John A. Roebling's and Sons Company materials, 1895-1949, contains a variety of items related to the company such as historical narratives, correspondence, price lists, testing data, and a ledger with cost estimates. The correspondence is partially bound (pages 1 to 104) from a letter press book (handwritten and typescript) belonging to John A. Roebling's and Sons Company. William Hildebrand and Charles G. Roebling are the chief correspondents. The correspondence documents daily activities related to the design and erection of bridges as well as finances and supplies. Charles G. Roebling's notebook, undated, contains calculations and notes about various bridge projects.
Subseries 2, Newsletters, 1929-1931, contain copies of Blue Center and Wire Engineering, which were John A. Roebling's and Sons Company publications intended for employees. The newsletters were apparently used as scrapbooks, with black-and-white photographs pasted into the pages. Found among the pages of Blue Center are photographs of the Hudson River Bridge and in Wire Engineering, there are photographs of the Maysville, Kentucky Bridge.
Series 2, Photographs, 1926-1975, comprises the largest series in the collection. The photographs are primarily black-and-white and document aerial tramways, tramways for logging or mining, chair lifts, ski lifts, floods, and bridge construction projects. The latter makes up the majority. Most photographs were assembled into albums with corresponding captions and dates, and almost all of the photographs document bridges in the United States. There is one exception, the Yauricocha Tramway in Peru. In some instances, the captions are recorded on the back of the photographs, and others were recorded on album pages. The series is arranged alphabetically by name of bridge and/or project.
Series 3, Specifications, 1855-1962, consists of printed textual documents (both bound and loose) that contain information for bidders, proposals, contracts, and bonds, and the detailed specifications. This series is arranged alphabetically by bridge name.
Series 4, Reports, 1928-1938, contains bound reports (both progress and final) detailing problems, requirements, research, manufacture, plant installation, cable equipment, strand adjustments, and Roebling Company developments. This series is arranged alphabetically by bridge/and/or project.
Series 5, Patent materials, 1849-1952, consists of issued patents (to a variety of individuals) for cable and cable appliances, cables, and cable apparatus, cableways and tramways, and grips. The patents are arranged by subject area, then by patent number.
Series 6, Reference materials, 1836-1964, contains a wide range of materials—articles, biographical files, drawings, photographs, newspaper clippings, advertising, correspondence, notes—documenting all aspects of bridges. This series is arranged alphabetically by topic.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into six series.
Series 1, Historical background materials, 1895-1958, undated
Subseries 1, Biographical, 1900-1958, undated
Subseries 2, John A. Roebling's and Sons Company materials, 1895-1949
Subseries 3, Newsletters, 1929-1931
Series 2, Photographs, 1926-1975
Series 3, Specifications, 1855-1962
Series 4, Reports, 1928-1938
Series 5, Patent materials, 1849-1952
Series 6, Reference materials, 1836-1964
Biographical / Historical:
John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869) was the founder and proprietor of John A. Roebling's Sons Company. Born in Mühlhausen, Germany, he was a civil engineer famous for his wire rope suspension bridge designs, in particular, the design of the Brooklyn Bridge. Roebling married Johana Herting in 1836 and they had nine children: Washington A. Roebling (1837-1926); Laura R. Methfessel (1840-1873); Ferdinand W. Roebling (1842-1917); Elvira R. Stewart (1844-1871); Josephine R. Jarvis (b. 1847); Charles Gustavus Roebling (1849-1918); Edmund Roebling (1854-1930); William Roebling (b. 1856, d. 1860); and Hannah Roebling (died in infancy). Roebling's three sons, Washington Augustus Roebling; Ferdinand William Roebling and Charles Gustavus Roebling, worked for the company.
Roebling's Sons Company was active in the design and manufacture of wire rope used in the erection of suspension bridges since the 1840s. Roebling devised a system of spinning the wires together where weights and swivels turned the wire coils in the opposite direction from the twisting, thereby removing kinks. Method of and Machine for Manufacturing Wire Rope (US Patent # 2,720) issued on July 16, 1842. Roebling would adapt this wire rope to his suspension bridge principle. In 1848, he established a company—John Roebling's Sons Company—in Trenton, New Jersey, to manufacture his wire rope. Roebling manufacturing plants were sold in 1952 to the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) Company of Pueblo, Colorado. In 1968, the Crane Company purchased the CF& I.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
George S. Morison Collection (AC0978)
Modjeski and Masters Company Records (AC0976)
Materials at Other Organizations
The Rutgers University, Special Collections and University Archives
Roebling family papers, cicra 1820s-1950s
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Blair Birdsall, former chief engineer at John A. Roebling's Sons Company in 1981.
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.
Records of a family-owned manufacturing firm, best known for kitchenware products including the Bundt Pan and Micro-Go-Round. The collection richly documents the entrepreneurial spirit of the Minnesota firm and its history of product innovation through technical files, marketing materials, and administrative and financial records.
Scope and Contents:
The Nordic Ware collection consists of approximately twenty-eight cubic feet of records from the Northland Aluminum Company, most dealing with its Nordic Ware business. The Dalquist family recognized the importance of record keeping, and this collection documents very well the evolution of an entrepreneurial, family-owned American business from its earliest years.
Of particular interest for researchers may be the Pillsbury and Bundt Cake Pan dual marketing strategies, showcased mainly in Series 3, Marketing and Sales Records, 1948-2004, the introduction of ethnic cookware into American Culture through such dishes as the Rosettes and Timbales set and Taco dinner kit, the segmentation of product lines by price level to target consumers of differing incomes, and the issue of a trademarked term like "Bundt" becoming generic as seen in Series 6, Legal Records, 1962-1978. Series 4, Engineering Department Records, 1950-1994, provide in-depth documentation of the technical development of several of Nordic Ware's innovative products.
Series 1: Historical and Background Materials, 1940s-2006
These materials provide a history of Dave Dalquist as an entrepreneur and how this led to his ownership of Northland Aluminum Products and the Nordic Ware brand. There are histories put together by the company as well financial summaries for some years. The series contains The Nordic Ware Saga, a book edited and produced by the Dalquist family, and America at Home: A Celebration of Twentieth-Century Housewares. Both books have valuable background information on the company and how it fits into the housewares industry. There also are materials from the original business, Plastics for Industry. An undated marketing booklet, published about 1990, briefly describes the company's history and its product line and corporate structure. Additional company history is found in six installments written by Dave Dalquist under the title "From the Skipper" and covering the years 1946 to l985.
Series 2: David Dalquist Files, 1963-1993
David Dalquist, the president and founder of the company, kept these files in his office and home. Dalquist had no formal filing system and preferred to group records together as he used them. This order has been maintained as much as possible to the folder level. Several files contain information and notes from Dalquist's attendance at the National Housewares Shows and the meetings held there with his sales representatives. The annual Housewares Shows in Chicago were key events in this industry and Nordic Ware made them a high priority. The sales meetings materials include speeches Dalquist delivered. This series reveals Dalquist's involvement with every aspect of the company. It portrays an entrepreneur who began with an engineering degree, very limited capital, and no business experience. Dalquist built a multi-million dollar company while insisting on high ethical and business standards.
The several companies owned by the Dalquist family are documented in these files. There is a merger agreement between Northland Metal Finishers and Northland Aluminum. The records show the company went through several phases and had several brands besides Nordic Ware, including Minnesota Ware, DuNord, and Norcast.
Series 3: Marketing and Sales Records, 1948-2004
The Marketing and Sales Records focus mainly on the promotion of the Nordic Ware Brand and the sale and distribution of products, especially to the retail trade industry. There is evidence of how Nordic Ware presented its products to the industry and of other types of promotions to build brand awareness. These records are divided into three subseries: Subseries 1, General and Department Records, 1967-1995; Subseries 2, Promotional and Trade Sales Materials, 1958-2004; and Subseries 3, Public Relations, 1948-1992
Subseries 3.1: General and Department Records, 1967-1995
Dave Dalquist initially handled most of the company's marketing and sales, but as the company grew, a separate department was created. Among other things, this department created sketches of new product ideas that employees submitted as part of the New Product Idea meetings periodically scheduled by Dave Dalquist. Several files contain this artwork and a design notebook. There are also the files of Doug White, a Vice President of Marketing and Sales. Other art renderings, such as line art used in catalogs, are in this series.
Subseries 3.2: Promotional and Trade Sales Materials, 1958-2004
This subseries consists both of advertising geared towards the trade industry and that aimed at the consumer to promote brand image and sales. A 1970s scrapbook is a record of cross-promotional offers in which Nordic Ware and other firms advertised their products together in a single advertisement. The scrapbook also documents Nordic Ware products offered as sales premiums. The advertisements are organized by the brand co-featured in the advertisement. The Bundt Pan was the predominant Nordic Ware product in these advertisements. The Pillsbury file is especially important as it shows the building of the dual marketing arrangement which allowed Bundt Pans to be packaged with Pillsbury mixes. Nordic Ware received national publicity that it would otherwise have been difficult to generate. The Bundt Pan was integrated into magazine recipes and articles and included in mentions of other brands. These records document the remarkably brief time in which the Bundt Pan achieved national recognition.
The trade market was critical to Nordic Ware. The Sales Guides, 1982-2004, were given to regional sales representatives with information on sales promotions and incentives to representatives for sales of Nordic Ware products in specific markets. The Guides also have product descriptions, so that each representative was fully familiar with the products. Along with these guides, Nordic Ware put out trade catalogs, also found in this subseries. Although there is no master list of the catalogs, many have been hand-dated by Nordic Ware employees. Many of the models in the catalogs and the advertisements were members of the Dalquist family, neighbors, and other acquaintances.
Subseries 3.3: Public Relations, 1948-1992
These materials mainly document a series of campaigns created by Sara Jean Thomas, a public relations contractor. She worked with the marketing and sales department to build the Nordic Ware brand and to create a series of television and radio product promotions in the form of household hints. Several scripts are included here along with details of the overall campaigns. There also are files documenting the reach of these promotions. Other materials include a press kit for Chef Tell, a celebrity chef who represented Nordic Ware products for several years and who made appearances at its booth at the National Housewares Shows. New product press releases (with photographs) and general public relations files (1986-1989), along with the Marketing Communication Plans (1987-1989), give details on the planning of other public relations efforts. The trade press clippings scrapbook documents mentions of Nordic Ware and its products, competitors' advertising, and general developments in the house wares industry. Trade press clippings also are found in Series 8, subseries 4.
Series 4: Engineering Department Records, 1950-1994
The Engineering Department was vital to the success of Nordic Ware. Records in this series reveal the process by which a new product idea was developed, built, tested, and turned into a saleable product. Museum staff members selected the records in this series, occupying about five cubic feet, from a much larger group of files, roughly twenty-five feet in extent. The criteria for selection included substantive information on the design development of new products, especially those requiring substantial engineering work, and on product re-design to create cost efficiencies and resolve product problems.
Subseries 4.1: General Records, 1969-1992
These records deal with general departmental business and include incoming and outgoing correspondence and general files kept by individual engineers. They also provide operational information such as source for production materials, work orders processing, and treatment of employee issues in the department.
Engineers in the department kept these notebooks mainly for developing design ideas and working out the technical logistics of bringing the designs into production. The notebooks also served as evidential records for patent disputes. The engineers signed and dated the pages of their notebooks as proof of when ideas were conceptualized and who recorded them.
Subseries 4.3: Product Files, 1976-1993, undated
These records originally were organized by product number, but no index to the numbering system accompanied the records so files of like products were grouped together. The Micro-Go-Round, Oven-Aire, and Wok are the most thoroughly documented. The records include blueprints at various stages of the products development, work orders for research and development, outside quotations, invoices, quality control tests and guidelines, memoranda to and from other company offices about product development, and other types of operational materials. Most of these products had multiple versions, and evidence of ongoing testing and modification is seen in the records.
These records document some of the innovation that made Nordic Ware an important presence in the housewares industry. The Micro-Go-Round was a particularly revolutionary product at the time, and the records show how the company recognized a need for the product and did what was necessary to develop it, although it had little or no experience with microwave technology. Micro-Go-Round records also are found in Subseries 5 of this series. The Oven-Aire required extensive development efforts to bring to fruition. The idea behind this product was to make conventional ovens cook more evenly and operate like a convection oven. The records include photographs of the original working model, tests done in some of the engineers' home kitchens, and comparison photographs of foods cooked with and without the device. Though the product never took off in the market, the invention and development process is documented here from the perspective of the several parties who worked on it. To a much more limited degree, records for some of the other products -- like the Popgun Popcorn Popper and the Supremer Ice Creamer --demonstrate the design and development process. There is even information about packaging design for some of the products.
Subseries 4.4: New Product Ideas Files, 1976-1993
These records document Nordic Ware's efforts to identify and develop a stream of new products and to involve employees in that process. They include product ideas submitted from outside the firm but primarily relate to New Product Meetings at which employees shared their own ideas. The meetings often included voting for the best ideas and for those that would be most feasible to manufacture. Most of the files contain original artwork, usually brought to the meeting by the marketing department. They also include lists of product ideas and who submitted them, ballots for the voting on the best ideas, and notes taken at the meetings. Several files have memoranda to the employees encouraging submission of ideas outside the annual meeting cycle. Related materials are found in Series 3, Marketing and Sales Records, 1948-2004, Subseries 1, General and Department Records, 1967-1995.
Subseries 4.5: General Research and Development, 1976-1993
This subseries mainly contains files on the development of microwave cookware products and the Micro-Go-Round. Dr. T.K. Ishii, a leading researcher in microwave technologies from Marquette University, served as a consultant to Nordic Ware. He advised on technical problems and explained processes to the Nordic Ware engineers to enable them to develop products. Other materials deal with the application and certification process for Underwriters Laboratories, an independent organization that tested products and certified them as meeting its safety standards.
Subseries 4.6: Patent Materials, 1950-1994
Many records in this subseries deal with the patent application process. An outside legal firm submitted Nordic Ware's applications and negotiated with the Patent Office. The records include correspondence surrounding patent disputes and sworn affidavits by engineers submitted as proof of their work. Several reference files of non-Nordic Ware patents are in this subseries. Many were sent by the law office to Nordic Ware engineers to keep them current on new developments.
Subseries 4.7: Trade Associations, 1977-1994
These records reflect the participation of Engineering Department staff in trade associations, especially The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. Lloyd Keleny and several others were involved with the Microwave Oven Cookware Committee. The Society was concerned with the absence of standards for microwave ovens and the resulting problem that cookware used in these ovens was not always effective. The Committee gathered data and encouraged the microwave industry to recognize that consistency was needed. There also are files from the Frankfurt International Housewares Fair, 1994. Nordic Ware tried to build its presence internationally, and fairs such as this were opportunities to meet foreign manufacturers and distributors. They also enabled the company to see what was happening on a global level.
Series 5: Financial Records, 1948-1982
These records include financial information for Nordic Ware and other Dalquist interests, including Maid of Scandinavia Company, when it was still joined with Northland Aluminum Products, and the Minnesota Brand of Cookware. The intermixing of financial reports, invoices and receivables, petty cash receipts, and bank statements for the various enterprises demonstrates the close relationship of all of the beginning operations of the Dalquist family. There are many examples of consolidated financial information in the records including the balance sheets, combined financial reports, income statements, and the audit reports. Of particular interest is the accounting ledger (1949-1950) for Plastics for Industry, the Dalquist brothers' original company. It has handwritten entries and shows the company's simplified bookkeeping system. It also provides important financial data on the startup capital and the progress in the first year of business.
Reports created by the research firm Dunn and Bradstreet contain information submitted by the Dalquists to prove their credit worthiness to lenders. Several loan agreements document the company's practice of borrowing money on future earnings in order to meet operating expenses and finance innovation. Machinery owned by Nordic Ware is listed in several factory inventories. The firm also leased machinery instead of buying in order to save money. Inventory summaries (1950-1978) detail the numbers and value of the unsold product then on hand.
Though Nordic Ware stock was never traded publically, there was an employee shareholder plan that included profit sharing. Records in this subseries document the evolution and operation of the plan, including one employee's case for a public offering of the company stock. At some point Dave Dalquist did consider making the company public but decided to maintain private ownership. The emphasis on taking pride and ownership in the company was often repeated in memoranda that Dalquist wrote to employees about stock options. The records show that he was very conscious of morale and high standards of work within the company.
Series 6: Legal Records, 1962-1978
The bulk of these records deals with trademark issues, especially Nordic Ware's creation, licensing, and protection of the "Bundt" mark. Included are copies of correspondence with the law firms that handled applications to the Patent and Trademark Office and correspondence from that office. Correspondence and legal papers document licensing negotiations with Pillsbury and others. In several instances Nordic Ware took legal steps when the Bundt Pan trademark was being misused.
Series 7: Recipes and Cookbooks, 1966-2004, undated
This series is comprised of a large selection of cookbooks and recipe files maintained by Dotty Dalquist and reflect her active role in business activities. She did much of her cooking and experimenting in a test kitchen in her own home and was integral to the preparation of foods to be photographed in Nordic Ware products. These photographs demonstrated the use of the products and were included in the advertisements, catalogs, and product or recipe brochures.
Dotty Dalquist kept recipes, product booklets, notes, and other materials to aid in the development of her own recipes. She organized much of the material by food type, but she also had several files for specific Nordic Ware products. The Bundt Pan was a major product, and the files on it reflect that. As Nordic Ware sought new ways to promote the use of its products, Dalquist's development of new and inventive recipes was a major part of that effort.
Subseries 7.2: Bundt Pan Cookbooks, 1966-2004
Nordic Ware published several books by Dotty Dalquist to promote use of the Bundt Pan. Pillsbury and other firms also published their own books. Pillsbury incorporated its products into the recipes to promote the dual product relationship between the Bundt Pan and the Pillsbury brand of cake mixes. These books were sold in stores and added as premiums to go along with the purchase of the other products.
Subseries 7.3: Other Recipe and Public Relations Materials, 1970-1996, undated
Recipe contests and a cookbook were among the efforts to involve employees with the Nordic Ware products and to generate new recipes and ideas. These files include photographs and entries and correspondence about these employee activities.
A file of correspondence, mainly to and from Dotty Dalquist, concerns problems consumers encountered using specific recipes that she had published. Consumers also wrote about recipes they had tried on their own and could not get satisfactory results with a Nordic Ware product. Dalquist's problem-solving efforts were an example of the personal customer service in which Nordic Ware took pride.
Series 8: Non-Nordic Ware Reference Materials, 1940-2001, undated
The materials in this series were used by Nordic Ware as reference resources. They have been organized into subseries by type.
Dotty Dalquist collected cookbooks published by a wide range of manufacturers and trade organizations. The cookbooks are arranged in alphabetical order by the name of the sponsor. Many companies, such as Pillsbury and General Foods, put out these kinds of books to promote their own brands. This may have influenced Dalquist's creation of her own Bundt Pan cookbook.
Subseries 8.2: Product Guides (some with recipes), 1940-1992, undated
These product guides, for appliances and other items used in Dotty Dalquist's kitchen, include use instructions and, often, recipes. Nordic Ware often included recipes in the print materials packaged with its products and associated with its advertising.
Subseries 8.3: Home and Food Related Ephemera, 1950-1980, undated
These materials include booklets of general household hints, recipe cards published by various organizations, and information on food processes.
Subseries 8.4: Periodicals, 1967-2001
Several scrapbooks in this subseries contain clippings from various trade publications. Some focus on Nordic Ware and Northland Aluminum Products in articles or advertisements while others contain industry, including competitors', product advertisements. There are several issues of trade periodicals with Nordic Ware related stories. Trade press clippings also are found in Series 3, Marketing and Sales Records, 1948-2004, Subseries 3, Public Relations, 1948-1992.
Most of these newsletters were for reference use with Nordic Ware's microwave cookware projects. With its extensive line of these microwave products, there was an active effort to stay up to date with the field. The firm also tried to find different kinds of foods and recipes that could be prepared using a microwave oven.
Series 9: Photographs, 1940s-2006, undated
This series consists of a wide range of photographic prints re-housed in archival sleeves and assembled into a single binder. The photographs are arranged roughly by image content and document the Dalquist family and employees; factory and offices scenes, including a series of black and white images by Mel Jacobsen, a commercial photographer; and product displays at trade shows and other locations. The photographs also include a few images of Nordic Ware products and of baked foods and black and white images of plastic molds created by Plastics for Industry. Most of the photographs are undated and many are unidentified. There is a View Master viewer with one viewing card containing photographs assembled for Nordic Ware's sixtieth anniversary in 2006. Series 2, David Dalquist Files, includes five photographs of foods baked in Bundt Pans. Series 3, Marketing and Sales Records, Subseries 1, General and Department Records, 1967-1995, has photographs of a factory outlet store and product displays.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into nine series.
Series 1: Historical and Background Materials, 1940s-2006
Series 2: David Dalquist Files, 1963-1993
Series 3: Marketing and Sales Records, 1948-2004
Subseries 1, General and Department Records, 1967-1995
Subseries 2, Promotional and Trade Sales Materials, 1958-2004
Subseries 3, Public Relations, 1948-1992
Series 4: Engineering Department Records, 1950-1994
In 1946, the year he returned from Navy service in the Pacific, H. David (Dave) Dalquist (1918-2005) joined his brother Mark to launch a new manufacturing firm, Plastics for Industry, in Minneapolis. The two University of Minnesota graduates soon were making foundry patterns and industrial plastic products for area businesses, as well as aluminum consumer cookware. Among their earliest products were ebelskiver pans, krumkake irons, and rosette irons, essential kitchen tools for the area's large Scandinavian population. Their first employee, Donald Nygren, remained as head designer for many decades.
In 1950, the brothers bought Northland Aluminum Products, a small firm with a line of "Nordic Ware" products including griddles and steak platters. The same year, Dave Dalquist created a cast aluminum, fluted cake pan at the request of two local women, members of the Hadassah organization. The women sought to replicate a heavy mold used in Europe. Northland Aluminum registered the trademark "Bundt" for the new product and began to sell it to local department stores. (The women sold manufacturing "seconds" as a fund raiser for their group.) Mark Dalquist created a firm, Maid of Scandinavia, to market products by mail. It separated from Northland Aluminum in 1963. Over the years, Northland Aluminum increasingly used "Nordic Ware" to identify itself for marketing and public relations purposes.
Northland Aluminum created a subsidiary finishing and coating firm, Northland Color Anodizing Company, in 1962. In 1964, Northland became one of the first to license the use of Teflon from its inventor, DuPont, and non-stick products became an important part of the company's line. Northland also did coating work for many industries including medical, computer, and commercial food processing. For many years Northland also had a division to produce heads for video recording machines. Product sales reached $1,000,000 in 1964.
During the 1960s, Nordic Ware grew slowly, gradually increasing its product line to include specialty baking and cookware items and stove-top cookware. The company also expanded its production capacity and built its sales and marketing capabilities, including a national network of sales representatives working on commission. Dorothy Dalquist, Dave's wife, played a vital role in the company's history. She joined him at crucial annual sales conventions to demonstrate products, tested new products, and developed recipes for them in her home kitchen. Additionally, she represented the firm in public relations activities.
Although the Bundt Pan was only one of many Nordic Ware products, it became a national celebrity in 1966 when a Texas woman used it for her prize-winning Tunnel of Fudge Cake in the immensely popular Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. In 1970, Nordic Ware licensed the Bundt trademark to Pillsbury for use with a line of cake mixes. Customers received a cake pan at a small additional price with the purchase of the packaged mix. Although this pan was spun of light aluminum, not cast like the original models, the Pillsbury promotion was very successful. In addition to the classic Bundt design, the company began producing special designs, including a cathedral, a castle, a rose, a heart, and, in 2006, a stadium shaped pan. The Bundt Pan continues to be the most popular cake pan in America, and the company estimates it has sold sixty million pans over the past six decades.
Despite the steady popularity of the Bundt Pan, Dalquist and his firm knew that the spike in Bundt Pan sales resulting from the Pillsbury promotion was temporary, and they continued their strategy of seeking new products to buoy overall sales revenues. In 1978 Nordic Ware developed a "new thermoset plastic molding technology to create an extensive line of cookware designed to work in both conventional and microware ovens."
In these same years, as microwave oven use rapidly spread, Nordic Ware developed its second celebrity product. Designed by the company's own engineers, the Micro-Go-Round was promoted in print and television advertising and is still its most successful product. Since then, Nordic Ware has introduced a wide range of new products, some of them successful (for example, nonstick Barbecue Grill Cookware), others not (including a device to create convection currents in a baking oven and a bicentennial cake platter). Northland Aluminum holds at least twenty-five patents for its products.
Today David Dalquist (born 1949) -- son of founder "Dave Dalquist" and, like his father, an engineer -- heads Nordic Ware. He has been involved with the company for his entire working life with major executive responsibilities since the early 1980s. David Dalquist's mother, Dotty, is on the Board of Directors and serves as Corporate Secretary. David's three sisters—Corrine, Linda, and Susan—are also involved in the business. The firm employs between 200 and 400 people and continues, as a point of pride, to manufacture its products in the United States. The family has refused numerous buyout offers. Nordic Ware has managed to design and market products for the large, low price retailers, including Wal-Mart, and for the upscale, specialty gourmet market. Williams-Sonoma, a leader in the latter field, has exclusive sales for a small number of new Nordic Ware products each year.
For its sixtieth anniversary, Nordic Ware produced a company history, H. David Dalquist, The Nordic Ware Saga: An Entrepreneur's Legacy (Kirk House Publishers, Minneapolis, 2006). The volume provides edited recollections of "Dave," many family members, and other employees drawn from oral history interviews. This finding aid is based largely on that information, other historical sources within the collection, and visits to Nordic Ware offices by National Museum of American History staff members Paula Johnson and Nanci Edwards (June 2006) and Paula Johnson and John Fleckner (August 2006).
Related Materials:
The Division of Work and Industry holds thirty-six objects from Nordic Ware (Accession # 2007.0034), including Bundt Pans in a variety of shapes, foundry patterns and molds for Nordic Ware products, a wood panel display of products manufactured by Plastics for Industry, three versions of the Micro-Go-Round, and other kitchenware products.
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Dorothy M. Dalquist and H. David Dalquist in 2007.
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 intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The collection documents the activities of the United Shoe Machinery Corporation of Beverly, Massachusetts, manufacturers of shoe machinery equipment. The collection consists of engineering records, legal records, research and development records, employee/personnel records, correspondence, company catalogs, product literature, advertising materials, photographs, and moving images.
Scope and Contents:
This collection is among the largest and most complete bodies of business records in the holdings of the Archives Center. The records document in considerable detail the firm's engineering department and research and development efforts in shoe making machinery and in related technical areas, especially during World War II and as it attempted to diversify its activities after the war. There is detailed information, much of it on microfilm, about the leasing of United Shoe Machinery (USM) machines. The records also provide insight into the USM's culture of corporate paternalism, including its athletic and relief associations and its industrial school. The collection is rich in visual materials depicting both the machines made by the firm and the employees and the facilities.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into seventeen series.
Series 1: Historical and Background Materials, 1901-1985
Series 2: Executive Records, 1927-1987
Subseries 2.1: United Shoe Machinery, 1927-1975
Subseries 2.2: Emhart Corporation, 1976-1987
Series 3: Correspondence, 1890, 1901-1915
Series 4: Wilson Palmer Files, 1925-1952
Series 5: Research and Development Department Records, 1914-1980
Subseries 5.1: Background, 1947-1974
Subseries 5.2: Financial Information, 1947-1975
Subseries 5.3: Reports, 1962-1973
Subseries 5.4: Facilities, 1947-1975
Subseries 5.5: Personnel, 1942-1979
Subseries 5.6: Labor, 1961-1970
Subseries 5.7: Subject Files, 1943-1977
Subseries 5.8: Project Files, 1914-1968
Subseries 5.9: New Development (ND) Project Files, 1924-1970
Subseries 14.6: Quarter Century Club News, 1977-1987
Subseries 14.7: H.E. Smith & Company Catalogs, 1898-1930
Series 15: Product Literature, 1952-1979
Series 16: Advertising and Marketing Materials, 1902-1981
Series 17: Photographs, 1907-1960s
Subseries 17.1: Employees, 1907-1981
Subseries 17.2: Equipment/Products, 1961-1972
Subseries 17.3: Factories/Buildings, 1920s-1960s
Subseries 17.4: Trade Shows, 1954, 1968-1973
Subseries 17.5: Miscellaneous, undated
Subseries 17.6: Postcards, 1906-1938
Subseries 17.7: Prints from Glass Plate Negatives, undated
Subseries 17.8: Albums, 1915-1950s
Subseries 17.9: Film Negatives, 1956-1958
Subseries 17.10: Glass Plate Negatives, 1915-1923
Series 18: Audio-Visual Materials, 1934-1972
Biographical / Historical:
The United Shoe Machinery Company was formed in 1899 by the consolidation of the most important shoe machinery firms in the industry: Goodyear Shoe Machinery Company; Consolidated McKay Lasting Machine Company; and McKay Shoe Machinery Company. By this merger, conflicting patents were eliminated and patents supplementing each other were brought under United control to permit their prompt combination in a single machine or process. To ensure efficiency, the new company also continued the practice previously followed by its constituent firms of renting machinery that it manufactured instead of selling it. The authorized capital of the new company was twenty five million dollars. After the 1899 merger, United grew quite rapidly. In 1903, it began construction of a new factory in Beverly, Massachusetts about thirty-five miles from Boston. At its peak, this company employed 9,000 workers and produced eighty-five percent of all shoemaking machines in the United States. By 1910, it had an eighty percent share of the shoe machinery market with assets reaching forty million dollars, and it had acquired control of branch companies in foreign countries.
In 1911, the first of three civil anti-trust suits was brought against United by the United States government. It charged that the 1899 merger had restrained trade and violated the Sherman Act. The Massachusetts District Court ruled that the 1899 merger was not an attempt to restrain trade, only an attempt to promote efficiency. The court also said that the five companies that were merged to form United were not competitive with each other. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which only affirmed the District Court's verdict.
In 1917, the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, incorporated in 1905, absorbed the United Shoe Machinery Company. The United Shoe Machinery Corporation had its headquarters in Boston and its main manufacturing plant in Beverly, Massachusetts.
The second government suit was brought against United Shoe in 1915. The government claimed that United Shoe's leasing system restricted the shoe manufacturer to exclusive use of United Shoe's products and that it was a violation of the newly enacted Clayton Act. The Massachusetts District Court ruled in favor of the government. The Supreme Court, hearing United Shoe's appeal case, only affirmed the District Court's ruling. In 1923, United modified its leasing policy.
The last government suit against United was filed in 1947 and charged United with monopolizing the trade, manufacture, and distribution of shoe machinery from 1923 to 1947. During this period, United had bought all shares, assets, and patents of twenty one companies that dealt in the shoe machinery manufacture. The court ruled that United had clearly violated the Sherman Act, and United was forced to modify its leasing policies and restrict its purchases of other shoe machinery businesses and its acquisition of patents. In 1968, the United Shoe Machinery Corporation changed its name to USM Corporation. In 1976, United Shoe Machinery Company merged with Emhart Industries and produced the modern-day Emhart Corporation.
In 1989, in order to resist a two billion dollar takeover attempt by a New York investment group (which included oil heir Gordon P. Getty), Emhart merged with Black & Decker Corporation. The merged company operates from Black & Decker's headquarters in Towson, Maryland. The company headquarters in Farmington, Connecticut, were closed in June 1989.
Related Materials:
Materials at Other Organizations
Lynn Historical Society & Museum, Lynn, Massachusetts
Small volumes and pamphlets of shoe and shoe-related industry businesses in Lynn, Massachusetts, including miscellaneous articles and histories on the shoe industry in Lynn, manuals, catalogs, broadsides, patents, handbooks, patterns, price lists, brochures, and legal materials. Businesses represented include Beaudry Machine Company, Beckman Machine Company, Bresnahan Shoe Machinery Company, George W. Emerson & Company, Hamel Shoe Machinery Company, Gregory & Read Co., David Knox & Sons Machinery Company, Krippendorf Kalculator Company (manufacturers of a mechanical device to compute pattern values), Peerless Machinery Company, Quarmby & Hilliker, Machine Builders, Swain, Fuller Manufacturing Company, W.J. Young Machinery Company, and George J. Kelly, Inc. (maker of shoe polish).
United Shoe Machinery Company Records, 1915-1974
Materials assembled by Edward F. McCarthy, director of USM research, including notebooks, diagrams, manuals, brochures, catalogs, code sheets, flow charts, price lists, handbooks, lectures, directories, lexicons, catalogs of other firms, personal notebooks on shoe construction (1927-1931), factory visits to other shoe companies, and production of leading manufacturers (1939-1960), and floor directory of the plant; ledgers listing machines shipped and returned from the Lynn and Puerto Rico plants (nine volumes, 1935-1974); and machine development materials, including patents, chiefly those of Edward Quinn.
Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) Salem, Massachusetts
An accession in 1987 of institutional archives, includes publications, photographs, advertisements, lectures, scrapbook of shoes made for United Shoe Machinery Corporation of Beverly, Massachusetts, shoes from which are in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum (87020).
The United Shoe and Machinery Company Collection contains a large quantity of the company's patents, most of which pertain to the production and manufacture of shoes. Additionally there are patents for golf balls, nail guns, and magnetic closures. The majority of the remaining materials are Quarter Century Club documents ranging from financial and membership records, to pictures and other ephemera. The remainder of the collection consists of miscellaneous objects including sample knives and knife parts from the Booth Brothers Company.
University of Connecticut, Dodd Center
Emhart Corporation Records, undated, 1883-1989
Emhart Corporation was a multinational company located in Farmington, Connecticut. Prior to its 1989 merger with Black & Decker, Emhart operated in over one hundred countries with a worldwide work force of 30,000 employees. Emhart's products included machines for the manufacture of glass bottles and shoes; filling, sealing and packaging machinery; security systems; electronics; chemical products; metal fasteners; rubber processing equipment; and consumer and do-it-yourself products. Brand name products included True Temper® hardware and sporting goods, and Price Pfister® plumbing fixtures. Emhart's domestic roots went back to the American Hardware Company, founded in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1902.
Beverly Public Schools (Beverly, Massachusetts)
Beverly Public Schools/Beverly trade school records, 1909-1995
Materials relating to the establishment and operation of the Beverly trade schools, including trustee minutes, annual reports, curriculum journals, correspondence, photographs, programs and ephemera, and calendars.
Cornell University, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
[United Shoe Machinery Company, of New Jersey, et al. court proceedings], 1911-1917
United Shoe buildings and properties
The Cummings Properties now owns and leases "the Shoe."
Separated Materials:
Materials at National Museum of American History
The Division of Work and Industry holds artifacts related to the United Shoe Machinery Corporation. Some artifacts include a drafting table (1989.0259.349), tool chest (1989.0259.348), and molds for shoes, shoe heels, shoe welts, threads, needles, awls, and show wax.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by United Shoe Machinery Corporation, through Kevin Cochrane on November 20, 1987.
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.
Gloves must be worn when handling unprotected photographs and negatives. Special arrangements required to view materials in cold storage and audio visual materials. Using cold room materials requires a three hour waiting period, reference copies do not exist for audio visual materials. Arrangements must be made with the Archives Center staff two weeks prior to a scheduled research visit. Contact the Archives Center at 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The Archival collections of the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni (NACCCA) donated in 2006. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), created as part of the New Deal legislation initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, was a public work relief program for unemployed men designed to reduce high unemployment during the Great Depression. The CCC carried out a broad natural resource conservation program on national, state, and municipal lands from 1933 to 1942. This collection contains papers, photographs, and ephemera collected and created by alumni of the CCC and donated to the NACCCA archives.
Scope and Contents:
This material was acquired by the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni (NACCCA)from CCC alumni and originally housed in the NACCCA archives in St. Louis, Missouri. Photographic materials, including loose photos, slides, snapshots, group photos, panoramic photos, and albums and binders of photographs; printed materials, including newspapers published by individual companies, camps and districts, and the national CCC newspaper, Happy Days; materials documenting each camp, including camp histories, personal memoirs, blueprints of camps and projects worked on; the papers of C.E. Ward, Educational Director of the CCC's 3rd Corps, which document the planning and implementation of educational activities in that region; miscellaneous materials, including camp rosters, cartoons, menus, poems, pamphlets, booklets, magazines, manuals, enrollee discharge papers, work logs, and sheet music; and other more recent materials such as research papers, books on the CCC, selected audiotape and video interviews with some of the alumni; and other miscellaneous items. The collection is arranged into nine series.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into nine series.
Series 1: Scrapbooks, 1853-2003, undated
Series 2: State Material, 1922-2008, undated
Series 3: Publications, 1924-2006, undated
Series 4: C.E. Ward, 3rd Corps, 1933-2001, undated
Series 5: Photographs, 1929-2008, undated
Series 6: General Ephemera, 1915-2006, undated
Series 7: Bidwell Addendum, 1933-1987, undated
Series 8: Bires Addendum, 1934-1985, undated
Series 9: Audiovisual Materials, 1933-2009, undated
Biographical / Historical:
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal era program, created in 1933 to reduce unemployment, a direct result of the Great Depression. The CCC provided national conservation work across the United States for young, unmarried men. Veterans could be enrolled in the CCC after verification of their service by the Veteran's Administration. Veterans were exempt from the age and marriage restriction. Projects included planting trees, bulding flood barriers, combatting forest fires, maintaining forest roads and trails, and building recreational facilities in the National Park system and a host of other projects. There were separate CCC programs for Native Americans of recognized tribes and African Americans. In 1942, with the waning of the Great Depression and America's entry into World War II in December 1941, resources devoted to the CCC (men and materials) were diverted to the war effort. Congress ceased funding for the CCC and liquidation of the CCC was included in the Labor-Federal Security Appropriation Act (56 Stat. 569) on July 2, 1942, and for the most part completed by June 30, 1943. Appropriations for the liquidation of the CCC continued through April 20, 1948.
Related Materials:
Materials at Other Organizations
National Archives and Records Administration
Record Group 35, Civilian Conservation Corps
Provenance:
Collection donated by National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni in 2006.
Restrictions:
This collection is open for research use.
Researchers must handle unprotected photographs with cotton gloves. Researchers may use reference copies of audio-visual materials. When no reference copy exists, the Archives Center staff will produce reference copies on an "as needed" basis and as resources allow.
Viewing film portions of the collection requires special appointment, please inquire; listening to LP recordings is only possible by special arrangement.
Gloves must be worn when handling unprotected photographs and negatives. Special arrangements required to view materials in cold storage. Using cold room materials requires a three hour waiting period. Contact the Archives Center at 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.
Topic:
Conservation of natural resources -- 1930-1950 Search this
Photographs, scrapbooks, and other materials documenting the career of Joe Adams, a Los Angeles radio announcer and movie and television actor, who later became Ray Charles's manager.
Scope and Contents:
The collection is comprised of photographs, correspondence, certificates, magazines and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings dating from 1947-1980. The materials document Adams's career in radio and film, as well as touching upon his military experience with the Tuskegee Airmen. Various documents and newspaper features depict Adams's relationship with a multitude of local and national celebrities; of particular note is the long list of musicians represented, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Public figures, including several former mayors of Los Angeles and members of law enforcement, also appear.
The collection also includes magazines featuring articles on Adams and other celebrities and public figures. Adams appears in many advertisements for a variety of products that sponsored his radio shows. There are photographs, programs and advertisements for the movies, shows and plays in which Joe Adams appeared, including Disc Jockey and Carmen Jones. There is correspondence from public relations employees during the Ray Charles tour and from other radio personalities and journalists. There are also several certificates given in appreciation for Adams's community service. Newspaper articles and photographs feature "Joe Adams Day," declared by the mayor of Los Angeles, and document Adams's overseas USO tour to entertain the men and women of the Armed Forces, which was also broadcasted on Armed Forces Radio.
Series 1, Photographs, circa 1947-1980; undated, documents Joe Adams's personal and professional life. The photographs are arranged by subject, including Adams's work in radio and film, his public appearances, celebrities, Joe Adams Day, his work with the military and his later years. There is some overlap among the subject categories. The majority of the photographs cannot be dated. Featured programs, places, organizations and celebrities include the 7th United States Infantry Division, Emma Adams, Jim Ameche, Armed Forces Radio, Milton Berle, Eugene Biscailuz, Ruth Bowen, Fletcher Bowron, Tom Bradley, Tommy Butler, California Artichoke Foundation, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Paul Compton, Billy Daniels, Disc Jockey, the movie, Egyptian Shriners, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Suzette Gomez, Amos Green, Lionel Hampton, Eddie Harbin, Shirley Haven, Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association, Lena Horne, Jamaica, the Broadway play, Joe Adams Day, Danny Kaye, KDAY radio, Korea, KOWL Radio, Joe Lewis, Julie London, Nellie Lutcher, Will Martin, Clarence Metcalf, Husky Miller, MGM Studios, Roy Milton, David "Fathead" Newman, One Night Stand radio program, Pantages Nightclub, Pigalle Nightclub, Pub of Pittsburg, Pa., Lillian Randolph, Willis Reed, "Sugar Ray" Robinson, Kenny Rogers, Timmie Rogers, Ruth Bowen Agency, Wylie "Captain Death" Seldon Jr., Lionel "Chico" Sesma, George "Geo" Shearing, Frank Sinatra, "Star of Stars" Charity Show, Barry Sullivan, The Trenier Twins, The Tuskegee Airmen, USO, Viscount Airlines, Ches Washington, Dinah Washington, and Ben Webster.
Series 2, Scrapbooks, circa 1947-1954; undated, consists of newspaper articles, photographs, advertisements, and playbills. The scrapbooks document Adams's start in radio, his permanent appointment to KOWL, his service in the military and the inner-city community, his unique perspective and his philanthropy. They contain newspaper advertisements for Adams's radio shows on KOWL and the Armed Forces Radio Broadcasts. The scrapbooks include advertisements for his television shows as well as events and benefits where Adams was the featured emcee. Ink drawings of Adams used to advertise various products also appear in the newspaper articles. There are news stories on Joe Adams Day, a bus accident involving Lionel Hampton, the release of Ray Charles's song "Georgia" (1979), and advertisements for the movies Carmen Jones and The Manchurian Candidate. Numerous photographs document Adams's broadcasts and musical performances domestically and abroad as well as his interactions with many celebrities in the musical world. Aside from some newspaper clippings that include the date of publication, the contents of the scrapbooks are not dated. Featured programs, places, organizations and figures include Emma Adams, Ira Adams, Don Allen, Armed Forces Radio, Pearl Bailey, George A. Baron, Count Basie, Harry Belafonte, Irvin Berman, Eugene Biscailuz, Manny Borun, Fletcher Bowron, Charley Browning, Carmen Jones, the movie, Ray Charles, Club de Lisa, Arthur Croghan, Clay Cunningham, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr., Warren Dorn, Billy Eckstine, Egyptian Shriners, Bob Ellis, Kay Francis, Robert D. Funk, Georgia (by Ray Charles), Lee Gillette, Golden Grooves radio show, Curley Hamner, Lionel Hampton, Hunter Hancock, Addie Hansen, Leon Helflin, Billie Holiday, H. Claude Hudson, Jamaica, the Broadway play, Al Jarvis, Herb Jeffries, Joe Adams Day, Leon King, KOWL Radio, June Kristy, Chuck Landis, Mauri Lyn, The Manchurian Candidate, MGM Studios, Husky Miller, Lucky Millinder, Tim Moor, Otto Preminger, Paul Price, Lillian Randolph, Leonard J. Roach, Caesar Romero, Nina Russell, Lionel "Chico" Sesma, Jerry Simons, Mike Thompson, Sonny Tufts, Sarah Vaughan, T-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington, Leon H. Washington Jr. and Artie Wayne.
Series 3, Other Materials, 1948-1980; undated, includes magazines, correspondence, certificates and newspaper articles. The magazine cover stories are dedicated to fashion or to public figures such as John F. Kennedy, but they each contain a feature on Joe Adams and his involvement in the broadcast industry and the jazz music scene. There are fashion photographic spreads using musical stars that Adams knew well such as Nat King Cole. Two certificates thank Adams for community service to the Hollywood Canteen and the Hollywood Junior Chamber of Commerce (the "Out of this World series" celebrity baseball game). The correspondence is from other members of the broadcasting industry and pertains to matters in and outside of the business realm. The series also contains publicity concerning Ray Charles's tour through South Africa and the story of how Adams came to be his manager. Aside from magazines and newspaper clippings where the date of publication is featured, the majority of these materials are not dated. Featured programs, places, organizations and figures include Ami Artzi, Eddie Chamblee, Ray Charles, The Ray Charles Band, Nat King Cole, Madi Comfort, The Cotton Club, Arthur Croghan, Hilary Falkow, Roberta Flack, Joe Greene, Hollywood Canteen, Hollywood Junior Chamber of Commerce, Lena Horne, Charlotte Moton Hubbard, Karen Hutchinson, Jamaica, the Broadway play, Lyndon B. Johnson, James Earl Jones, Danny Kaye, John F. Kennedy, Lew Lauria, Robert Lewis, Sonny Liston, Paul R. McClure, Ricardo Montalban, Willa Moultrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Breau Palmer, and Jack Ruby.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into three series.
Series 1, Photographs, circa 1947-1980
Series 2, Scrapbooks, circa 1947-1954; undated
Series 3, Other Materials, 1948-1980; undated
Biographical / Historical:
Joe Adams was born on April 11, 1924. A native of Los Angeles, California, he wanted to work in radio at a very young age. Despite the racial discrimination that existed in the radio and television industry, Adams pressed on, practicing public speaking in vacant lots. He also gained confidence serving domestically as a pilot with the 332nd Tuskegee Airmen Fighter Group during World War II.
After his time in the service, Adams was able to get occasional radio work at Hollywood stations such as KFWB, KPAS, KFOX, and KGFJ. In 1946, Adams got the chance to host a fifteen minute radio show at KOWL. He also married his wife, Emma Millhouse, that year.
Within two years, Joe Adams was hosting the number one-rated live radio show in Los Angeles, and the show had expanded from fifteen minutes to five hours. Adams was also able to sign on fifty-six sponsors for his show, a number previously unheard of. This was the beginning of a career that would last for more than twenty years.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Adams garnered success both on the radio, the small screen, and the big screen. He had two television shows, Adams Alley and Joe Adams Presents, made famous for the many music and film stars that Adams featured. Some of the celebrities Adams hosted included Jerry Lewis, Duke Ellington, The Trenier Twins, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Count Basie. Ellington played two themes for Adams's shows, "Take the 'A' Train" and "Smada" ("Adams" backwards). Both songs were written by jazz great, Billy Strayhorn. In 1954, Adams fronted a band that was part of the first USO tour to entertain troops stationed in Korea. Among the band members was actress-turned-singer, Shirley Haven.
Adams opened a nightclub, Pigalle, which was wildly popular in Los Angeles. In addition to being one of the first radio personalities to do a simulcast radio and live show by appearing live at the Paramount Theater in downtown Los Angeles, Adams was the first African American to be featured in an on-air, West Ccoast network radio show.
Adams appeared in nearly thirty movies, including the hit Carmen Jones (1954), where he played Husky Miller, and the original version of The Manchurian Candidate (1962). In 1958, Adams became the first African American to receive the Foreign Correspondents Award for Outstanding New Actors from the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association. The Foreign Correspondents Award would later be called The Golden Globe. In 1957, Adams retired from radio and television to star in the Broadway play, Jamaica, with Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban.
Adams made many famous friends during his career in broadcasting and film; one of the best known was Ray Charles. After inviting Adams on tour in 1959, Charles asked Adams to become his manager. Adams agreed (although to date, Adams humorously claims, he was never formally hired), and he managed Charles until the musician's death in 2004. Adams helped position Charles for fame through such venues as a long line of Pepsi commercials and the creation of both a Ray Charles studio and a company. Adams even arranged for Charles to tour in South Africa, and he served as both the producer of the Ray Charles Show and the wardrobe designer for Charles and his backup singers, the Raelettes.
Adams also acquired expertise outside the broadcasting and music business. He became a licensed commercial pilot and an authority in law. His philanthropy and his tireless work for African Americans and inner-city communities have been recognized by many organizations, from the Egyptian Shriners to the Urban League. Even his home town of Los Angeles has recognized Adams's efforts, making March 14th the official "Joe Adams Day."
Sources
The National Visionary Leadership Project. "Joe Adams." http://www.visionaryproject.
org/adamsjoe (accessed June 20, 2008).
Ray Charles Official Website. "Joe Adams." http://www.raycharles.com/the_legacy_
joe_adams.html (accessed June 28, 2008).
Separated Materials:
The Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) holds artifacts related to this collection, including three jackets and one blue tuxedo worn by Joe Adams during his onstage career with Ray Charles and two scripts from the movie The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and the Broadway musical, Jamaica. See accession number 2005.3098.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Joe Adams.
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.
Papers document Landy R. Hales (1889-1972), an inventor and commercial artist who designed window and interior store displays, posters, children's games, and puzzles primarily from 1920s to 1930s in New York City and Baltimore. Of significance is Hales's work for Macy's Department Store. The papers consist of correspondence, patents, business records for several of Hales's companies, photographs, drawings/sketches, prototypes, and newspaper and magazine clippings.
Scope and Contents:
The papers document Hales's career as an inventor and commercial artist as well as his work in games, puzzles, educational tools, and posters. The collection includes sketches and design drawings, photographs, publicity materials, clippings and articles, and game prototypes.
Series 1, Brilliant Sign Company, 1908-1909, consists of stock shares, transferred by Hales to others in the amount of twenty dollars for the Brilliant Sign Company of Baltimore City, Maryland.
Series 2, Landy R. Hales, Inc., 1927-1929, 1944, consists of of invoices, orders, and check stubs from R.H. Macy and Company and Gimbel Brothers, Inc. for work by Landy R. Hales, Inc. for window displays. The orders detail what will be constructed and decorated. The R.H. Macy materials also contain a 1927 souvenir from Macy's Wonderland Christmas. Included in this series is a 1944 United States Treasury Department War Finance Program citation to Landy R. Hales.
Series 3, Hales Layer Poster Corporation, 1922-1969 (bulk 1920s), consists of materials documenting Hales poster company. Hales's formed Hales Layer Poster Corporation in New York State on July 16, 1925 to manufacture, purchase, sell and deal in layer posters and equipment for constructing layer posters in packaged or other forms. The corporation's other directors were Alfred J. Silberstein and Alvin A. Silberman, both of New York. Hales developed a new method of making a poster by placing cut-out pieces of materials such as composition board or wood on a background, then building layers to form three dimensions in the finished product. The first store to use Hales layer posters was Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City. The posters were never sold and were only used in advertising and window displays.
The materials consist of stock shares and values, a certificate of incorporation, branded letterhead, correspondence, an order book (blank forms), a point-of-purchase ad featuring Little Red Riding Hood, a patent for a display device, layer poster instructions, examples of posters, sample card stock, and instructions for the ABCD Ease Game. The display device patent (US 1,563,485) was issued to Hales on December 1, 1925. The invention relates to display devices for commercial advertising arrangements constructed out of layers of veneer or cardboard for reproducing and illustrating articles for sale, magazines, posters or art works. The principal object was to provide a display picture having depth. The correspondence, 1922-1937, 1969 and undated, contains letters with individuals companies, hotels, and department stores primarily in New York City such as B.F. Keith's New York Hippodrome, Saks & Company, Hotel Nassau, Keystone Manufacturing Company, and Rialto Theatre. Much of the correspondence relates to services provided by Hales Layer Poster Corporation. Hales's correspondence with Morris Gest, a theatrical producer who introduced La Chauve-Souris, a touring revue during the early 1900s, to the United States. There is also a letter typewritten by Hales in 1969 to Pablo Picasso about copying Picasso prints using the Hales layer poster method.
The instructions for "how to make" a Hales layer poster are well documented, detailing the step-by-step process and including the use of Hales Studio colors for painting. Specific instructions for the "Tom, Tom Piper's Son" with color guide are found here. A full, unused layer poster kit is in box 14. Additionally, Hales created the ABCD Ease Game, a board game played with dice with the objective to reach "ease." The way to reach "Ease" is through truth, courage, justice, thrift, study, work, loyalty, and honesty. Instructions and prototypes of the gameboard are represented.
Series 4, Hales Manikins, Inc., 1938-1948 and undated, consists of correspondence, a voting trust agreement, board of directors meeting minutes, stock shares, a floor plan for the company, blueprints for rubber figures, and a patent for a manikin and method of making the same (US 2,129,421). Hales Maninikin incorporated in 1941 in Baltimore, Maryland to manufacture, distribute, sell and otherwise deal in manikins and other display advertising figures. The board of directors meeting minutes contain articles of incorporation, by-laws, and minutes.
Series 5, Hales Pictures, Inc., 1937-1938, 1967 and undated, consists of an agreement with Walt Disney Enterprises, sketches by Kay Kamen, Ltd., a press release about Hales Picture Puzzles, and prototypes of Hales Puzzle Pictures. Of note is a copy of the February 1938 Rockefeller Center Magazine. The magazine contains articles about science, technology, publishing, the arts, events at Radio City Music Hall (Disney-related) and television. It offers good documentation of office business machines.
The first series of puzzles Hales introduced in 1937 were four subjects from Walt Disney's characters: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, and Donald Duck. The object of the puzzle was to put all of the pieces together in their proper place--some of the puzzle pieces were raised to different levels. After the puzzle was completed, it could be glued to a backboard. There are prototypes for the Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck puzzles. Only the Mickey and Minnie puzzles contain puzzle pieces. The Donald Duck puzzle consists of the box only.
In August 1937, Hales Pictures Inc., entered into a one year agreement with Walt Disney Enterprises that granted Hales the right to reproduce Disney characters for his puzzles and poster pictures. Hales paid Disney the sum of five-hundred dollars as an advance on future royalties. Disney also provided to Hales typical representations of the Disney characters. There are a series of Kay Kamen Ltd., Disney character drawings for Pluto, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, and Mickey Mouse. These drawings were provided to Hales by Kamen. The Minnie and Mickey Mouse drawings have been heavily annotated and mocked up by Hales for the purposes of creating his signature Hales Puzzle Pictures. Kamen (d. 1949) began his professional career as a retail hat merchant and later entered advertising. In 1932, Kamen contacted Disney, soon signed a contract, and was named the company's sole licensing representative. Through merchandising, Kamen made Disney's mouse star popular.
Series 6, Hales Sign Company, 1909 and undated, consists of examples of promotional and branded pieces for Hales's sign painting business that was located in Baltimore, Maryland.
Series 7, Drawings/Sketches, 1927-1930 and undated, consists of pencil, ink and paint sketches. The bulk of the sketches are Christmas-related, such as the poster study for the Macy's Christmas Wonderland, 1927 and the toy department displays for a bridge, drawbridge, house and tower. Other sketches include Noah's Ark, a matador, the "The Wise Woman of Gotham," Carlin's Amusement Park of Baltimore, Maryland, and resort scenes (tennis, golf and sailing).
Series 8, Photographs, 1925-1935, consists primarily of black-and-white prints documenting Hales's work in his studio and for clients such as Macy's. Some of the photographs were taken by Worsinger Window Service, Hughes Company of Baltimore, Le Don Studio of White Plains, New York; Apeda Studio, Inc. of New York City; Schultze Studio of Brooklyn, New York, and H.C. Campbell Company of Oakland, California.
Series 9, Greeting Cards, undated, consists of examples of greeting cards and postcards, primarily for Christmas, Easter, and Valentines Day, assembled by Hales.
Series 10, Clippings, 1922-1935, consists of loose photocopies and original news and magazine clippings in a bound volume. The clippings primarily relate to Hales's work in New York City, but there are clippings about The Corner Shop at Macy's, and there are copies of illustrations assembled by Hales, specifically the "Best Fifty Small Folio Currier and Ives Prints. " The majority of these he clipped from the New York Sun. Also included are clippings about La Chauve-Souris the touring revue during the early 1900s.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into ten series.
Series 1, Brillant Sign Company, 1908-1909
Series 2, Landy R. Hales, Inc., 1927-1929, 1944
Series 3, Hales Layer Poster Corporation, 1922-1969 (bulk 1920s)
Series 4, Hales Manikins, Inc., 1938-1948 and undated
Series 5, Hales Pictures, Inc., 1937-1938, 1967 and undated
Series 6, Hales Sign Company, 1909 and undated
Series 7, Drawings/Sketches, 1927-1930 and undated
Series 8, Photographs, 1925-1935
Series 9, Greeting Cards, undated
Series 10, Clippings, 1922-1935
Biographical / Historical:
Landy R. Hales was born on September 17, 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland to Landy J. Hales and Fanny Linthicum Hales. Hales grew up in Anne Arundel, Maryland and had one brother, Wesley Hales. Hales began his career with no formal art training and apprenticed as a sign painter in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1908, Hales formed the Brilliant Sign Company in Baltimore to design displays for area businesses. In 1913, Hales married Lenore McCully. They had two children, Elizabeth McCully Hales (b. 1915) and Landy Romain Hales (b. 1921).
During World War I, Hales designed posters for the Liberty Bond Program, created by then Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941). This poster campaign was intended to popularize the bonds, and Hales created posters using his "layer technique," which was a method of making a poster by placing cut-out pieces of materials such as composition board or wood on a background, then building layers to form three dimensions in the finished product. In the early 1920s, Hales moved to New York City to advance his career and expand his opportunities. In New York, Hales specialized in display devices, commercial art, and advertising. An artist-inventor, Hales patented two ideas, a display device (US Patent 1,563,485) and a manikin (US Patent 2,129,421). He founded Landy R. Hales, Inc. (1925), Hales Layer Poster Corporation (1925), Hales Manikins, Inc. (1941), and Hales Pictures, Inc. 1937. In 1937, Hales Pictures Inc., entered into a one-year agreement with Walt Disney Enterprises that granted Hales the right to reproduce Disney characters for his puzzles and poster pictures. During the same year, Hales leased office space at Rockefeller Center.
Hales worked for Morris Gest, a theatrical producer, creating advertising for the Russian show Le Chauve Sourvis which featured the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. Hales also manufactured and installed mechanical displays in Macy's Christmas windows at 34th Street and worked as an independent contractor for other department stores such as Gimbel Brothers and Saks & Company as well as the Hotel Nassau, Keystone Manufacturing Company, Rialto Theater, Keith's New York Hippodrome, and the Music Box Theatre.
Hales left New York City in 1945 and returned to Maryland, where he did commercial work for Carlin's Amusement Park in Baltimore and created layer posters for himself and family members. Hales died in 1972 at the age of 84.
Related Materials:
Materials at the Archives Center
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Parades:stereographs, circa 1880-1908 (AC0060)
Messmore and Damon Company Records, 1930s-1990s (AC0846)
Hudson Fulton Celebration Parade Photograph Album, 1909 (AC1149)
William L. Bird "Holidays on Display" Collection (AC1288)
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Katharine Landa McNulty Hogben, Frances Helen McNulty Beverage, Margaret Ann McNulty Klipp, Lenore Hales McNulty Frey, and Elizabeth Stuart McNulty on November 27, 2005.
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.
Papers relating to Charlotte Cramer Sachs's life and career as an inventor mainly of food and household-related products: correspondence, photographs, business papers, awards, patents, printed materials, notes, and miscellany. The collection primarily consists of invention-related marketing materials including invention samples and prototypes, notes, clippings, business correspondence, and customer account records.
Scope and Contents:
The records are divided into two series. Series 2 is further divided into eight subseries.
Series 1 documents the inventor's creativity through her artistic, literary, and musical records. Also included are awards and certificates received and materials related to her childhood home. This series contains few photos of Cramer Sachs herself, although a print of one of her paintings, "Portrait of a Lady," circa 1953, seems to be a self-portrait. There are no photos of her husband or daughter in the collection. Also missing is any information related to the inventor's formal education, childhood, the circumstances of her departure from Berlin, marriage, and family life.
Materials in Series 2 constitute the bulk of the collection and are primarily comprised of marketing ephemera, with very few financial and production records. This series gives a broad outline of Cramer Sachs's many inventions documenting Joy Products and wine-related inventions in the most depth.
Series 1: Creative and Artistic Papers, 1933-2002
These records include sheet music, songbooks, stories, and poetry of the inventor's own creation; photographic prints of her artwork; art exhibition materials; publishing company (Crambruck Press) records and published materials; childhood residence ("Haus Cramer") materials, and awards and certificates unrelated to inventions. Artwork and songs make up the bulk of the materials, and are arranged alphabetically by subject. Records in this series provide a context for Cramer Sachs's career as an inventor, although they do not reveal extensive information regarding her personal life or history.
Records relating to artwork include press releases, exhibition photographic prints and negatives, promotional materials, newspaper clippings, notebooks compiled by Cramer Sachs, as well as donation records of artworks given by the inventor to The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
Crambruck Press publishing company is a combined name which incorporates the inventor's surname, Cramer and mother's maiden name, Bruck. These records include a pre-publication notice and order form for a Crambruck Press publication, correspondence from a donor, as well as three Crambruck Press publications: From Boring Dinosaur to Passionate Computer by Livingston Welch, 1968; Poems by Helen H. Shotwell, 1970; and In Search of Harmony by Charlo, 1964.
Haus Cramer materials include photographs, newspaper clippings (many of them in German), correspondence between Cramer Sachs and Stanford University, and floor plans of the house designed in 1912 by German architect Hermann Muthesius. A framed black-and-white photographic print of Haus Cramer is fragile and is housed in a sink matte, box 9.
Poetry materials, songs, and stories are contained in bound books, published songbooks, original sheet music, and copyright records for song words, manuscripts written by Cramer Sachs, as well as correspondence records related to her writings. The song "With Love From New York" was used in the marketing of "Joy New Yorkshire Pudding Mix," and the records contain a vinyl recording which doubles as a marketing piece. Allusions to her husband, Alexander Sachs, and daughter, Eleanor, are found in some of her songs and stories.
Translation materials are comprised of correspondence (mostly in German), as well as Cramer Sachs's complete English translation of the "Stoffel Flies Across the Ocean" story, originally written in German by Erika Mann, circa 1932.
Series 2: Invention Records, 1905-2002
Invention Records contain information related to Cramer Sachs as an inventor and are divided into eight subseries. Materials include: patent related records; samples and prototypes; marketing and advertising materials; newspaper and magazine clippings; business correspondence records; customer account records; Wine Museum materials; and patent searches. These present a broad overview of Cramer Sachs's many inventions, although the majority of information is concentrated in the Household/Office, Food Products, and Wine-related series. Records are arranged chronologically by invention. The final subseries contain patent searches requested by the inventor.
Subseries 2.1: Cramer Products Company and Affiliate Company Records, 1942-2002
Materials include financial records, business correspondence, company awards and certificates, real estate materials, license agreements with outside inventors, a promotion prospectus for the company, and three company stamps (three dimensional). Also included are records of an invention for which Cramer Sachs sought copyright, "Orthodontic Device," 1954, and those having to do with products distributed—not invented—by Cramer Products Company, "Forster Longfresh," 1985. In addition, there are black-and-white photographic prints of an office opening which include images of Cramer Sachs in 1967. These records are arranged chronologically.
These records relate to seven different inventions, each with varying degrees of information. "Combination Key and Flashlight," 1940 was an improvement on previous patents and therefore consists of the earlier patent materials (1913 and 1938), Cramer Sachs's patent application materials, an official, sealed patent application (1940), prototype drawings, correspondence records related to manufacturing and distribution, photographic prints, and a newspaper article. "Cozi-Crib," 1958 and 1968, and "Joy Originals Log Cabin Furniture Set," 1957, records include marketing materials whereas "Holdit," 1972, and "Party Platter," 1962, are minimally represented by one or two photographic prints. "Gaitray" materials consist of four product samples. Materials for "Miracle Knee Tray," circa 1953 include marketing ephemera, a photograph, and two product samples. A prototype for the "Traypron," 1954, is also included. These records are arranged alphabetically by invention name.
Subseries 2.3: Food Products, 1940-1969
Records in this subseries are mostly comprised of Joy Products prepared mix materials. Two exceptions are the small, fragile recipe book, 1940, and the "Caviodka," 1962, records. Business correspondence materials contain those from a food and equipment consultant, the Colgate-Palmolive Company, and Arthur Colton Company, in addition to those relating to the incorporation of Cramer Sachs's "baking mix manufacturing plant" (1945). There are numerous packaging samples of various Joy Products, along with handwritten recipes and notes. An example of early packaging for Joy Products "Early American Muffin Mix" is in flat box 10. This subseries also includes customer surveys and comments, marketing plans and proposals, advertisements, and a marketing portfolio compiled by the inventor. A scrapbook contains Joy Products newspaper clippings, advertisements, marketing ephemera, and photographs of store displays. The scrapbook pages are extremely brittle and are housed in sleeves. Preservation copies are available for research use. These records are arranged chronologically.
Subseries 2.4: Pet Accessories, 1953-1954
This subseries consists of materials relating to three inventions: "Bonnie Stand," circa 1953-1954; "Guidog," 1953; and "Watch-Dog," 1953. Records include photographic prints, marketing materials, printing blocks (for "Bonnie Stand"), as well as a declaration of invention for, and a product sample of, "Watch-Dog." These records are arranged alphabetically by invention name.
Subseries 2.5: Games, 1961-1969
The inventor created two games: "Domi-Notes," circa 1961 and "Musicards," circa 1969. "Domi-Notes" materials include an order form citing the distributor as G. Schirmer, Inc. and the addressee as Walter Kane and Son, Inc., and three games two in cardboard boxes, (fragile) and one housed in the original hard plastic case. Records relating to "Musicards" consist of two game samples including directions for playing.
Subseries 2.6: Wine-Related, 1966-2002
Wine-related records cover twenty distinct inventions and range from specialty cabinets—which make-up the bulk of the materials—to bottle accessories such as the "Bottle Bib" and the "Cramanna Bottle Ring." The type and number of records vary, with the majority concentrated in the "Cool-Safe," "Cramarc Multiple Cabinet," "Modern Wine Cellar," and "Well Tempered Systems" folders. Records in invention-specific folders are arranged alphabetically and include marketing materials, press releases, photographic prints and some negatives, cabinet drawings, brochures, order forms, correspondence, as well as product samples of "Bottle Bibs."
Customer account records are arranged alphabetically and consist of billing statements, invoices, receipts, blueprints, correspondence, cabinet drawings, customer feedback, bills of lading, and memoranda. Letters from David H. Wollins laud Cramer Sachs's cabinet as "the finest home wine storage system in the world." Examples of how the inventor handled an unsatisfied customer can be found in the Col. Charles Langley folder.
Miscellaneous wine-related materials follow the customer account records. Included are advertising ephemera, photographs, and newspaper clippings originally assembled into a binder by Cramer Sachs. Taped to the inside front cover was a cut-out from a magazine advertisement which reads, "If you stick with the herd, you could end up as a lamb chop." Miscellaneous materials also include unlabeled cabinet drawings, photographic prints, competitor materials, photocopies from Grossman's Guide to Wines, Spirits, and Beers, as well as marketing materials and newspaper clippings covering a range of wine-related inventions. These records are arranged alphabetically by subject.
The final section of the wine-related subseries documents the development and eventual dissolution of The Wine Museum of New York. Records are arranged chronologically and include a provisional charter; an extension of the provisional charter; a newspaper clipping; outreach correspondence; a binder of wine museum materials including brochures, event invitations, exhibition opening cards, board member profiles, a press release, and newspaper clippings; wine museum exhibition information; and records related to the dissolution of the museum.
Subseries 2.7: Temperature and/or Humidity Controlled Devices, 1968-2002
This subseries documents the inventor's temperature and/or humidity controlled inventions that do not relate to wine. Cramer Sachs created the "Well Tempered Cabinet" for both wine and musical instruments; it is documented in this and the wine-related subseries. These records cover eight distinct inventions which range from specialty cabinets for musical instruments, furs, and cigars to devices designed to cool the body. Records relate to marketing, invention-specific business correspondence, confidential information and competition agreements, and include photographic negatives and prints. Miscellaneous cabinet drawings, cigar-related materials, and newspaper articles are also included. Records are arranged alphabetically by invention name followed by miscellaneous materials.
Subseries 2.8: Patent Searches, 1905-1980
Records in this subseries include correspondence as well as copies of several patented inventions for which Cramer Sachs requested information.
Arrangement:
Tha collection is arranged into two series.
Series 1: Creative and Artistic Papers, 1933-2002
Series 2: Invention Records, 1905-2002
Subseries 2.1: Cramer Products Company and Affiliate Company Records, 1942-2002
Subseries 2.2: Household/Office, 1913-1972
Subseries 2.3: Food Products, 1940-1969
Subseries 2.4: Pet Accessories, 1953-1954
Subseries 2.5: Games, 1961-1969
Subseries 2.6: Wine-related, 1966-2002
Subseries 2.7: Temperature and/or Humidity Controlled Devices, 1968-2002
Subseries 2.8: Patent Searches, 1905-1980
Biographical / Historical:
Charlotte Cramer Sachs was born in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1907. Her father, Hans Siegfried Cramer, worked as a businessman for a successful grain import and export company whose innovative enterprises included the import of soy beans from Eastern Europe. In 1903, Hans married Gertrud Bruck, one of the first women to attain her Abitur, somewhat similar to an American high school diploma, at age eighteen. Bruck's formal education ended there, as her wish to attend university was thwarted by her father Adalbert, a judge who insisted that she remain at home. The couple settled in Berlin and had two children—Frederick H., born March 2, 1906, and Charlotte. From 1913 to 1924 The Cramers lived in the Berlin Dahlem suburb occupying "Haus Cramer," a villa built in 1912 to their specifications by German architect Hermann Muthesius.
On September 12, 1924, Cramer Sachs married Donald Samuels, a top executive of the Manhattan Shirt Company and moved to New York from England where their daughter Eleanor was born on June 11, 1926. Several years later, the couple divorced. Mother and daughter lived together in London for a few years before moving back to New York around 1936. Charlotte's parents relocated to New York at the same time, after a brief stay in London following their flight from Berlin after Hitler's rise to power. In August 1945, Charlotte Cramer married Alexander Sachs, a leading economist who had introduced Albert Einstein to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and acted as advisor to the President.
Although she established her business career in America, Cramer Sachs retained fond memories of the house and extensive grounds in Dahlem. In 1977 she composed the song "A Salute to Berlin" to commemorate the designation of Haus Cramer as one of the city's historic landmarks. In 2000, she donated a painted portrait of herself from the time she had lived in Haus Cramer to the villa's new owner, Stanford University. The house retains additional significance in the context of this collection because Cramer Sachs credited its wine cellar—unusual in that it provided a separate, climate controlled environment for red and white wines—as an inspiration for her line of custom-built, vibration-free wine storage devices, which would later make Cramer Products Company a household name among wine connoisseurs.
While she did not attend university her pursuit of learning continued throughout her life as she studied poetry, musical composition, and the fine arts. Cramer Sachs often told her niece, Lilian Randall, that she wished she had received further education, although her public art exhibitions, poetry awards, numerous original songs, the establishment of Crambruck Press (her own publishing company), as well as language fluency in French, English, and German, are testaments to this inventor's intellectual curiosity and development. Evidence of Cramer Sachs's entrepreneurial spirit surfaced in her early thirties with her first patent: Improvements in Combined Key and Flashlight, July 16, 1940, patent number 2,208,498.
In 1940, Cramer Sachs completed courses from the New York Institute of Dietetics, an effort spurred by the onset of her daughter's diabetes. With financial assistance from her parents in the early 1940s, Cramer Sachs developed Joy Products prepared mixes, marking the beginning of a successful career in inventing. "We were a pioneer in that field," said Cramer Sachs of her baking mix manufacturing company, an operation that consisted of a Bronx neighborhood factory employing ninety workers. The enterprise began with corn muffin and popover mixes and expanded into frostings, puddings, and breads. Newspaper clippings from the time promoted Joy packaged mixes as ideal gifts for "the boys overseas" who were in locations where it was "impossible to get together the makings of a cake." Cramer Sachs refused an early offer to sell her mix formulas which were subsequently copied and exploited by larger, more powerful companies. Joy Products, whose name was chosen to express the inventor's delight in creativity, remained in business as a modest one-woman operation for over twenty years before succumbing to competition.
Cramer Sachs created another highly successful invention, the specialty wine cabinet, more than twenty years after she founded Joy Products. In addition to her memories of visits with her father to the wine cellar in her family's German villa, further motivation came from an interest—though she hardly drank it at all—in wine and recognition that "standard cooling and refrigerating appliances [were] too cold for wines." Reportedly, Cramer Sachs "started looking for [an appropriate device] and could not find one," and thus the impetus to invent took shape. The "Modern Wine Cellar," 1966, was an early example of over twenty wine-related inventions, most of them storage devices. A mention of her product in Grossman's Guide to Wines, Spirits, and Beers, increased demand among wine lovers and may have prompted Cramer Sachs to state that she "should find a good market" for her newest invention line. Testimony from David H. Wollins, a successful New York lawyer and customer of Cramer Sachs, lauded the cabinet as "the finest home wine storage system in the world." She framed his letter and hung it in her office at 381 South Park Avenue, her base operation where she employed one or two part-time helpers from the 1960s until her death in 2004.
The inventor took great joy in music, expressed in her own numerous compositions and her creation of the games "Domi-Notes" and "Musicards" in 1961 and 1969. Her fondness for music also prompted the expansion of her specialty cabinets to include temperature and humidity controlled devices for storing a variety of items, most notably the "Well Tempered Cabinet for Musical Instruments," which Cramer Sachs first designed for legendary violinist Isaac Stern. Soon the inventor began producing similar cabinets for the storage of cigars, furs, and documents.
Described by her niece as "shy with people but a great admirer of talent, intellect, and humanity," Cramer Sachs also "harbored a great love for animals." She invented several pet accessories in the early 1950s, including: "Watch-Dog," a dog collar with a time piece; "Bonnie Stand," a holder fashioned to accommodate disposable food bowls; and "Guidog," an early version of a retractable dog leash.
In 1972, Cramer Sachs suffered the loss of her only child, Eleanor, and in the summer of the next year her husband Alexander passed away. She continued her "business of creating new product ideas" for the remainder of her life. The most recent invention materials represented in the collection are those for the "Conservator" from 2002, a temperature and humidity controlled device with compartments to store a variety of items. In her last telephone conversation with her niece, on March 10, 2004, Cramer Sachs expressed her hope that she would feel "strong enough to get to the office the next day or so." The inventor died the following day at the age of 96.
Patents issued to Charlotte Cramer Sachs:
United States Patent: 2,208,498, "Combined Key and Flashlight," July 16, 1940
United States Patent: 2,509,423, "Wedge Heel Shoe," May 30, 1950
United States Patent: 2,808,191, "Lap Tray," October 1, 1957
United States Patent: Des. 363,618, "Cabinet," October 31, 1995
Related Materials:
Materials in Other Organizations
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Related materials on husband Alexander Sachs's political and professional life found in the Papers of Alexander Sachs
Art Gallery of Ontario, E. P. Taylor Research Library and Archives, Toronto Ontario, Canada
Correspondence between Cramer Sachs and Sam and Ayala Zacks dating from the 1970s and relating to Zionist art found in the Sam and Ayala Zacks Fonds.
Columbia University Libraries, Avery Drawings & Archives Collections
Haus Cramer architectural records and papers, 1911-2004, (bulk 1911-1955)
This collection primarily contains original and reprographic architectural records, photographs, correspondence and personal and professional records related to the design, construction, and ownership of the Haus Cramer in Dahlem, Berlin, Germany, designed by German architect Hermann Muthesius in 1911-1913 for Hans and Gertrud Cramer, with later additions by Muthesius and other architects. A significant portion of the collection also documents the Cramer family's efforts to obtain restitution after World War II for the seizure of the house in the 1930s. Also included are records documenting the restoration and reuse, an effort led by noted architectural historian Julius Poesner.
Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections
Cramer papers, 1938-1954
Cramer, Frederick Henry, 1906-1954; historian and college teacher. Mount Holyoke College faculty member, 1938-1954. Papers consist of writings, biographical information, and photographs; primarily documenting his scholarly activities and his interest in automobile racing.
German Historical Institute
Charlotte Cramer Sachs in the Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present.
The collaborative research project Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present sheds new light on the entrepreneurial and economic capacity of immigrants by investigating the German-American example in the United States. It traces the lives, careers and business ventures of eminent German-American business people of roughly the last two hundred and ninety years, integrating the history of German-American immigration into the larger narrative of U.S. economic and business history.
Provenance:
The papers were donated to the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History in the spring of 2005 by Lilian Randall (niece), Erich Cramer (nephew), Aileen Katz (niece), Elisabeth Weissbach (niece), and John Cramer (nephew).
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research use. Gloves must be worn when handling unprotected photographs and negatives.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The Duncan Family Yo-Yo Collection consists of papers, photographs, advertising materials, scrapbooks, clippings and audio-visual materials. These materials trace the rise and fall of the companies owned by the Duncan family as well as the world of yo-yo's. The materials date from 1929 to 2002, with the bulk of the material focused on the Donald F. Duncan, Inc., and the companies that would become Playmaxx, Inc.
The collection is arranged in seven series. Series one contains business material pertaining to Donald F. Duncan, Inc., and its spin off companies. Series two contains material about Donald F. Duncan, Inc. It contains business records, correspondence, photographs, advertising materials, contest materials, information about demonstrators, and sales. Series three describes the creation of Duncraft, Inc. and how it changed names to Duracraft, Inc., finally becoming Playmaxx, Inc. The series contains material on the creation of a small business, photographs, advertising materials, instructional materials, patents and correspondence. Series four contains newspaper clippings arranged by dates. Series five contains information on the competitors of Donald F. Duncan, Inc, and Playmaxx, Inc. as well as information on the Flambeau Corporation who had bought out the Duncan name and was continuing to sell yo-yos. Series six contains information on yo-yos in general. It has materials including articles, magazines, books, music, information on the Smothers Brothers, and miscellaneous material. Series seven contains audio-visual materials including commercials, videos, audio tape and
records.
Arrangement:
Collection is divided into eight series.
Series 1, Donald F. Duncan, Inc. Records, 1930-1985
Subseries 1, Minute books, 1930-1967
Subseries 2, Correspondence, 1930-1985
Subseries 3, Organizational Materials, 1959, 1962
Subseries 4, Conference Reports, 1962-1963
Subseries 5, Financial materials, 1959-1965
Subseries 6, Employee and Personnel Materials, 1962-1964
Subseries 3, Advertising and Promotional materials, 1982-1990
Subseries 4, Financial Materials, 1990-1995
Subseries 5, Employee and Personnel materials, 1990-1995
Subseries 6, Sales Materials, 1981-1997
Subseries 7, Patents, 1974-1997
Subseries 8, Production Materials, 1980-1992
Subseries 9, Newsletters and Releases, 1978, 1997
Subseries 10, Programs, 1981-1997
Subseries 11, Duracraft, 1977-1986
Subseries 12, Competitors, 1976-1997
Subseries 13, Miscellaneous, 1997
Series 3: Yo-Yo's, 1928-2002
Subseries 1, Newspaper clippings, 1929-1999
Subseries 2, Articles, 1952-1998
Subseries 3, Books, 1978-2000
Subseries 4, Instructional Materials, undated
Subseries 5, Magazine, 1958-2002
Subseries 6, Newsletters, 1988-1999
Subseries 7, Music, 1930-1964
Subseries 8, Competitors, 1958-1992
Subseries 9, Contests, 1997-2000
Subseries 10, Photographs, undated
Subseries 11, Miscellaneous, 1930-2002
Series 4, Other Toys, 1935-1991
Subseries 1, Toys, 1935-1991
Subseries 2, Photographs of Other Toys, undated
Subseries 3, Photographs of Tops, undated
Series 5, Audiovisual Materials, 1946-1996
Biographical / Historical:
Donald F. Duncan (1892-1971), a businessman who had successfully marketed parking meters and ice cream, began to sell yo-yos after seeing them on a visit to California. Duncan founded Donald F. Duncan, Inc. in 1930, running it with the help of family members and soon got the word yo-yo trademarked. Duncan marketed the yo-yo successfully by using traveling demonstrators, many who were Filipinos, to hold contests around the country to increase demand. Duncan claimed the yo-yo was once a primitive hunting weapon in the Philippines and whose name meant "come-come". Duncan also used the slogan, "If it isn't a Duncan, it isn't a Yo-Yo."
As the company became more successful a plant in Luck, WI was constructed to be near the maple used to produce the yo-yos. The management division remained in Chicago, where it shared some of the same staff as the Duncan Parking Meter Company. The company also began to branch out, trying to create new toys and products, including a line of tops and selling plastic yo-yos. In the early 1960s the company, now run by Donald F. Duncan, Jr., began an aggressive and expensive marketing campaign using television ads, creating a huge demand for yo-yos that the Luck plant could not keep up with.
By 1965 Donald F. Duncan, Inc. was in financial trouble. The company was unable to keep up with demand for yo-yos, losing out to other brands. They lost an expensive legal battle Royal Tops over trademark infringement. The court ruled that the word yo-yo was the generic word for the toy. In 1965 the company's creditors wanted their money and the company filed for bankruptcy. The company was auctioned off in 1966, with the Flambeau Corporation, owners of the plastic yo-yo molds, buying the Duncan name and continuing to produce Duncan Yo-Yos.
In the early 1970s, Donald F. Duncan Jr. wanted to return to the yo-yo business. He created and received a patent for a plastic yo-yo that was balanced to maximize spin time, allowing tricks to be performed better and longer. Duncan created a series of companies, Duncraft, Inc., in 1976, Duracraft, Inc., in 1977, and finally Playmaxx, Inc., in 1987, to market his new yo-yo. These companies, based in Arizona, were primarily run by Duncan and his wife Donna. They focused on school demonstrations and other programs to sell yo-yo's. The yo¬yo, known as the ProYo, has removable sides allowing it to be display any type of logo. In addition to Playmaxx, the Duncan's also ran a yo-yo museum, the Yozeum. By the end of the 1990s, Playmaxx was no longer in business and the Duncan's moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where they operated the Yozeum.
Materials in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History:
Bob Rule Papers, circa 1950-2002 (AC0855)
Separated Materials:
The Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) holds related artifacts. See accession #2002.0246, #2004.0029, #2007.0158.
Provenance:
This collection was donated to the Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, by the Duncan family in March, 2002.
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.
Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization Search this
Names:
New York World's Fair (1939-1940 : New York, N.Y.) Search this
Extent:
130 Cubic feet (417 boxes, 25 map-folders)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Souvenirs
Photographs
Pamphlets
Guidebooks
Exhibition posters--1930-1940
Diaries
Ephemera
Film transparencies
Motion picture film
Posters
Place:
Flushing Meadows Park (New York, N.Y.)
New York (N.Y.)
Date:
1835-2000, undated
Summary:
Collection documents the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. Also includes material relating to other fairs, the Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization (ECHO), New York City tourism and The Walt Disney Company.
Scope and Contents:
Collection primarily documents the conception, planning, construction, management, and operations of the 1939 New York World's Fair located in Flushing Meadows, New York. Materials provide historical context and cultural significance as recorded in publications, artwork, photographs, ephemera, postcards, maps, plans, exhibitor's literature, souvenirs, and motion picture film. Most of the materials were primarily created for people who attended the fair. Some of the materials include scrapbooks created by fair visitors to document their experiences. There is a significant amount of material relating to other fairs, New York tourism, the Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization (ECHO) and the World's Fair Collector's Society. Other forms of entertainment such as festivals, the Olympic games, and Disney World are also found among these materials. There is little information relating to Edward Orth's personal and professional life as a city planner. The collection is arranged into eleven series.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into eleven series.
Series 1, Edward J. Orth Personal Papers, 1915-1989, undated
Subseries 1.1, Correspondence, 1939-1989
Subseries 1.2, Other Materials, 1915-1989, undated
Series 2, Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization (ECHO) and World's Fair Collector's Society, Incorporated Records, 1942-1990, undated
Subseries 2.1, General Information, 1960-1988, undated
Subseries 2.2, Correspondence, 1942-1990, undated
Subseries 2.3, Classified and Wanted Advertisements, 1956-1988, undated
Edward Joseph Orth grew up with a strong interest in history, particularly the history of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Orth's visit to the fair as a twelve-year-old boy led to a life-long passion of collecting. At the time of his death, he had amassed enough materials to fill two homes in California. Orth also collected materials from several other fairs. In addition, he saved some of the records of the Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization (ECHO) and the World's Fair Collector's Society.
Orth was born April 19, 1927, to Andrew Joseph Orth and Florence Minnie Gordon Orth in Glendale, New York. In the 1930s, the Orth family lived in several locations in New York including Ridgewood, Brooklyn, Glendale, and Queens. The home that made the most impact in young Orth's life came in 1935 when the family moved to St. Albans, Queens seven miles from Flushing Meadow Park, the future site of the 1939 fair. Sadly in 1939 there were several deaths in the family including three grandparents. The severe loss of life limited family social activities but a drive by the future site of the fair provided Orth a glimpse of the Trylon and Perisphere. He would later remark that the sight appeared to be magic. In the summer of 1939, he went to the fair with his classmates from Public School 136. The next summer Orth and his father purchased a 10-admission ticket from an elementary school in Hollis, Queens, New York. He saved every souvenir and any information he could find about the fair. He filled scrapbooks with images from newspapers and postcards from the Curt Teich and Manhattan Postcard companies. When his family moved from an apartment to a house, he acquired a fair bench which was kept in the backyard.
In 1941, Orth attended Newton High School in Elmhurst, and Queens, New York. The high school offered a college preparatory program with heavy emphasis on mathematics, science, mechanical drawing, and workshop courses. Orth's education and training combined with the knowledge he gained from motion picture films viewed at the fair, including Thomas Edison's "The City of Light," Ford Motor Company's "Road of Tomorrow," "Democracy," and General Motors' "Futurama" provided the foundation and inspiration for a career in architecture and landscaping. He ultimately became a city planner for the state of California. By 1943, Orth was exploring used magazine and bookstores in New York City to acquire more fair materials before enlisting in the United States Army in 1945. Upon his discharge he resumed buying and trading fair postcards. From 1948-1953, Orth attended the University of California and the University of Connecticut where he studied architecture and landscape design. During these years he posted advertisements in various publications in his continued pursue for fair materials.
In March 1953, Mr. Orth moved to Los Angeles, California. There he formed lasting friendships with other collectors. By 1967, Orth and several of his closest friends including Peter Warner, Oscar Hengstler, David Oats, Larry Zim, and Ernest Weidhaas conceived the idea of a fair collector's organization. By the summer of 1968, the group had formally created the Exhibition Collectors Historical Organization (ECHO).
As time passed Orth became increasing concerned about the welfare of his collection. He wanted it to go to a museum rather than be sold in parts. In his will he stipulated that the collection would be given to the Smithsonian Institution upon his death. Jon Zackman, former Smithsonian employee, interviewed Orth's brother George and fair collector Peter Warner. Orth and Warner corresponded and traded objects over many years. Mr. Orth primarily covered the west coast area while Peter Warner was his east coast counterpart. Edward Orth died on September 6,1989 in Los Angeles, California at the age of sixty-two.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
New York World's Fair Collection, NMAH.AC.0134
Landor Design Collection, NMAH.AC.0500
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subject Category, World Expos, NMAH.AC.0060
Larry Zim World's Fair Collection, NMAH.AC.0519
Alice R. Hillis World's Fair Film, NMAH.AC.0531
Borden Company 1939 New York World's Fair Collection, NMAH.AC.1063
Memories of the New York World's Fair, NMAH.AC.0592
Archives Center World Expositions Collection, NMAH.AC.0825
Daniel H. Meyerson World's Fair Collection, NMAH.AC.0745
Division of Community Life World's Fairs Collection, NMAH.AC.1132
Princeton University Posters Collection, NMAH.AC.0433
Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project, NMAH.AC.0417
Messmore and Damon Company Records, NMAH.AC.0846
Thomas Norrell Railroad Collection, NMAH.AC.1174
William L. Bird Holidays on Display Collection, NMAH.AC.1288
Wurlitzer Company Records, NMAH.AC.0469
Victor A. Blenkle Postcard Collection, NMAH.AC.0200
Materials at Other Organizations
New York Public Library The New York World's Fair 1939 and 1940 Incorporated Records, 1935-1945, MssCol 2233.
New York City 1939 World's Fair architectural drawings, circa 1935. Museum of the City of New York. Museum of the City of New York.
New York City 1939 World's Fair Collection, 1939-1940. Museum of the City of New York. New York World's Fair 1939/40 Collection. Queens Museum.
1939 New York World's Fair Postcards, Identifier: 1972-320, Audiovisual Collections Repository, Hagley Museum & Library
Separated Materials:
Materials at the National Museum of American History
Artifacts from the collection include several thousand souvenirs and examples of memorabilia commemorating the fair to include buttons and badges, ceramics, glassware, clothing, costume jewelry, coins and medals, commemorative spoons and flatware, toys and games, and philatelic material which are all part of the Division of Home and Community Life's holdings (now Division of Cultural and Community Life).
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Researchers must handle unprotected photographs with gloves. Researchers must use reference copies of audio-visual materials. When no reference copy exists, the Archives Center staff will produce reference copies on an "as needed" basis, as resources allow. Viewing film portion of collection requires special appointment, please inquire. Do not use when original materials are available on reference video or audio tapes.
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.
Topic:
Exhibitions -- 1930-1940 -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The majority of the material in the Benny Carter Collection is dated from the late 1920s through the later half of the 1990s. Donated to the Smithsonian Institution in December, 2000, the bulk of the collection is comprised of original music manuscripts (full scores and parts), band books, and published sheet music from Benny Carter's prolific career as a jazz composer and musician. The collection also contains newspaper clippings, correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, awards, posters, commercial sound recordings, a few jazz related journals and some personal ephemera documenting Benny Carter's personal life and career as a composer, arranger, bandleader, trumpeter and alto saxophonist.
Arrangement:
The collection is organized into six series
Series 1: Music Manuscripts, 1928-1990s
Series 2: Newspaper Clippings and Magazine Clippings, 1928-2000
Series 3: Photographs, 1928-1998
Series 4: Awards and Proclamations, 1961-1999
Series 5: Sound Recordings, 1958-1989
Series 6: Ephemera, 1952-2000
Series 7: 2004 Photographs Addenda
Series 8: 2004 Ephemera Addenda
Series 9: 2004 Magazine and Newsclippings Addenda
Series 10: 2004 Awards and Proclamations Addenda
Biography:
Bennett Lester Carter, better known as "Benny," was born on August 8, 1907 in New York City. The Carter's were quite a musical family - - Benny's father played guitar, his mother played piano, and a cousin, Theodore ("Cuban") Bennett, played the trumpet professionally - - so it was no surprise that Benny also became a musician, beginning his musical training at the age of ten. He first played the trumpet and then C-melody saxophone before changing to alto saxophone, which became his chief instrument.
Benny Carter began his professional career around the young age of seventeen, when he joined a local group as an alto saxophonist. He subsequently played with various other groups, including Billy Paige and Louis Deppe, until attending Wilberforce College in Ohio to study seminary in 1925. Finding music more enticing than theology, Carter left college and instead toured with Horace Henderson's Wilberforce Collegians intermittently between 1925 and 1928.
Carter's musical talents began attracting widespread attention in 1930 during a year-long stint with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, to which he contributed many important arrangements. As word of his talent continued to spread, Carter played with such notables as William "Chick" Webb (1931) and served as musical director of William McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1931-1932) in Detroit. Upon returning to New York in 1932, Carter formed his own highly-respected orchestra. In its two years of existence, the Benny Carter Orchestra included several major pioneers in early swing style, such as Bill Coleman, Dicky Wells, Ben Webster, Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson, and Sid Catlett. Months after playing the inaugural show in New York City at Harlem's Apollo Theater in 1934, Carter disbanded the orchestra and, one year later, sailed to Europe to spread jazz across the globe.
After arriving in Europe, Carter first performed with Willie Lewis in Paris, France, and then, during 1936 -1938, served as staff arranger for the BBC Dance Orchestra in London, England. As he continued to tour throughout his stay in Europe (even leading his own interracial band in the Netherlands in 1937), he met with even greater success than in the United States. By this point, Carter was well-known for his arrangements and for his alto saxophone and clarinet playing. He was also recognized for his talented singing and tenor saxophone, trumpet, and piano playing.
In 1938, Carter sailed back to the United States and formed a new orchestra which regularly played at Harlem's Savoy Theater until 1940. He toured the United States during the next few years, both with small groups and with his big band, finally settling in Los Angeles in 1945. There he continued to lead his band (band members included modern jazz greats such as Miles Davis and J. J. Johnson), but turned increasingly to writing and arranging music for films and television productions. His film scores include Stormy Weather (1943), A Man Called Adam (1966), Red Sky at Morning(1970), and Buck and the Preacher (1972). "Ironside," "Bob Hope Presents," and the Alfred Hitchcock show were among the television programs for which he wrote music.
Carter had stopped performing with a regular orchestra by 1946, but he remained active up through the 1960s both by playing at Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic shows and with Duke Ellington, among others. He also continued to arrange music for various singers, including Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, and Louis Armstrong. During the 1970s he began performing again, touring in Europe, Asia and Australia; in 1976 he toured the Middle East under sponsorship of the U.S. Department of State. Carter also became involved with academia, serving as visiting professor or workshop consultant at universities such as Yale, Cornell, Princeton, and Duke. He remained active in the music business well into the 1990s and still resides in California.
Benny Carter is regarded as "one of the most versatile musicians of his time." As a musician, he made major contributions to several areas of jazz and, as an arranger, he helped to construct the big-band swing style. He has received many awards throughout his career. The more prestigious honors included a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and a 1994 Grammy Award for the album "Elegy in Blue."
Footnotes
[1 ] Biographical note derived from Benny Carter: A Life in American Music, by Monroe and Edward Berger, and James Patrick (New York: Scarecrow Press and the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1982).
[2] J. Bradford Robinson, "John Kirby," The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, vol 1, 1986: 653-54.
Provenance:
The Benny Carter Collection was donated by Bennett Carter in December 2000.
Scrapbook contains articles and ephemera relating to an African American troupe of thirty five minstrels who performed in the Pacific Northwestern United States.
Scope and Contents:
The scrapbook offers documentation of the troupe's activities dating from 1876-1909 in the Pacific Northwestern United States. It contains articles, ticket stubs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and programs. Also included are brief biographical sketches of Billy Williams, the contortionist, and Harry Gillam, the "Hebrew acrobat," and an article about the managers of the Up To Date minstrels, J. Edward George and G. E. Hart. In addition, there are business cards from other minstrel performing groups including, Cissel and Mines and Oliver and Gilliam, with accompanying pictures. There are loose materials which were probably once part of the scrapbook, including programs and letterhead stationery. There are also photographs of the troupe taken in Missouri in 1900 standing outside a train car as they travelled from one location to another. The materials are arranged first by type and then in chronological order.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in one series.
Biographical / Historical:
George and Hart's Up To Date Georgia Minstrels were an African American troupe of thirty-five entertainers about whom this scrapbook was created. In 1901, these minstrels were described as "the only colored show running for thirty years." The troupe, which began circa 1866, was billed as "the most popular" troupe of performers from California to Montana to Washington to New Mexico to Colorado to Minnesota. They performed standard minstrel acts and included a contortionist, an acrobatic act, and a male impersonator. This form of theater entertainment was used by African American dramatic performers for consistent employment with reasonable wages. The Up To Date Georgia Minstrels were said to have been the "highest paid" performers in the area, making five to fifteen dollars a week. The troupe was managed by George Hart.
Related Materials:
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subject Categories: Theater, NMAH.AC0060
John B. Rogers Producing Company Collection, NMAH.AC0245
Hazen Collection of Band Photographs and Ephemera, NMAH.AC0253
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 3: African-American Music, NMAH.AC0300
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 11: Entertainment, NMAH.AC0300
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 4: Songwriters, NMAH.AC0300
Ernie Smith Jazz Film Collection, NMAH.AC0491
Donald J. Stubblebine Collection of Musical Theater and Motion Picture Music and Ephemera, NMAH.AC1211
Peter Marks Minstrelsy Collection, NMAH.AC1328
Hooker-Howe Company Papers, NMAH.AC1475
Henry "Buddy" Graf and George Cahill Vaudeville and Burlesque Collections, NMAH.AC1484
B. Thomas Smith Minstrel Show Posters, NMAH.AC1490
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution
Ralph Rinzler Papers and Audio Recordings, CFCH.RINZ
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, CFCH.SFF.2002
Monitor Records Business Records, CFCH.MONI
Moses and Frances Asch Collection, CFCH.ASCH
Provenance:
The material was donated to the Archives Center, National Museum of American History by the San Diego Historical Society on March 11, 1997. The Society has no further information about the scrapbook which was outside the scope of its collecting policy.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
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.
Collection documents Binney & Smith, Inc. creators and manufacturers of Crayola crayons. Includes documentation on 20th century advertising, commercial packaging, commercial imagery, and retail merchandising: newsletters, annual reports, research and development records, color charts, advertising materials, and product information, including catalogs and price lists.
Scope and Contents:
The Binney & Smith Inc. Records, document twentieth century advertising, commercial packaging, commercial imagery, and retail merchandising. They are a major source for research on American consumer culture. This collection is divided into thirteen (13) series.
Series 1:Historical Background, 1956-1994 contains documentation on the corporate history of Binney & Smith, and general background on how crayons are made. The Story of the Rainbow (editions 1947, 1956, and 1961) provide corporate historical highglights and a history of the company. See also Series 5: Newsletters and Publications, 1948-1955 for information about the company.
Series 2: Executive Records, 1897-1995, consists of annual and corporate reports, by-laws, minutes, correspondence, annual reports, stockholder materials and the attempted merger of Binney & Smith by Cheeseborough-Ponds in the early 1970s and the Kellogg Co., ca. 1979.
Series 3: Financial, Sales, and Marketing Records, 1902-1990, consists primarily of sales information and statistics for crayons and other products. The correspondence, 1913-1931, includes documentation on monthly sales with explanations and analysis. Binney & Smith created comparative data on a yearly basis for products and salesmen. The salesmen data, 1919-1932, contains the amount of sales, expenses, percentages, time periods, and increases and decreases in business. Specific salesmen are cited in reports. All of the sales information should be consulted as there is considerable overlap.
Series 4: Employee/Personnel Records, 1917-1993, contains payroll rate books, employee reports and miscellaneous documentation. The payroll rate books include the names of employees and the rate at which they were paid per hour. In some instances it is noted if the employee left the company.
Series 5: Newsletters and Publications, 1948-1995, include newsletters and other publications produced by Binney & Smith, Inc. Arranged alphabetically, this series contains publications intended for both internal distribution such as the Rainbow Insider and external distribution such as the Art Educationist and Drawing Teacher. This series provides valuable information on the history of the company, how it operates, the types of products produced, and the employees. The Art Educationist, formerly known as the Drawing Teacher, which began publication in 1926, was a publication for art teachers that promoted the value of art in schools. It contains editorials, comments from teachers, and suggested art activities.
Series 6: Research and Development Records, 1905-1987, includes a wide variety of materials documenting the Research and Development Department. The bulk of the materials include crayon formulas. Other formulas for products such as chalk exist.
Series 7: Advertising and Marketing Records, 1918-1998, contains several subseries with the bulk of the material being documentation on labeling and packaging. The advertising accounts are arranged chronologically and then within each year, alphabetically by the name of the journal or magazine in which Binney & Smith advertised. The cards provide the name, address, date of contract, date of expiration, space allotted, rate, subject of the ad, and remarks if applicable. Information on distribution and "specials" is available for some years. The promotional materials consist of licensing information, press kits, and printed literature, particularly Promotional Plans which describe the details of each promotion offered for each product along with suggestions for merchandising activities.
Series 8: Catalogs, 1916-1995, and Series 9: Price Lists, 1916-1995, are arranged alphabetically by division within Binney & Smith, Inc. Both series provide documentation on the types of products available to the consumer and costs associated with each product.
Series 10: Product Information, 1918-1995, consists of printed literature on a variety of products produced by Binney & Smith, Inc. The series is arranged alphabetically. The product inventories, 1920-1925, are arranged by product number in sequential order. There are three distinct inventories--those arranged by product number (#1-#7026); those arranged alpha-numerically (#04-#04Y); and those arranged alphabetically.
Series 11: Competitors, 1918-1992, contains published catalogs and advertising of crayon competitors. There is a scrapbook of competitors advertising contains correspondence, product information, advertisements, and newspaper clippings for the American Crayon Co., Art Crayon Co., Botts Mfg., Eberhard Faber Co., Ferst Brothers, Joseph Dixon Crucible Co., Milton-Bradley Co., and National Crayon Co.
Series 12: Photographs and Scrapbooks, circa 1900s-1997, includes several subseries documenting buildings and office spaces,displays, employees and machinery, products, portraits, photo albums, and oversized. The oversized photographs contain some panoramic shots of Binney & Smith company "annual outings." The photograph albums consist of several albums including the Middletown Township Workshop, 1952, an art workshop sponsored by Binney & Smith, Inc. Three albums contain photographs of various construction and expansion projects from the 1960s to 1975. Of note is the photo album containing photographs and newspaper clippings from the 1959 California Pacific Crayon Company fire. Also, there are Binney & Smith company albums, 1949-1976, that document a variety of activities within the company. Each album was photographed by W. H. Milliken, Jr., and specified the location, date, and number of photographs in the album. The albums cover topics such as art shows, trade shows, suppers, dinner parties, office shots, employee anniversaries, and retirement parties. The scrapbooks span the years 1962-1975, and contain both newspaper clippings and some black and white photographs documenting various company activities and its employees.
Series 13: Audio-Visual Materials, circa 1980s-1998, contain two 1/2" VHS tapes documenting the 40th anniversary of the Crayola 64 box and Silly Putty.
Arrangement:
Series 1: Historical Background
Series 2: Executive Records, 1897-1995
Series 3: Financial, Sales, and Marketing Records, 1902-1990
Series 4: Employee/Personnel Records, 1917-1993
Series 5: Newsletters and Publications, 1948-1995
Series 6: Research and Development Records, 1905-1987
Series 7: Advertising and Promotional Records, 1918-1998
Series 8: Catalogs, 1916-1995
Series 9: Price Lists, 1916-1925
Series 10: Product Information, 1918-1925
Series 11: Competitors, 1918-1992
Series 12: Photographs and Scrapbooks, circa 1900s-1997
Series 13: Audiovisual Materials, circa 1980-1998.
Series 1: Historical Background, 1956-1990s
Series 2: Executive Records, 1897-1995
Series 3: Financial, Sales and Marketing Records, 1902-1990
Series 4: Employee and Personnel Records, 1917-1993
Series 5: Newsletters and Publications, 1948-1995
Series 6: Research and Development Records, 1905-1987
Series 7: Advertising and Promotional Records, 1918-1998
Series 8: Catalogs, 1916-1995
Series 9: Price Lists, 1916-1995
Series 10: Product Information, 1918-1995
Series 11: Competitors, 1918-1992
Series 12: Photographs and Scrapbooks, circa 1900s-1997
Series 13: Audio-Visual Materials, circa 1980-1998
Biographical / Historical:
In 1864, Joseph W. Binney (1836-1898), began a small chemical works in Peekskill, New York. He ground and packaged hardwood charcoal and manufactured small quantities of lamp black from whale oil. In 1880, he opened a New York City office taking on his nephew, C. Harold Smith (1860-1931) as a salesman. Later, Joseph Binney's son, Edwin Binney (1866-1934), joined the business. The organization was known as the Peekskill Chemical Co. Joseph W. Binney retired and in May 1885, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith formed a partnership, Binney & Smith. Their early products included red oxide pigment used in barn paint and carbon for black tires. In 1900, the company began producing slate school pencils in its Easton, Pennsylvania mill. With the assistance of John Ketchum, the owner of a talc mine in North Carolina, Binney began combining old slate waste with cement and the talc supplied by Ketchum to produce slate pencils. Two years later, Binney & Smith introduced their white dustless blackboard chalk, "Au-Du-Septic" and in 1903, the company produced a box of eight crayons, which sold for a nickel. The word "Crayola" coined by Edwin Binney's wife, Alice, comes from "craie" the French word for chalk, and "ola," from oleaginous, meaning oily or pertaining to oil. Binney & Smith's best known product is Crayola crayons. However, its product line now includes: tempera, washable, and fabric paints, Liquitex acrylic paints, Magic Marker, chalk, clay, and Jazzy fashion and craft accessories. Binney & Smith acquired Silly Putty in 1977 and in 1984, became a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards, Inc. Products are still manufactured in Easton, Pennsylvania (world headquarters), as well as Mexico, and Indonesia and are available in twelve languages. In 2007, the company changed its name to Crayola LLC.
Separated Materials:
Artifacts were donated to the National Museum of American History, Division of Cultural History (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) on November 18, 1997 and March 15, 1998. The artifacts consist of more than 150 objects, including 79 boxes of Crayola crayons from the 1900s to 1998; 24 boxes of chalk from the 1890s to 1998, 18 art kits; 10 sets of EDU-CARDS from the 1960s and 1970s; and 10 packages of Silly Putty from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Provenance:
This collection was donated to the National Museum of American History, Archives Center on November 18, 1997, by Binney & Smith through Patrick Morris. Additional materials were donated in March 1998, by Binney & Smith through Tracey Muldoon Moran and in February 2000 through Stacy Gabrielle.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
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.
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Electricity and Modern Physics Search this
Extent:
1 Cubic foot (5 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Scrapbooks
Notebooks
Manuscripts
Newsletters
Date:
1909-1952
Scope and Contents note:
This collection traces the training and employment of an early electrical engineer. It includes 4 manuals filled with Berger's lab training at Stevens and G.E., a lecture notebook, two business correspondence scrapbooks, an industrial power data reference book, and a group of G.E. technical newsletters.
Biographical/Historical note:
Berger served as a General Electric Company electrical engineer, a William Gordon Corporation contractor, and eventually began his own electrical design firm. He was educated in 1910 at the Stevens Institute, and enrolled in the General Electric continuing education program at Lynn, Mass.
Provenance:
The immediate source of acquisition for the materials transferred in 1983 is unknown.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
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.
The collection documents Parke, Davis and Company, one of the largest and oldest pharmaceutical firms in America.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents Parke, Davis and Company, one of America's oldest and largest drug makers. Parke, Davis had the first research laboratory in the American pharmaceutical industry. The company played a major role in the development of some of the principle new drugs of the twentieth century and pioneered the field of drug standardization. They were one of the first American firms to produce antitoxins, hormones, and other biologicals. They introduced new and important drugs such as adrenalin, dilantin, chlorenpleniol, and other antibiotics. They also did important research on vitamins, disinfectants, and pencillin.
The collection contains complete documentaion of all the research activities done, including research laboratory notes, correspondence, and published papers. The collection also contains corporate, financial, advertising and sales materials, photographs, and audiovisual materials. The collection is important for those researchers interested in the history of public health, the history of biologicals, pharmaceutical manufacturing and business history.
Arrangement:
Collection is divided into 13 series.
Series 1: Corporate Materials, 1887-1951
Series 2: Financial Materials, 1880-1970
Series 3: Employee/Personnel Materials, 1900-1989
Series 4: Advertising/Sales Materials, 1868-1980
Series 5: Photographs, 1866-1992
Series 6: Notebooks, 1908-1968
Series 7: Control Department Records, 1884-1931
Series 8: Formulas, 1882-1967
Series 9: Equipment Data Files, 1922-1978
Series 10: Publications, 1968-1988
Series 11: Research Materials, 1920-1978
Series 12: Drawings, 1911-1971
Series 13: Addenda, 1867-1970
Series 14: Audio Materials, 1956-1957
Historical:
Parke, Davis and Company traces it's origins to Samuel Pearce Duffield (1833-1916), a physician and pharmacist. Duffield was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and his family moved to Detroit when he was an infant. Duffield graduated from the University of Michigan in 1854 and he attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, latter leaving for Germany where he studied chemistry and sought treatment for his eyesight. He subsequently earned a Doctor of Philosophy from Ludwig University at Giessen in Germany. Duffield returned to Detroit in 1858 and established a retail drugstore with a strong interest in manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Duffield sought financial partners for his retail and manufacturing venture with A.L. Patrick and Francis C. Conant. Both men retracted their investments and Duffield met Hervey Coke Parke (1927-1899), a native of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Duffield and Parke formed a formal partnership in 1866. George S. Davis, a third partner and traveling salesman previously with Farrand, Sheley and Company, was added 1867. Augustus F. Jennings joined the company as a partner to head manufacturing. The company became known as Duffield, Parke, Davis, & Jennings Company. Duffield withdrew in 1869 and the name Parke, Davis & Company was adopted in 1871. The company incorporated in 1875 and began planning world-wide scientific expeditions to discover new vegetable drugs such as Guarana, Bearsfoot, Eucalyptus Globulus, and Coca. The company first showed a profit in 1876, and the first dividend paid to shareholders in 1878 and dividends paid until mid-1960s. Research was a major activity of the company.
In 1907, Parke, Davis and Company bought 340 acres in northeast Avon Township, Michigan, and called it Parkedale Farm. The farm was dedicated on October 8, 1908, and included sterilization rooms and a vaccine propagating building. By 1909 the farm included 200 horses, 25 to 50 cattle, 150 sheep, and employed 20 men. The horses produced the antitoxin for diphtheria and tetanus, the cattle produced a vaccine for smallpox preventatives, and the sheep made serum. Only the healthiest animals were used and all were well cared for. Exotic plants were also grown on the site and used for drugs. Parke-Davis' chief products were antitoxins and vaccines as well as farm crops for feeding the animals. The farm continued to produce vaccines for diphtheria, scarlet fever, tetanus, smallpox, anthrax, and in the 1950s, the Salk polio vaccine.
Due to a weakening financial position, the company became susceptible to take-over, and was purchased by Warner-Lambert in 1970. Warner Lambert, was then acquired by Pfizer in 2000. In 2007, Pfizer closed its research facilities in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Source
Rochester Hills Museum at Voon Hoosen Farm (last accessed on September 29, 2021 https://www.rochesterhills.org/Museum/LocalHistory/ParkeDavisFarm.pdf)
Parke, Davis and Company. Parke-Davis At 100...progress in the past...promise for the future. Detroit, Michigan, 1966.
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Albert W. Hampson Commercial Artwork Collection (NMAH.AC.0561)
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Kiehl's Pharmacy Records (NMAH.AC.0819)
Alan and Elaine Levitt Advertisement Collection (NMAH.AC.0303)
Medical Sciences Film Collection (NMAH.AC.0222)
Norwich Eaton Pharmaceutical, Inc. Collection (NMAH.AC.0395)
Procter & Gamble Company Product Packaging Collection (NMAH.AC.0836)
Sterling Drug Company Records (NMAH.AC.772)
Syntex Collection of Pharmaceutical Advertising (NMAH.AC.0821)
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Medicine (NMAH.AC.0060.S01.01.Medicine)
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Patent Medicines (NMAH.AC.0060.S01.01.PatentMedicines)
Materials at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Libraries Trade Literature Collection
Trade catalogs related to Parke, Davis & Co.; Warner-Lambert; Pfizer Pharmaceuticals; and Pfizer, Inc.
Materials at Other Organizations
Detroit Public Library, Special Collections
Parke, Davis & Company records, 1892-1959
Scrapbook of clippings, 1929-44; Excursions & Announcements, 1892-1902; and company newsletters.
University of California San Francisco
Drug Industry Documents was created by the University of California San Francisco Library in collaboration with faculty members C. Seth Landefeld, MD and Michael Steinman, MD. Originally established to house documents from an off-label marketing lawsuit against Parke-Davis (United States of America ex rel. David Franklin vs. Parke-Davis), the archive has grown to include documents from additional sources illustrating how the pharmaceutical industry, academic journals and institutions, continuing medical education organizations and regulatory/funding agencies operate in ways that are detrimental to public health.
Separated Materials:
Division of Medicine and Science, National Museum of American History
The division holds objects related to Parke, Davis that primarily include containers (boxes and glass bottles) that held phamrmaceuticals, biologicals (vaccines), crude drugs, and herb packages. See accessions: 1978.0882; 1982.0043; 1982.0043; 1984.0351; 1985.0475; 1988.3152; 1991.0415; 1992.3127; 2001.3066; 2012.0165; and 2018.5001.
Provenance:
The initial collection of approximately 185 cubic feet was donated by the Warner-Lambert Company, through Jerry A. Weisbach, Vice-President and President of the Pharmaceutical Research Division, on February 3, 1982.
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.
