The Formica Collection consists of textual files, photographs, slides, negatives, drawings, blueprints, posters, advertisements, product brochures, newsletters, and informational pamphlets documenting the history of the Formica Corporation and the use of Formica brand plastic laminate.
Scope and Contents:
The Formica Collection, 1913-2003, consists of textual files, photographs, photo slides, drawings, blueprints, posters, advertisements, product brochures, informational pamphlets, and research notes documenting the history of the Formica Corporation and the use of Formica brand plastic laminate.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into ten series.
Series 1: Corporate Records, 1920-1992, 2003
Subseries 1.1: Annual reports, 1949, 1966, 1988
Subseries 1.2: Correspondence and company identity, 1920-1988
Subseries 1.3: Corporation histories and timelines, 1949-1991, undated
Subseries 1.4: Newspaper clippings and articles, 1934-2003
Subseries 1.5: Awards, 1940s-1987
Subseries 1.6: Patent information, 1925-1994
Subseries 1.7: Photographs, 1927-1966
Series 2: Personnel Records, 1943-1992
Series 3: Newsletters, Magazines, and Press Releases, 1942-1990
Subseries 3.1: Newsletters, 1942-1988
Subseries 3.2: Press releases, 1973-1990
Series 4: Product Information, 1948-1994
Series 5: Advertising and sales materials, 1913-2000
Subseries 5.1: Advertising materials, 1913-2000
Subseries 5.2: Sales materials, 1922-1993
Series 6: Subject Files, circa 1945, 1955-1991, 2002
Series 7: Exhibits, 1981-1994
Series 8: Grace Jeffers Research Materials, 1987-1997
Series 9: Audio Visual Materials, 1982-1995, undated
Series 10: Martin A. Jeffers Materials, 1963-1999
Subseries 10.1: Background Materials, 1965-1999
Subseries 10.2: Employee Benefits, 1963-1998
Subseries 10.3: Product Information, [1959?]-1997
Subseries 10.4: Advertising and Sales Records, 1987-1999
Biographical / Historical:
Since its founding in 1913, the history of the Formica Company has been marked by a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. The history begins with the discovery of Formica by two men who envisioned the plastic laminate as breakthrough insulation for motors. Later, Formica became a ubiquitous surfacing material used by artists and architects of post-modern design. The various applications of the plastic laminate during the twentieth century give it a prominent role in the history of plastics, American consumerism, and American popular culture.
The Formica Company was the brainchild of Herbert A. Faber and Daniel J. O'Conor, who met in 1907 while both were working at Westinghouse in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. O'Conor, head of the process section in the Research Engineering Department, had been experimenting with resins, cloth, paper, and a wide array of solvents in an effort to perfect a process for making rigid laminate sheets from Kraft paper and liquid Bakelite. O'Conor produced the first laminate sheet at Westinghouse by winding and coating paper on a mandrel, slitting the resulting tube, and flattening it on a press. The finished product was a laminated sheet with the chemical and electrical properties of Bakelite that were cut into various shapes and sizes. O'Conor applied for a patent on February 1, 1913, but it was not issued until November 12, 1918 (US Patent 1,284,432). Since the research was done on behalf of Westinghouse, the company was assigned the patent, and O'Conor was given one dollar, the customary amount that Westinghouse paid for the rights to employees' inventions.
Herbert Faber, Technical Sales Manager of insulating materials, was excited about O'Conor's discovery. Faber saw limitless possibilities for the new material. However, he quickly became frustrated by Westinghouse's policy limiting the sale of the laminate to its licensed distributors. After failing to persuade Westinghouse to form a division to manufacture and market the new material, Faber and O'Conor created their own company. On May 2, 1913, the first Formica plant opened in Cincinnati, Ohio. On October 15, 1913, the business incorporated as the Formica Insulation Company with Faber as president and treasurer and O'Conor as vice-president and secretary. The company began producing insulation parts used in place of or "for mica," the costly mineral that had been used in electrical insulation.
Like most new companies, Formica had modest beginnings. Faber and O'Conor faced the challenge of looking for investors who would let them maintain control over the company. Finally, they met J. G. Tomluin, a lawyer and banker from Walton, Kentucky, who invested $7,500 for a one-third share in the Formica Company. Renting a small space in downtown Cincinnati, Faber and O'Conor began work. The company's equipment list consisted of a 35-horsepower boiler, a small gas stove, and a variety of homemade hand screw presses. By September 1913, Tomluin had brought in two more partners, David Wallace and John L. Vest. With the added capital, O'Conor, Faber, and Formica's eighteen employees began producing automobile insulation parts for Bell Electric Motor, Allis Chalmers, and Northwest Electric.
Initially, the Formica Company only made insulation rings and tubes for motors. However, by July 4, 1914, the company obtained its first press and began to produce flat laminate sheets made from Redmenol resin. Business gradually grew, and by 1917 sales totaled $75,000. Fueled by World War I, Formica's business expanded to making radio parts, aircraft pulleys, and timing gears for the burgeoning motor industry. In the years that followed, Formica products were in high demand as laminate plastics replaced older materials in washers, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators. By 1919, the Formica Company required larger facilities and purchased a factory in Cincinnati.
During this time, patent battles and legal suits emerged to challenge Formica's success. On June 11, 1919, Westinghouse sued Formica for patent infringement on its laminated gears; Formica won. Later that year, Westinghouse brought two new lawsuits against Formica. The first was for a patent infringement on the production of tubes, rods, and molded parts; the second was over an infringement based on a 1913 patent assigned to Westinghouse through O'Conor. Formica prevailed in both suits.
Legal battles did not deter the company. Having to defend itself against a giant corporation gave Formica a reputation as a scrappy contender. Finally, Faber and O'Conor made a quantum leap in 1927, when the company was granted a U.S. patent for a phenolic laminate utilizing lithographed wood grains of light color, forming an opaque barrier sheet which blocks out the dark interior of the laminate. In 1931, the company received two more patents for the preparation of the first all paper based laminate and for the addition of a layer of aluminum foil between the core and the surface, making the laminate cigarette-proof. These patents would allow Formica to move from a company dealing primarily with industrial material to the highly visible arena of consumer goods.
In 1937, Faber had a severe heart attack which limited his activity within the company. O'Conor continued as president, encouraging new product lines, including Realwood, as a laminate with genuine wood veneer mounted on a paper lamination with a heat-reactive binder. With the introduction of Realwood and its derivatives, manufacturers started using Formica laminate for tabletops, desks, and dinette sets. By the early forties, sales of Formica laminate were over 15 million dollars. The final recipe for decorative laminate was perfected in 1938, when melamine resins were introduced. Melamine was clear, extremely hard, and resistant to stains, heat, light, less expensive than phenolic resins. It also made possible laminates of colored papers and patterns.
Due to World War II, Formica postponed the manufacturing of decorative laminate sheets. Instead, the company made a variety of war-time products ranging from airplane propellers to bomb buster tubes.
The post-World War II building boom fueled the decorative laminate market and ushered in what would come to be known as the golden age for Formica. The company, anticipating the demand for laminate, acquired a giant press capable of producing sheets measuring thirty by ninety-six inches for kitchen countertops. Between 1947 and 1950, more than 2 million new homes were designed with Formica brand laminate for kitchens and bathrooms.
Formica's advertising campaigns, initially aimed at industry, were transformed to speak to the new decorative needs of consumer society, in particular the American housewife. Formica hired design consultants, Brooks Stevens, and, later, Raymond Loewy who launched extensive advertising campaigns. Advertising themes of durability, cleanliness, efficiency, and beauty abound in promotional material of this time. Advertisers promised that the plastic laminate, known as "the wipe clean wonder," was resistant to dirt, juices, jams, alcohol stains, and cigarette burns. Atomic patterns and space-age colors, including Moonglo, Skylark, and Sequina, were introduced in homes, schools, offices, hospitals, diners, and restaurants across America.
The post-war period was also marked by expansion, specifically with the establishment of Formica's first international markets. In 1947, Formica signed a licensing agreement with the British firm the De La Rue Company of London for the exclusive manufacture and marketing of decorative laminates outside North America, and in South America and the Pacific Basin. In 1948, Formica changed its name from the Formica Insulation Company to the Formica Company. In 1951, Formica responded to growing consumer demand by opening a million square foot plant in Evendale, Ohio, devoted to the exclusive production of decorative sheet material. In 1956, the Formica Company became the Formica Corporation, a subsidiary of American Cyanamid Company. A year later, the international subsidiaries that Formica formed with De La Rue Company of London were replaced by a joint company called Formica International Limited.
The plastic laminate was not merely confined to tabletops and dinette sets. Formica laminate was used for skis, globes, and murals. Moreover, well-known artists and architects used the decorative laminate for modernist furniture and Art Deco interiors. In 1960, Formica's Research and Development Design Center was established, adjacent to the Evendale plant, to develop uses for existing laminate products. In 1966, the company
opened the Sierra Plant near Sacramento, California. Such corporate expansion enabled Formica to market its laminates beyond the traditional role as a countertop surface material.
In 1974, Formica established its Design Advisory Board (DAB), a group of leading designers and architects. DAB introduced new colors and patterns of laminate that gained popularity among artists and interior designers in the 1980s. In 1981, DAB introduced the Color Grid, a systematic organization of Formica laminate arranged by neutrals and chromatics. The Color Grid was described as the first and only logically arranged collection of color in the laminate industry. DAB also developed the Design Concepts Collection of premium solid and patterned laminates to serve the needs of contemporary interior designers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the corporation continued to produce laminates for interior designers, artists, and architects. In 1982, Formica introduced COLORCORE, the first solid-color laminate. Due to its relatively seamless appearance, COLORCORE was adopted by artists for use in furniture, jewelry, and interior design. The introduction of COLORCORE also marked the emergence of a wide variety of design exhibitions and competitions sponsored by the Formica Corporation. In 1985, Formica Corporation became independent and privately held. Formica continues to be one of the leading laminate producers in the world with factories in the United States, England, France, Spain, Canada, and Taiwan.
For additional information on the history of the Formica Corporation, see:
DiNoto, Andrea. Art Plastic: Designed for Living. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985.
Fenichell, Stephen. Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century. New York: Harper/Collins, 1996.
Jeffers Grace. 1998. Machine Made Natural: The Decorative Products of the Formica Corporation, 1947-1962. Master's thesis. Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts.
Lewin, Susan Grant, ed. Formica & Design: From Counter Top to High Art. New York: Rizzoli, 1991.
Related Materials:
Materials at the Archives Center
Leo Baekeland Papers, 1881-1968 (NMAH.AC.0005)
DuPont Nylon Collection, 1939-1977 (NMAH.AC.0007)
J. Harry DuBois Collection on the History of Plastics, circa 1900-1975 (NMAH.AC.0008)
Earl Tupper Papers, circa 1914-1982 (NMAH.AC.0470)
The Division of Medicine and Science holds artifacts related to this collection. See accession # 1997.0319 and #1997.3133.
Provenance:
This collection was assembled by Grace Jeffers, historian of material culture, primarily from materials given to her by Susan Lewin, Head of Formica's New York design and publicity office when the office closed in 1995. The collection was donated to the Archives Center by Grace Jeffers in September 1996.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. 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. 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 artist and illustrator Lili Réthi who was best known for her drawings of industrial subjects such as bridges, construction scenes and mines.
Scope and Contents:
Drawings, sketches, watercolors, biographical material, photographs, printed material, correspondence and books relating to the career of artist and illustrator Lili Réthi. The bulk of the collection consists of originals and copies of Réthi's drawings and sketches for various projects in Europe and the United States.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into five series.
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1928-1968
Series 2: Projects, 1918-1969
Series 3: Exhibits, 1940-1943, 1965
Series 4: Portraits, 1919-1965
Series 5: Illustrated Books, 1916-1969
Biographical / Historical:
Lilly (Lili) Maria Réthi (1894-1969) was born in Vienna, Austria to Leopold Réthi (1857-1924), a professor of medicine and Marie née Mauther (1863-1955). Réthi had one sister, Elizabeth "Elsie" (1889-1970). Lili attended the Viennese Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen (The Art School for Women and Girls), established in 1897. The school existed until 1945, but it closed to Jewish women artists in 1938, when the school was subordinated to the municipality of Vienna and used to inculcate Nazi ideology. (Ben-Eli, 1999). Réthi learned to sketch the human form at the Vienna Anatomical Institute—training, no doubt, that her physician father encouraged. This training, which sharpened her sense of form and function, helped her later when drawing complicated machinery and illustrating Victor Hecht's book, Leitfaden der Physikalisch-Therapeutischen, (Guide to Physical Therapy, 1916). Réthi became fascinated with construction at a young age. "When I was a little girl in Vienna, I used to take walks and watch men building houses. I was fascinated by the men working as well as the excitement of watching the building grow." (Constructor, December 1967, page 25) Her burgeoning interest would grow, and she became one of the best-known illustrators of engineering, construction, and industrial sites. She was named a Royal Society of Art Fellow in 1961.
During the inter-war years (1918-1939) Réthi interrupted her academic studies to work across Europe, illustrating sites in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The bulk of her work captured coal mines, coal yards, factories, chemical plants, blast furnaces, iron foundries, shipyards, steel production, buildings, aircraft, and bridges.
In 1929, Réthi moved to Berlin where she worked recording engineering projects and was an illustrator for the magazine "Der Bücherkreis" (Book Circle). She illustrated many of the "Dortmunder Union" activities during this period. The Union, a vertically integrated mining group (mining and iron and steel production), was founded in 1872 and was located in the Ruhr area of Germany. This work for the Union resulted in an exhibition in Berlin at the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (1931) and "Wien- Berlin: Das Gesicht zwei Städte" (Vienna and Berlin: The Face of Two Cities") (1932); at the World Power Conference in Stockholm (1933); and the Technical Museum of Vienna (1934). While in the Ruhr, Rethi documented workers, elevating their significance as subjects in their own right. She recorded the working conditions, many of which depicted harsh and dangerous physical labor. Her published work Germinal (1924) highlighted, through seven lithographs, the terrible conditions in French mines. Her work with the Union provided exposure and elevated her growing artistic status, especially with the Third Reich. With war imminent in Europe, the erosion of her personal rights as a Jewish woman, and a commission invitation by Hermann Göring to create propaganda images for the Nazi Regime, she left for England, never to return to her homeland in Austria.
Her portfolio of work is immense and while she primarily focused on engineering, industrial and construction sites, trade publications, industry magazines and newspapers, she branched into other areas. She illustrated the German version of Upton Sinclair´s Letters to Judd, an American Workingman (Briefe an einen Arbeiter, Leipzig- Wien, 1932) and was widely published in Austrian, Danish and German newspapers such as Aften-Avisen, Bergland Wien, Børsen, Der Welt Spiegel, Beitbilder, and VDI Nachrichten. Later projects included books, primarily for children, commissions to sketch churches, portraits of individuals, illustrated book plates, pamphlets, and Christmas cards. Catholic entities such as St. John the Divine and the Capuchin Friars in New York, also sought her services to sketch church interiors and illustrate brochures. And, in 1950, Réthi sketched the interior renovation (1948-1952) of the White House during the Truman Administration.
The Illustrated London News hired Réthi in 1937 to sketch the coronation of King George. While in England, she also created sketches for a booklet issued by the London, North Eastern Railway (L.N.E.R.) posters for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (L.M.S.) and the General Post Office (GPO): Post Office Motor Transport Depot (1937); the Post Office Underground Mail Train (1935); and LMS Crewe Works, Building Coronation Class Engine (1937). The Illustrated London News sent her to the 1939 New York World's Fair where her introduction and love of New York City was launched. Réthi arrived in the United States on March 23, 1939, and became a citizen in 1944.
In the United States, Réthi continued illustrating engineering and construction activities, many of which were major post war projects. Réthi was attracted to the great industrial scene of 1940s America, and New York City provided a fertile location for most of her projects. The first public showing of her work in the United States was at the Architectural League of New York (1940) and her "American Industry at War" exhibit was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1943). She documented some of the most significant projects in North America such as the New York City Pavilion at the World's Fair (1964), the United Nations Building (1949), the Pan Am Building (1962), Pennsylvania Station (1965), and the World Trade Center (1967-1968).
She had commissions from Surveyer, Nenniger & Chênevert (an engineering and construction firm that used her images on company Christmas cards), Sperry Gyroscope Company, U.S. Tobacco Company, Turner Construction, Walsh Construction, Atlas Steel Plant, Bliss Manufacturing, George A. Fuller Company, Standard Chemicals, and the United States Pipe and Foundry Company, to name a few.
Réthi also worked with several book publishers, especially, McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Brace. She illustrated over 40 books, many for children. Her work also appeared on the covers of many trade publications and magazines such as Pencil Points, Service, Factory, Product Engineering, and the Journal of the American Society of Automotive Engineers. Réthi was one of a few, if not the only female artist who devoted her career to portraying engineering works.
Related Materials:
Materials at the Smithsonian Institution
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering Bridges Reference Collection, NMAH.AC.1577
Contains negatives and prints of drawings for the Verranzo-Narrows Bridge, New York, New York
Smithsonian Instituton Archives
Records, circa 1948-1988
Contains documentation about a Lili Réthi exhibit, 1964-1965, curated by the then Museum of the History of Technology.
Archives of American Art
Associated American Artists Records, circa 1934-1983
Includes three file folders in the Series: Artists Files about Lili Réthi.
Materials at Other Organizations
Hagley Museum and Library
Sperry Gyroscope Company Division photographs and films (1986-273)
Contains Lili Réthi graphic arts, 1943, consisting of 24 reproductions.
Provenance:
The collection was bequeathed by Lili Réthi to the United States National Museum (now known as the National Museum of American History) through Herbert G. Fenison in 1971.
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.
Includes records of the Salem China Company relating to the administration of the company, its sales and art department, and other material relating to plant operations prior to 1960, when the company ceased manufacturing and became a distributor only. Includes photographs of various promotions, Salem China patterns, factory buildings, sales staff, show rooms, etc. as well as extensive advertising material of the Salem China Co. and its competitors. Another series contains blueprints and drawings of the Salem China Company's plant and equipment. Another series contains bulletins issued by the Associated Industries of Cleveland from 1977 to 1981.
Scope and Contents:
The collection includes records of the Salem China Company relating to administration of the company, its sales and art department and other material relating to plant operations prior to 1960 when the company ceased manufacturing and became a distributor only. There are a number of photographs of various promotions, Salem China patterns, factory buildings, sales staff, show rooms, etc. There is extensive advertising material of both the Salem China Co. and of its competitors. Another series consists of blueprints and drawings of the Salem China Company's plant and equipment. There is also a series of bulletins issued by the Associated Industries of Cleveland from 1977 to 1981.
Series 1: General Administration, includes a history of Salem, Ohio as well as a history of the United States pottery industry written by Floyd W. McKee, long time manager of the Salem China Company, after he retired. Issues of the Stylon News from 1954 to 1957 indicate the company's interest in tile. Union materials relate to the several craft unions concerned with organizing pottery plants. There is some generalized anti union material.
Series 2 contains bulletins of the Associated Industries of Cleveland (AIC). These bulletins include material of general interest to members, bulletins from the legal counsel, a newsletter for executives, bulletins relating to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and surveys of management employee relations, salaries and benefits and wage settlements.
The third series consists of the Sales Department's records, including advertising brochures, pamphlets and photographs relating to various promotions supermarket, bank, movie, department store as well as those for general advertising of Salem products, the records of a factory outlet store operated by the Salem China Company, bulletins, a notebook and other materials directed to the sales staff.
Art Department records incorporate mats, photographs, some drawings and occasional negatives of nearly 40 patterns of china as well as service plates and souvenir plates. The notebooks relate to premiums, specialized ware such as children's ware, proofs, photos, half tones and ads.
Over 65 companies are represented in the competitors' advertising material, most of which relates to china although there are a few tile and other manufacturers included.
With the exception of the art department notebooks, and the drawings and blueprints, most of the collection is in good condition.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into ten series.
Series 1: Executive and Administrative Records
Series 2: Labor Relations
Series 3: Sales Department Records
Series 4: Promotional Photographs
Series 5: Art Department Records
Series 6: Plant Operating Records
Series 7: Competitors' Advertising
Series 8: US Potters Association
Series 9: Tile Industry
Series 10: Associated Industries of Cleveland
Biographical / Historical:
The Salem China Company of Salem, Ohio was founded in 1898 by Pat and John McNichol, Dan Cronin and William Smith, all from East Liverpool, Ohio. It was sold to the F.A. Sebrings of Sebring, Ohio in 1918. Until retirement in 1950, Floyd W. McKee, who had been with the company since 1918, was the general manager. When he retired in 1950 J. Harrison Keller, the husband of F.A. Sebring's granddaughter, Gretchen, took over the management of the company. Harrison Keller was also president of the United States Potters Association, the principal function of which was labor negotiations. From 1898 until 1960 the company was engaged in both manufacturing and distribution. Since 1960, its function has been distribution only.
In addition to the manufacture and distribution of dinnerware, novelty and souvenirware, the Salem China Co. distributed flatware, crystal and Corningware and was the American distributor for the James Sadler Company, English manufacturers of teapots. The company supplemented its sales to retail outlets by heavy reliance on bank, movie, drugstore and supermarket promotions. For example, Peoples Drug Co. used over 150,000 thirty two piece sets of dishes from the Salem China Co. in the 1930's with the buyer paying $2.98 for a set costing $2.72 at the factory. During the 30's also, about 130 carloads of Salem dinnerware were used by American Stores in Philadelphia in promotions. In 1993, the president of the Salem China Co. was Gary Keller.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Salem China Company, February 22, 1989.
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.
George Miller Dyott (1883--1972) was an early aviator; veteran of the Royal Naval Air Service; aircraft designer; and explorer. This collection contains approximately 1 cubic foot of material pertaining to Dyott's aviation career including correspondence; photographs; financial records; technical drawings; military records; news clippings; a World War I field diary; calling cards; and an annotated manuscript entitled, "Flying," written by Dyott.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains approximately 1 cubic foot of material pertaining to George Miller Dyott's aviation career including correspondence; photographs; financial records; technical drawings; military records; news clippings; a World War I field diary; calling cards; and an annotated manuscript entitled, "Flying," written by Dyott. Photographic formats include black and white prints of various sizes (some of which are mounted on cardstock or matted) and 5 by 7 inch glass plates. Many of the photographs, including one entire album, are devoted to Dyott's service with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) during World War I. Aircraft pictured in the photographs include the Dyott Monoplane; Dyott Bomber; Walden IV 1910 Monoplane (identfied here as the Walden-Dyott Monoplane); an unidentfied model of Deperdussin; Nieuport 17; Vickers (UK) E.F.B.5 Gunbus; a Sopwith Baby fitted with Le Prieur Rockets; Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2; Handley Page O/400; Morane-Saulnier Type L (Mo.S.3); Blériot XI; Farman (Henry) H.F.20 (Type Militaire Biplane); and a later photo of a Bellanca Pacemaker CH-300. There are also photographs of a Royal Navy non-rigid airship and the wreck of the Zeppelin LZ 76 (Navy L 33), as well as early equipment such as searchlights; anti-aircraft guns; an anti-aircraft armored vehicle; and various types of bombs. In addition to Dyott, other well-known people in the photographs include Henry W. Walden; Patrick Hamilton; Francisco Madero (33rd President of Mexico); Arthur W. Bigsworth; and Reginald A. J. Warneford. The collection also contains one photograph of Harriet Quimby. There are also four technical drawings dating to 1914 in the collection ranging in size from approximately 24.25 by 15.5 inches up to 41 x 14 inches. Three of the drawings are on coated cloth and one is on waxed paper. Two are for a small promotional aircraft made from an ale bottle and powered by an 80-hp Gnome engine, one is marked "Worthington Ales" and the other is marked "Little Peter." The third drawing is a three-view of a "Hydro-Aeroplane for Tropical Rivers" powered by two 100-hp Mercedes engines, and the fourth is a side drawing of an unspecified type of biplane (undated). In addition to the drawings, there is a graph on waxed paper (14.5 by 13.25 inches) tracking altitude, time, and speed for an unknown aircraft (undated). The collection also includes records relating to the design and production of the Dyott Monoplane and Dyott Bomber.
Arrangement:
Some of the material in this collection arrived grouped together in folders or envelopes. This material was housed accordingly and original folder titles were kept where applicable. The rest of the collection is organized by type of material. Folder titles created by archivist, or additional information added to original folder titles by archivist, are in brackets. Within folders, material is arranged chronologically.
Biographical / Historical:
George Miller Dyott (1883--1972) was an early aviator; veteran of the Royal Naval Air Service; aircraft designer; and explorer. Dyott was born in New York in 1883 to an American mother and a British father. Dyott was educated in the United Kingdom before returning to the United States where he learned to fly at Curtiss Field in New York. Dyott was awarded Royal Aero Club aviator's certificate 114 in August of 1911. Around this time, Dyott partnered with Henry W. Walden designing monoplanes. In the autumn of 1911, Dyott and Patrick Hamilton began making a tour of exhibition flights with two Deperdussin monoplanes (one single and one double seater) which started in New York and included stops in the Bahamas and Mexico, where they carried then-President Francisco Madero as a passenger. Dyott then returned to the United Kingdom where he designed the Dyott Monoplane, manufactured by Hewlett & Blondeau, which he brought to the United States to fly a six month demonstration tour beginning in April 1913. Dyott entered military service in 1914 and served as a squadron commander for the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I. Around this time, Dyott designed a large twin-engine biplane for use in exploring. The Royal Naval Air Service saw a potential in this design for military use so Dyott made some modifications and two prototypes were ordered from Hewlett & Blondeau in 1916. The two Dyott Bomber prototypes were built and flight tested with various engines and armament, with the second being service tested in France, but the model never entered production. After World War I, Dyott became an explorer and joined the Royal Geographical Society. In 1927, Dyott was hired to lead an expedition retracing the steps of the Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition which confirmed Theodore Roosevelt's claims about the group's discovery and exploration of the Rio Roosevelt ("River of Doubt"). In 1928, Dyott led an expedition into Brazil searching for missing explorer Percy Fawcett. Dyott also founded Dyott & Company, Ltd. in Lima, Peru taking aerial photographs and other scenic views that were sold as post cards. Dyott wrote several books about his adventures (one of which was adapted into a feature film, Manhunt in the Jungle, in 1958), and also starred as himself in two documentary films (Hunting Tigers in India in 1929 and Savage Gold, which he also co-wrote, in 1933). In the mid-1930s, Dyott retired to Ecuador where he lived largely in isolation. He conducted two expeditions searching for Inca treasure in the late 1940s before returning to Ecuador where he stayed until returning to New York to reunite with his wife and children shortly before his death.
Provenance:
Michael Dyott, Gift, 2016, NASM.2016.0019.
Restrictions:
No restrictions on access.
Rights:
Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests
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.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Alka-Seltzer Documentation and Oral History Project (NMAH.AC.0184)
N W Ayer Advertising Agency Records (NMAH.AC.0059)
Cover Girl Advertising Oral History Documentation Project (NMAH.AC.0374)
Garfield and Company Records (NMAH.AC.0820)
Albert W. Hampson Commercial Artwork Collection (NMAH.AC.0561)
Ivory Soap Advertising Collection (NMAH.AC.0791)
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.
The collection consists of photographs and advertisements related to women working in industry dating from 1890 to 1948.
Scope and Contents:
Series 1 consists of photographs that include images of women in industry along with associated documents. Materials are arranged alphabetically by subject. The photographs date from 1890 to 1981, yet the bulk of the materials are from 1930 to 1948. A portion of the materials are undated. There is a notable shortage of material related to women of color. The photographs depict women working in engineering jobs, operating heavy machinery, working with textiles, and handling different types of technology. There are several types of machines and products featured in the collection including pneumatic drills, gas irons, typewriters, rivet guns, compressed air machines, an arbor press, bending roll machines, and light bulbs. Documents that correspond to the photographs discuss an increase in women taking men's jobs in the 1940s while the men were at war. Consequently, photographs from the 1940s in this collection represent the transition of making machinery more applicable to women and enabling them to do "man-sized" jobs. Many of the 1940's photographs depict women enrolling in engineering training programs and physically working with heavy machinery.
Earlier materials from the early 1900s show women sitting in factories next to lighter equipment such as sewing machines and typewriters. There are a variety of companies displayed in the photographs including B. F. Spinney Co., Computing-Bureau Freight Accounts, Curtis Publishing Company, Curtis-Wright Corporation, Deane Works, Draper Corporation, General Electric Co., Glenn L. Martin Co., Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Osborn Manufacturing Company, and Timken Roller Bearing Co. A portion of the commercial photographs were taken by companies including Commercial Photo Co., Eastman Kodak Company, Mercury MFG. Co., Novelty Photo Co., Science Service, and Underwood and Underwood.
Series 2 contains advertisements related to women in industry. These advertisements date from 1927 to 1946. The materials in this series promote products and jobs targeting women operating machinery such as safety bars, grinding tools, bending roles, gauges, double-seaming machines, and portable package staplers. There are a variety of companies featured in this series including Acme Staple Co., Ashcroft Gauge Division, Buffalo Forge Company, E.W. Bliss Co., The Sheffield Corporation, and Willson Safety Products.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into two series.
Series 1: Photographs, 1890-1948
Series 2: Advertisements, 1927-1946
Historical:
This artificially created collection traces the transition of women's work in industry during the twentieth century. Most of the collection materials have a different provenance, but thirty-two photographs were assembled by Helena E. Wright during her years working as a curator in the Division of Culture and the Arts at the National Museum of American History. Other photographs showing women in industrial sites were added to the collection by the curator Peter Liebhold in the Division of Work and Industry. The photographs and advertisements in the complete collection were arranged to exhibit the evolution of women in the workforce. Women's occupations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included work in the clothing industry (i.e. Draper Corporation, B. F. Spinney Co.), factories, and production lines. Despite the low pay, laborious and unsafe working conditions that came with working in these industries, most women felt a sense of empowerment being employed outside the home. Many women welcomed the opportunity to provide an income for their families yet worked long hours in inadequate and dismal settings. During World War I and World War II, men left their industry jobs to serve in the war. In order to serve the war effort, women found more employment opportunities in several types of industries. These included electric companies (i.e. General Electric Co.), aircraft and aerospace engineering businesses (i.e. Glenn L. Martin Co., Goodyear Aircraft Corp.), foundry work (i.e. Osborn Manufacturing Company), steel making (i.e. Timken Roller Bearing Co.), as well as enrollment in engineering training programs (i.e. Curtis-Wright Corporation). These industries provided women with a broader range of employment opportunities, skills, and experiences. Consequently, other companies began creating and marketing products to help improve the lives of women in the workforce. Inventions such as the Willson Saf-t-Bra advertised comfort and protection to women working in various industry occupations.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Women (AC0060)
Rosie the Riveter Health and Safety Records (AC0621)
Jantzen Knitting Mills Collection (AC0233)
Provenance:
Found in collections and assembled by curatorial staff.
Restrictions:
Unrestricted research access 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.
Records document Charles Eisler, a Hungarian immigrant who was a skilled mechanic and engineer and his company, Eisler Engineering Company of Newark, New Jersey, which manufactured equipment for producing electric lamps, television and radio tubes, welding equipment and laboratory equipment.
Scope and Contents:
The bulk of the materials date from the 1930s to the 1950s and document Charles Eisler's contributions to the modern lamp making industry. There is considerable personal information documenting Eisler and his family, and his connection to his native Hungary. The collection is divided into 9 series: personal materials; business materials; employee records, operating records; diagrams and drawings; litigation and patent records; photographs; and scrapbooks.
Series 1, Personal Materials, 1944-1970, is divided into six subseries: Passports and Naturalization Certificate, 1910-1970s; Photographs, 1912; Chronological Correspondence, 1944-1970; Alphabetical Correspondence, 1941-1969; Family and Friends Correspondence, 1956-1966; Vacation Information, 1951; Financial Information, 1960-1967; and Medical Bills and Information, 1963-1967.
There are several passports (United States and German) for Eisler and his United States naturalization certificate of 1910. The photographs, 1912, are from Eisler's friend, Ed Korn. The photographs depict an airplane that Eisler created drawings for and two individuals, Bert Berry (parachutist) and Tony Januss, a pilot at Kinloch Field, St. Louis, Missouri.
The chronological correspondence, 1944-1970, is arranged chronologically. It contains letters about Hungarians and Hungarian issues; invitations to social events and speaking engagements; thank you letters; letters of condolence; donations; birthday greetings; and club memberships. Eisler was active in the Newark, New Jersey, Hungarian community. He donated equipment, clothes, and money to a variety of organizations that assisted Hungarians in the United States and in Hungary. Some of the correspondence was written by Mrs. R. Testa, secretary to Charles Eisler.
The alphabetical correspondence, 1941-1969, is arranged alphabetically. It consists of letters documenting such issues as stock in Eisler Engineering Company, personal purchases of Eisler's at the Ivanhoe Lobby Gift Shop by the Sea Hotel, and "Help the Suffering Hungarians" organization (1956-1961). This includes canceled checks from donors, specifically Operation Mercy to assist refugees from Budapest. Additionally, there is correspondence and itemized price lists for food and clothing for Hungarians. Of note is some Raritan Yacht Club (R.Y.C.) of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, materials. There is a R.Y.C. Duffle Bag newsletter, February, 1964. Eisler was a member of R.Y.C.
Family and friends correspondence, 1956-1966, includes letters and postcards from family and friends, mostly in Hungarian. Topics discussed include sending food, clothing, hearing aids, and medicine to Hungarian refugees; Christmas packages; emigration; and U.S. Relief Parcel Service receipts.
Vacation information, 1951, consists of one file folder of documentation of airline tickets, baggage tickets, tour itineraries, receipts from hotels, letterhead from hotels, and itemized lists of purchases for several trips Eisler made. Airlines ephemera represented include Pan American World Airways System; Air France; British Overseas Airways Corp; Trans World Airlines, Inc; and Eastern Airlines.
Financial information, 1960-1967, contains investment securities (certificates) information for Massachusetts Investors Trust; consolidated checking account information; lists of personal donations, personal income, and savings accounts. Eisler's personal donations varied greatly, both in amount and in the type of organization—American Hungarian Studies Foundation at Rutgers, Father Flanagan's Boy's Home; and the Jewish Community Council of Essex County, New Jersey.
Medical Bills and Information, 1963-1967, consists mostly of bills from doctors for services rendered.
Series 2, Business Materials, 1885, 1931-1985, is divided into seven subseries: correspondence, general files, financial information, World War II boards and regulations, real estate holdings and investments, articles, and Kahle Engineering.
Correspondence, 1946-1971, is arranged alphabetically by surname or company name. It contains a variety of issues—real estate, accounting, legal representation, and tenants. Attorneys Kessler and Kessler handled Eisler vs. General Electric Company. There is correspondence about meetings, depositions, and reviewing documents before filing. The tenant information includes assignments and agreements between individual tenants and the landlord, Lesire Corporation, which Eisler owned.
General Files, 1931-1985, contains files arranged alphabetically on a variety of topics.
Financial Information, 1931-1945, is mainly comprised of Treasury Department and Internal Revenue correspondence, and income tax documentation
World War II Boards and Regulations, 1942-1946, contain information about manpower, labor, and production during World War II for the manufacturing industry. The National War Labor Board contains wage rates and audit information for Eisler Engineering. The Manpower Commission established the total manpower allowance for Eisler Engineering and other companies. It set specific quotas for the number of male employees permitted. The War Production Board material includes a plant report of operations. It describes the product being made and categorizes the percentage of "war" versus "civilian" work. The War Department Plant Protection Division contains notes and recommendations for Eilser Engineering Company to implement.
Real Estate Holdings and Investments, 1932-1980, consists mainly of tax and stock returns and income information and cancelled notes for collateral with the Lesire Corporation. The record of real estate, 1952-1974, contains ledger sheets for seven separate properties with the name of the property, improvements if any, and address: Farm Flagtowne, Neshanic, New Jersey; 733 S. 12th Street, Newark, New Jersey; 735-737 S. 12th Street, Newark, New Jersey; 738-758 S. 13th Street, Newark, New Jersey; 16 N. Salem Street, Dover, New Jersey; 269 E. Blackwell Street, Dover, New Jersey; and Lad Construction. The ledger sheets also include a loan record with rents and mortgage receivable information. The Avenue L files document a factory building owned by Eisler in Newark, New Jersey. The files contain correspondence, receipts, and bills for work done on the building in preparation for sale.
Articles, 1885-1962 (not inclusive) includes four articles relating to the topic of electricity.
Kahle Engineering, 1960-1982, contains Dun and Bradstreet analytical reports from 1960 to 1964 and interoffice correspondence with Steven Logothetis, an employee of Kahle Engineering, interoffice memos, credit profiles, notes, mortgage papers, and information sheets for specific properties for purchase at public auction for the period 1979-1982.
Series 3, Employee/Personnel Records, 1940-1988, is divided into ten subseries: personnel files; accident reports; lists of employee names; service years and anniversaries; union (IUE AFL-CIO) agreements; benefits (health and pension); deceased employees; payroll information; electrical license course; Department of Labor; and miscellaneous.
The bulk of this series consists primarily of employee personnel files from the 1940s to 1960s. Arranged alphabetically by surname, the files contain employee record cards, employee applications, in some instances photographs (head shots), tax withholding exemption certificates, medical forms, union dues information, union steward reports detailing grievances and appeals, correspondence, recommendations, unemployment benefit payments, workers compensation, paychecks, and applications for United States citizenship and visa requests. The employee record cards capture the employee name; address; social security number; department; occupation; title; clock number; phone number; race; marital status; date of birth; number of children; stating rate; increases; vacation taken; country of birth; entry into the United States; naturalized and, if so, when and where; former employees and any union grievances. It provides a comprehensive view of the employee composition of the company.
The accident reports, 1958-1988, are arranged chronologically by year and then further arranged alphabetically by employee surname. These accident claim forms used by Eisler Engineering Company are for the New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Company of Trenton, New Jersey. Additionally, there are blank State of New Jersey accident forms. There is some correspondence about specific claims and employees. There is one file folder documenting injuries and illness, 1971-1978. It consists of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) forms completed by Eisler Engineering. They provide a summary of the types of injuries and illnesses, number of lost work days, number of cases and a supplementary record of occupational injuries.
Lists of employee names, 1957-1977, provides information on employees who left employment, were laid off, owed union dues; years of service to the company, birthdays, addresses, and job descriptions.
Service years and anniversaries, 1955-1970, provides the employee name, when employment began, years of service and if a service pin was awarded.
Union (IUE AFL-CIO) agreements, 1942-1957 contain union contracts and agreements between Eisler Engineering Mutual Employees Association, Inc., and the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE-AFL-CIO).
Benefits (health and pension), 1957-1967, contains information on dental benefits, hospital service plans, Group Health Insurance (GHI) Inc., claim forms for medical care insurance, and the annual report of District 4 IUE, AFL-CIO Welfare Plan for 1957.
Deceased employees, 1946-1951, consists of form letters with the employees name, address, next of kin, date of death, and the amount of unpaid salary due.
Payroll Information, 1940-1973, includes deduction of wages or salary forms for union dues, plans for enrolling in the U.S. Savings Bond program, canceled payroll checks, forms for requesting vacation, and bonus and merit increases for employees.
Electrical License Course, undated, includes homework assignments, tests, and answers to questions, in lessons/courses on: compound generators, DC (direct current) self-excited generators, power, combination circuits, parallel circuits, split phase/resistance-start induction run motors, electricity, and compound motors.
Department of Labor, 1944-1956, contains employment reports and public contracts and minimum wage determinations. There is statistical information on the type of employee (male, female, non-white, and part-time) and a report of current and anticipated employment.
Miscellaneous contains one file folder with an undated Department of Labor and Industry letter about a highly desirable labor pool of technical, skilled, and semi-skilled workers becoming available.
Series 4, Operational Records, 1934-1977, is divided into two subseries: Equipment Quotes, 1960-1977, were prepared by Eisler for clients/companies in the United States and in foreign countries. The quotes include details about the machine requested and its price.
Operating Instructions and Parts Lists, 1934-1940s, are arranged predominately by machine number, but there are some exceptions. The files include drawings and sketches, operating instructions on assembling and disassembling, black and white photographs, charts, and product literature. There are some documents that were not created by the Eisler Engineering Company. These documents include operating instructions and drawings from other companies that Eisler had a working relationship with. The instructions, [1934-1945?], arranged alpha-numerically, are operating instructions for machines manufactured by the Eisler Engineering Company. The instructions are labeled D-1 to D-800. These instructions should be used in conjunction with the other operating instructions for specific machines. For example, instructions D-1 are for Eisler machine No. 00, a coil winding machine
Series 5, Diagrams and Drawings, 1924-1960, is divided into two subseries, wiring diagrams and drawings. The wiring diagrams 1934-1956, are arranged by type and provide instructions and diagrams on how to connect wires for Eisler machines. The drawings, 1924-1960, include blueprints, tracings, sketches and in some instances, specifications for specific machines. The name and number of the machine are listed. Also, the drawings contain factory layouts for companies in the United States and in Leningrad, Russia.
Series 6, Sales Records, 1924-1984, is divided into three subseries: customer sales lists, lamp machinery sales records, and catalogs. The Customer Sales Lists, 1951-1958, and the Lamp Machinery Sales Records, 1929-1958, include detailed information for each machine built and shipped to a client: shop number, job number, type of machine, machine number, customer name, customer order number, Eisler order number and date shipped, and a serial number if applicable. There are some lists for customer requested machines such as exhaust machines, stem machines, and base filling machines.
The catalogs, 1924-1979, are arranged into two sub-subseries, Eisler catalogs and other companies' catalogs. The catalogs are further arranged chronologically and are bound or consist of loose pages and individual bulletins. They provide information on incandescent lamps, power transmission tubes; neon tube signs; tungsten equipment and wire; burners, torches, fires, gas and air mixers; metal sprayers; bases; furnaces; vacuum flasks; ampules and vials; vacuum pumps; and electric welders.
Index cards for Eisler Engineering Anniversary Catalog 1945, are arranged by machine number and contain the machine name with a description, pricing information, and in some instances a date and annotations. Each card has a page number that correlates to the Anniversary Catalog No. 45-CE, 1945.
Series 7, Litigation and Patent Records, 1897-1953 (bulk 1926-1929), 1949, 1953, consist of briefs (for the defendant, Eisler, and plaintiff, General Electric) and the transcript of record in the case General Electric vs. Charles Eisler and Eisler Engineering Company, 1926-1929. The litigation was heard in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New Jersey and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Third District. GE brought suit against Eisler for infringement of two U.S. patents, #1,128,120 for manufacturing glass rods and forming spiders, and # 1,220,836 for a filament support wire inserting machine. Eisler allegedly infringed by manufacturing and selling a hook inserting machine.
There is one file folder of newspaper clippings about anti-trust in lamp manufacturing and specifically conclusions to the Opinion for the case United States of America vs. General Electric Company, 1953. GE, Corning Glass Works, N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabriken, Consolidated Electric Lamp Company, Hygrade Sylvania Corporation, Chicago Miniature Lamp Works, and Tung-Sol Lamp Works, Inc., were found guilty and in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. GE, in particular, negotiated agreements through its wholly-owned subsidiary, International General Electric that divided the world lamp markets. This division permitted GE to have the U.S. market exclusively and bar foreign lamp manufacturers. The domestic licensees' growth was limited by GE to a fixed percentage of its own production and expansion so that over the years a licensee's share of the business was diminished. This restrained trade, and competition by GE unlawfully monopolized the incandescent electric lamp business.
A separate case involving Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. vs. Beacon Lamp Co., Leopold Rossbach, C. L. Shoninger, A.H. Moses, L.E. Whicher and J.T. Hambay from 1896 to 1898 is also documented through the brief for the complainant and a record of the case.
Patents, 1913-1931, are further divided into tube patents, 1924-1931 and tube patents assigned to Raytheon Company, 1913-1929. The patents were assembled by Eisler for reference.
Series 8, Photographs, 1944-1967, is further divided into six subseries: machines by number, CAMS; timers; jigs; transformers and electrodes; welders; welders, tips, jigs and fixtures; and miscellaneous. The series contains 8" x 10" black and white prints. Originally organized in three- ring binders, the photographs are arranged by machine number with further numerical identifiers. For example, Machine No. 103 is a glass lathe machine and No. 103-XL is a vertical glass lathe machine.
CAMS are curved wheels mounted on a rotating shaft and used to produce variable or reciprocating motion in another engaged or contacted part. They are used to produce or machine something. Tips refer to the remnant of the glass tubing through which the lamp was exhausted of its air (as well as filled with inert gases after the invention of the gas-filled lamp in 1912) and jigs are devices for guiding a tool or for holding machine work in place.
The majority of photographs document machinery; few employees are featured.
Photographs for Machine No. 170, can working equipment at vacuum products, features African American workers circa the 1950s and Machine No. 160, an automatic tub bottoming machine features a female employee. Some of the miscellaneous photographs contain prints of equipment, parts and employees working in the factory.
Series 9, Scrapbooks, 1916-1959, includes three scrapbooks. Many of the articles are in Hungarian or Spanish.
Scrapbook, 1943 (bulk 1945-1955), 1959, contains newspaper articles about Charles Eisler and Eisler Engineering Company. Many articles and advertisements focus on specific machines Eisler manufactured. Articles about Charles Eisler contain information about the associations he belonged to, litigation, awards received, Lesire Corporation, his tenant company; and the appointment of Charles Eisler, Jr., as President of Eisler Engineering Company. Other items include company Christmas cards.
Scrapbook, 1916-1944, 1948, 1957, contains newspaper clippings and catalog pages on machines manufactured by Eisler; personal information about Charles Eisler's trip to Europe; a fire at his summer home; and Christmas decorations. There is documentation on Eisler Engineering Company employees, World War II contributions and production, and photographs of Charles Eisler presenting a donation to the Newark Hungarians and the U.S. Army Ambulance Branch.
Scrapbook, 1924-1959, contains convention programs, Family Circle information, documentation on various social events Eisler attended and machine advertisements.
Arrangement:
Collection organized into nine series.
Series 1, Personal Materials, 1910s-1970s
Subseries 1, Passports and Naturalization Certificate, 1910-1970s
Subseries 3, Timers, Jigs, Transformers, and Electrodes, 1952-1960
Subseries 4, Welders, 1944-1952
Subseries 5, Welders, Tips, and Jigs and Fixtures, 1944-1952
Subseries 6, Miscellaneous, 1944-1957
Series 9, Scrapbooks, 1916-1959
Biographical / Historical:
Charles Eisler (1884-1973) was born in Hungary to Adolph and Helen Eisler. Charles was the second child of nine: George, Emil, Michael, Leopold, Rudi, Franz, Emma and Lajos. Eisler completed his engineering and mechanical studies by the age of 17 and began an apprenticeship with a local factory. He became a licensed steam engineer and fireman of high pressure boilers. In 1902, he left Hungary for Berlin, Germany, with the goal to immigrate to the United States. In Germany, Eisler worked in a factory in Eberswalde, north of Berlin. The factory manufactured cast-iron pipe and machinery, and Eisler operated a crane loading barges near the factory. Eisler left Eberswalde and returned to Berlin to work as a toolmaker at Allgemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft' (AEG). He arrived in New York City on the SS Potsdam/Stockholm (I) in November 1904. Because Europeans dominated the field of skilled mechanics and tradesmen in the United States, Eisler easily found employment in East Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh Westinghouse. In 1907, Eisler worked for Studebaker Metzger Motor Company as a tool-designer and tool room foreman.
Eisler returned to Hungary in the spring of 1912 where he took a job as a tool designing engineer with an American owned electrical firm, Standard Electric Company, in Újpest. He married Frieda Schwartz Eisler (d.1962) on December 24, 1912, in Budapest. They had four children: Charles Eisler, Jr., Martha (Eisler) Leff; Ruth (Eisler) Forest; and Constance (Eisler) Smith. In 1914, Eisler, his wife Frieda, and their newborn son Charles, Jr., returned to the United States. Eisler worked at the Westinghouse Lamp Company in Bloomfield, New Jersey, designing machines for building incandescent lamps with tungsten wire. At Westinghouse, Eisler held the position of chief engineer of the equipment division, and he completed the International Correspondence Schools course in mechanical engineering (1918). Eisler left Westinghouse in 1919 to work for Save Electric Corporation of Brooklyn, New York (an independent lamp manufacture), formed by Max Ettiger. At Save Electric, Eisler was equipment engineer superintendent and responsible for designing machines for the production of incandescent lamps.
General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, and RCA had a monopoly on modern incandescent lamp making machinery. The manufacture of lamps and tubes had moved from a low-rate, highly skilled craft work of Edison's Menlo Park to a high-rate, semi-skilled process dominated by GE and others. It was difficult for independent lamp manufacturers, such as Save Electric, to compete. The control and licensing of machinery patents was one method GE used to maintain a virtual monopoly on lamp manufacture throughout the first half of the 20th century. GE purchased Save Electric in 1920 to remove it from the incandescent lamp market. That same year, Eisler lost his job and started his own company, Eisler Engineering Company, to consult and manufacture equipment for producing electric lamps, television tubes, radio tubes, glass products, neon tubes, welding equipment and laboratory equipment. He established a machine shop at 15 Kirk Alley, Newark, New Jersey, where he redesigned many of his machines and drawings and started patenting. By 1924, Eisler's plant doubled in physical size and labor supply, with the radio tube industry peaking in 1929.1 However, the stock market crash of 1929-1930 severely impacted production, and Eisler never again saw the same growth. In 1929, Eisler sold a 49% interest in the company to Frank Bonner.
In June 1933, Eisler and others organized a group of independent manufacturers into the Incandescent Lamp Manufacturer's Association (ILMA). In response to the pressuring tactics of GE, Westinghouse and RCA, the group also documented every lamp maker who went out of business or that was bought by a monopoly member. The ILMA allowed members to pool their resources for patent litigation. "Eisler was the third leading outside supplier of lamp making machinery. It was not licensed by General Electric, and the unlicensed lamp manufacturers obtained most of their lamp making equipment from it. The Eisler equipment was less automatic and of considerably less speed than the machinery used by the General Electric group. However, it was considerably lower in price."2
Eisler Engineering Company was sued at least four times by GE between 1923 and 1928 for alleged patent infringement but won each case. The cases involved four United States patents owned by GE: Van Keuren #1,326,121; Mitchell and White #1,453,594; Mitchell and White #1,453,595; and Marshall #1,475,192. The last three patents address a process used in the manufacture of electric lamps known as "sealing in" of tip-less lamps. The plaintiff, GE, complained that Eisler, the defendant, was infringing. Several GE patents were declared invalid during the proceedings or were withdrawn, and Eisler's U.S. Patent #1,637,989 for tip-less lamps was upheld. See General Electric Company vs. Eisler Engineering Company, 20 F (2d.) 33 (C.C.A., 1927), 26 F (2d.) 12 (C.C.A., 1928), and 43 F (2d.) 319 (C.C.A., 1930). One of Eisler's strongest defenses was a 1916 article he published in Machinery on Tungsten Lamp Manufacture. Eisler defended his case not only for the interest of his own company but also for those who utilized his products as well as those who manufactured under a licensing agreement with Eisler Engineering Company.
In 1954, Charles Eisler, Jr., formerly vice president became president of Eisler Engineering Company, Inc., and Charles Eisler, Sr., became chairman of the board. In 1958, Eisler Senior officially stepped down. In the late 1970s, Eisler, Jr., sold the company to Kahle Engineering Company. Kahle, established in 1920 with its roots in the glass machinery business, provided equipment for the medical device, pharmaceutical, electrical and automotive industries. Today, Kahle focuses solely on the manufacture of assembly machines for medical devices.
Eisler was issued fifty-seven United States patents relating to the mass production of glass articles. His first patent was issued in 1916 (U.S. Patent # 1,209,650) for a turret attachment and his last was issued in 1958 (U.S. Design Patent # DES 182,796) for a spot welder/press type. Eisler received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Bloomfield College in Bloomfield, New Jersey (1951) and was elected to life membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1952). He died on October 8, 1973 at the age of 89 in East Orange, New Jersey.
1 Eisler, Charles. The Million-Dollar Bend (New York: William-Frederick Press, 1960).
2 Bright, Arthur. The Electric Lamp Industry (New York: Macmillan Co., 1949).
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
Kahle Engineering Company Records, 1930-1980 (AC0735), the successor company to Eisler Engineering
Materials in Other Organizations
Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives have some Eisler Engineering Company trade literature in the Sinclair New Jersey Collection: New Jersey Trade Literature and Manufacturers' Catalogs at http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/sinclair/sinclair_main.shtml.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by E.N. Logothetis of Kahle Engineering on June 15, 2000.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but the majority is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Series 3, Employee Records, personnel files are restrictedContact 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.
United States. Armed Forces -- Supplies and stores Search this
United States. Army -- Supplies and stores Search this
Extent:
12 Cubic feet (34 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Patents
Trademarks
Slides (photographs)
Advertisements
Sales records
Photographs
Photographic prints
Filmstrips
Design drawings
Date:
1925 - 1998
Summary:
The Brannock Device Company began with the 1925 invention of the Brannock Device, a tool to measure foot length and width at the same time, by inventor and businessman Charles F. Brannock. Early in his career Brannock worked as a shoe salesman at the Park-Brannock shoe store, and in 1962 he became the CEO of the company. This collection documents both the Park-Brannock store and the Brannock Device. Materials in The Brannock Device Company Records, 1925-1998, include of correspondence, design drawings, United States and foreign patents and trademarks, advertisements, product information, sales records, photographs, and a film strip documenting the invention, promotion, and sale of the Brannock Device as well as the concurrent development of Park-Brannock as a leading shoe store in Syracuse, N.Y.
Scope and Contents:
The Brannock Device Company Records, 1925-1998, consist of correspondence, design drawings, United States and foreign patents and trademarks, advertisements, product information, sales records, photographs, and a film strip documenting the invention, promotion, and sale of the Brannock Device as well as the concurrent development of Park-Brannock as a leading shoe store in Syracuse, NY. The collection is useful to researchers for its stories of invention and entrepreneurship and its exemplification of the patent and trademark process in the United States and internationally in the early 20th century. The process of manufacturing and marketing in the shoe industry, and manufacturing of military supplies during World War II is also highlighted.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into two subgroups.
Subgroup 1, The Brannock Device Company, 1925-1998
Series 1: Historical Background, 1928-1995
Series 2: Operational Records, 1926-1980
Subseries 1: Book for Recording Devices on Hand, 1927-1929
Subseries 2: Correspondence, 1926-1951
Subseries 3: Census, 1947-1980
Subseries 4: Insurance Inventory, 1956
Subseries 5: Royalties Accrued, 1946-1951
Subseries 6: Time Records, 1952-1958
Subseries 7: Notes, undated
Series 3: Product Development Records, 1925-1981
Subseries 1: Competitors' Devices and Other Products, c. 1928-1981
Subseries 2: Fitting Stool, 1936-1947
Subseries 3: Design, 1925-1975
Subseries 4: Manufacture, 1927-1959
Series 4: Advertising and Marketing Records, 1926-1998
Subseries 1: Correspondence, 1926-1998
Subseries 2: Mailing Lists, 1947-1950
Subseries 3: Ideas and Copy, undated
Subseries 4: Printed Materials with the Brannock Device Name (stationery, business cards, leases), undated
Subseries 5: Advertisements and Product Information, 1934-1980
The Brannock Device Company began with the 1925 invention of the Brannock Device by Charles F. Brannock. Charles Brannock was working as a salesman in the Park-Brannock shoe store, co-owned by his father Otis C. Brannock and Ernest N. Park, in Syracuse, New York when he saw the need for an improved foot-measuring device. The Brannock Device soon gained favor over size-sticks because it measured foot length and width at the same time. Additionally, it measured heel-to-ball length, a feature which aided in fitting heeled shoes.
Charles F. Brannock (1903-1992) was an inventor and businessman. He began tinkering with the idea of a new foot-measuring device while attending Syracuse University, where he would get up in the middle of the night and work on sketches and calculations. Brannock obtained a patent for the device on August 28, 1928, but by then manufacture and sale of the device was already underway. Brannock assembled the device in the Park-Brannock shoe store and gave the device a trial on the sales floor. In 1926, Charles Brannock began offering the device to shoe retailers first on a rental basis and then by sale through the use of salesmen who lived throughout the country and each covered a geographic area. By 1929, the company began to phase out salesmen because it offered quantity discounts to shoe companies which distributed the devices to their stores at a lower price than salesmen could offer.
Brannock sold his device internationally beginning in 1929 through Mr. I. Singer of London, England. In 1936 distribution rights transferred to Henry Maitland Marler of Feature Shoes Limited of London, an affiliate of the Selby Shoe Company. Renewing and protecting foreign trademarks proved to be a legal challenge. Due to some confusion, Brannock's British patent was allowed to lapse. In order to prevent other companies from using the Brannock name in England, H.M. Marler set up Brannock Fitting Device Limited in October 1937. The company began manufacturing Brannock Devices in January 1946, but royalties accrued through European sale by 1951 did not even cover a third of the cost of trademarks, patents, and designs.
Fortunately for the Brannock Device Company, these costs were absorbed by the Selby Shoe Company, with whom it had entered into agreements about foreign distribution in November 1941. Selby had exclusive rights to distribute the Brannock Device in South America, South Africa, and other countries, and assisted Brannock in securing trademarks in many foreign countries.
In 1933 a United States Navy captain asked a shoe salesman to find the source of many sailors' foot problems. The salesman, after measuring sailors' feet with the Brannock device, declared that the Navy shoe was not the cause of the problem; the sailors were simply wearing the wrong size shoes. The captain was so happy that he would not have to order special shoes for his men that he wrote an article in the July 1933 issue of United States Naval Institute Proceedings which described how the Brannock Device had eliminated foot troubles aboard the ship. This gave Brannock an opportunity to promote his device in the Navy by sending the article to other ships. He calibrated his device for use in other branches of the military and by World War II the Brannock Device was being used by most of the armed forces. Several articles were written about the greater foot comfort enjoyed by the military after the introduction of the device. Charles Brannock was proud of his small but widespread role in the war effort and in the comfort of America's enlisted men and women.
Through the years Charles Brannock developed many different models of his device, including the women's, men's, junior, growing girl's, athletic, ski-boot, and military models. In 1947, Brannock moved the device company to a machine shop at 509 East Fayette Street in Syracuse, where it remained for 50 years.
Brannock advertised both the store and the device in local papers, and the device in trade literature such as Boot and Shoe Recorder. He encouraged other shoe stores to promote themselves by using the device in their advertising. He also attended the annual National Shoe Fair in Chicago from 1938 to 1968 in order to promote the device as well as learn about shoe-fashion trends for the Park-Brannock shoe store.
Concurrently, Charles Brannock also played a significant role in the Park-Brannock shoe store. His father, Otis C. Brannock and Ernest N. Park founded Park-Brannock in 1906 in a small store at 321 South Salina Street, focusing on women's shoes. In February 1937, they moved to a three-story building at 427 South Salina Street. Finally, in 1946, a six-story store was built at 473-475 South Salina Street through 129 East Onondaga Street. While waiting for the newest store to be built, Park-Brannock temporarily moved to the Chimes Building at 510-512 South Salina Street and 113 West Onondaga Street. Park-Brannock gained fame in Syracuse for a wide selection of men's, women's and children's shoes, handbags, millinery, hose, and accessories. In an advertisement, the store declared itself "one of America's finest shoe stores." The design of the two newer stores was state-of-the-art, and Park-Brannock was featured in shoe magazine articles. For example, the men's department was designed to look like a great room inside a ship. Charles Brannock became the CEO of Park-Brannock after both his father and Ernest Park died in 1962. Park-Brannock closed its doors in 1981, after the Hotel Syracuse offered to purchase the property for its new Hilton Tower.
Charles Brannock died on November 22, 1992, at the age of 89. The company was purchased in 1993 from the Brannock Estate by Salvatore Leonardi. Leonardi continues to manufacture Brannock devices in a small factory in Liverpool, New York. Over a million Brannock Devices have been manufactured, and it remains the shoe industry standard
Related Materials:
Materials at the National Museum of American History
Artifacts (several Brannock Devices and competitors' devices) are in the Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) and the Division of Armed Forces History (now Division of Political and Military History).
Provenance:
The collection was donated to the National Museum of American History by Salvatore Leonardi on November 4, 1998.
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.
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.
Topic:
World War, 1939-1945 -- Equipment and supplies Search this
Sports and trading cards, 1952-1996, amassed by card collector Ronald S. Korda. The sports cards are subdivided by sport. Baseball cards, (1952-1996), comprise the vast majority of the sports cards, while football (1968-1996) and hockey (1968-1996) are the two next largest subseries. There are lesser quantities of cards for basketball, and only a few each for all other sports, such as racing, skiing, etc. Non-sports cards cover a large variety of popular culture topics, including motion pictures, television programs, popular music, toys, games, cars and trucks, comics, fantasy art, and many other subjects. Some ephemeral items are also included in the collection, such as sticker albums, posters and programs
Scope and Contents:
This collection is divided into two main series, Series 1, Sports; and Series 2, Non-Sports.
Series 1, Sports, comprises more than 90% of the collection. Within Series 1, the collection is divided into seven subseries:
Subseries 1.1: Baseball;
Subseries 1.2: Football;
Subseries 1.3: Hockey;
Subseries 1.4: Basketball;
Subseries 1.5: Other Sports;
Subseries 1.6: Sports programs, schedules and other paper ephemera; toys, souvenirs and novelty items;
Subseries 1.7: Sports card packaging.
Subseries 1.1 is the largest, with baseball cards making up approximately 70% of the entire Korda collection. Within the first three subseries, the cards are further subdivided into cards in sets, which are sleeved, and cards in packs, which are stored in card-sized boxes. Subseries D and E are in packs only. Both cards in sets and in packs have been arranged alphabetically by manufacturer, and thereunder, chronologically. Within sets, cards are arranged in numerical order by card number. In cases where, for baseball cards, titles of sets were unclear or ambiguous, the reference book Sports Collector's Digest's Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards (which in this finding aid will be referred to as Standard Catalog) was used to determine how card sets should be titled. Likewise, in the rare cases in which cards were not numbered within sets, the order used was that given in Standard Catalog. In the case of football and hockey, Beckett's Football Card Monthly and Beckett's Hockey Card Monthly were used as reference guides.
Series 2: Non-Sports, is arranged into twenty three subseries:
Subseries 2.1: Mass Media and Entertainment
Subseries 2.2: Education
Subseries 2.3: Comic Books and Strips
Subseries 2.4: Toys and action figures
Subseries 2.5: Literature
Subseries 2.6: Automotive Themes
Subseries 2.7: Crime and Law Enforcement
Subseries H: Military Topics
Subseries 2.8: Biography
Subseries 2.9: Fine Arts
Subseries 2.10: Adult Themes
Subseries 2.11: Beauty Contests
Subseries 2.12: Video Games
Subseries 2.13: Parodies
Subseries 2.14: Product Advertising
Subseries 2.15: Fantasy Art
Subseries 2.16: Monsters
Subseries 2.17: Card Games
Subseries 2.18: Stickers, patches and tattoos
Subseries 2.19: Toys, games, puzzles, post cards and posters
Subseries 2.20: Pogs, caps and gum wrappers
Subseries 2.21: Oversize of above topics
Subseries 2.22: Non-card items, relating to above topics
Subseries 2.1, Mass media and entertainment, is the largest of the non-sports categories, comprising movies, television and music. Other subseries are similarly subdivided. Unlike the majority of the sports cards, the non-sports cards are stored in small, card-sized cartons, which have been assigned the letters A through DD, and are stored in 4 Paige boxes and 1 document box. They are listed here according to titles of packs.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into two series.
Series 1: Sports
Series 2: Non-sports
Biographical note:
Ronald Korda, an employee of NBC television and a man of modest, middle class means, began assembling his card collection in childhood after receiving a pack of cards as a party favor. After that initial inspiration, he began his collecting hobby which was his passion until his death in March, 1996. In the early years of his hobby, he collected baseball cards, later expanding to other sports as well as cards on diverse popular culture topics. Among these topics are films, television, popular music, science and nature, comics and magazines, toys and action figures, games, and products, and in addition to cards, there are stickers, sticker albums, tattoos, gum wrappers, puzzles, games and other novelty items. Numerous foreign issues are included. He amassed his collection by attending cards and collectibles shows and seeking out reputable dealers, and by purchasing factory sets when they became available. He was selective and careful, and in the case of the sports cards, succeeded in acquiring complete sets of virtually every series which he collected. (With the non-sports cards, he tended to collect samples rather than entire sets.) This thoroughness is what makes this collection rare and possibly unique among any card collections in public or private hands. With few exceptions, there are no cards missing, and virtually all are in mint or near mint condition. The Kordas could have sold their collection for a fortune, but felt it important that the collection stay together as a unit. Mr. Korda, in an emotional article entitled "Collections Should Live Forever" written for Baseball Hobby News, referred to his collection as "my card family" and expressed the fear that the family would be split up after he died. He approached the Smithsonian late in 1995. Just days before the Archives Center was to acquire the collection, Mr. Korda died. Finalization of his gift was completed by his wife.
History:
Although baseball and other trading cards date back to the nineteenth century, with some of the earliest accompanying packages of tobacco, they gained great popularity during the Depression with the advent of the bubble gum card. In the post-World War II years, and especially during the prosperous decade of the 1950s, they began to enjoy tremendous popularity, as the technology for producing them improved. The market rapidly expanded, and cards for other sports and other topics became popular, just as competition among manufacturers was heating up. The earliest trading cards accompanied packs of tobacco, but were eventually used to advertise gum, cookies, soft drinks, baked goods, hot dogs, and numerous other products. Card manufacturers, such as Topps, changed card formats with each new set, varying the presentation of statistics, vertical and horizontal orientation, use of action shots, candid shots and portraits, and inclusion of puzzles, games, fold-outs, and other novelties. They also added new features, such as trivia questions, cartoons, and holograms. As the hobby has changed, so have trading cards. Today's glossy, high-tech trading cards bear little resemblance to the tobacco cards of the 19th century or even to the cards produced during the "golden age" of cards in the 1950s. This collection represents a very diverse sampling of the card hobby from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Separated Materials:
Some card packaging was transferred to the Museum's Division of Cultural History (now Division of Cultural and Community Life).
Provenance:
The entire collection was donated to the Archives Center in April, 1996 by Mr. Korda's widow, Catherine Korda. Some of the card packaging was transferred by the Archives Center to the Division of Cultural History.
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
Use of this collection by researchers requires compliance with security procedures more stringent than those required for other collections in the Archives Center. This is due to the high value and rarity of some of the items in this collection. Autographed items, and cards valued at higher than $300 by Standard Catalog and Beckett's are stored separately, and may be seen only with special permission from the Archives Center staff and then only in cases (such as photography or scanning) where it is deemed a necessity.
Color photocopies have been placed in sleeves where these items would normally be stored. When using card boxes, only six at a time may be requested from the Reference Archivist, and unlike other collections, may not be reserved in advance (i.e., on each separate research visit, a researcher must request boxes only for that visit.)
Card sleeves may be taken out of the binders for photocopying only with the permission and the supervision of the Archives Center staff. Cards may not be taken from sleeves, except with the permission and supervision of Archives Center staff. This may involve making advance arrangements with the Archives Center staff. These procedures are necessary for the preservation of this exceptional collection in perpetuity.
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.
Ronald S. Korda Collection of Sports and Trading Cards, 1952-1996, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Gift of Catherine Korda.
Sponsor:
The enormous task of rehousing and processing this collection was enabled by a generous grant from the Smithsonian Research Resources Program in 1997, which made possible the purchase of large quantities of extremely specialized supplies.
Jones, William (Vice President, Zippo Lighter) Search this
National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Domestic Life Search this
Extent:
0.75 Cubic feet (2 boxes, 3 oversize folders)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pamphlets
Posters
Articles
Date:
1937 - 1998
Scope and Contents:
Advertising brochures, posters, and articles on the company.
Biographical / Historical:
The Zippo Company has made over 300 million cigarette lighters since it was founded in 1932. The founder, George Blaisdell, believed that the policy of planned obsolescence repulsive, so he guaranteed his product "forever". Any Zippo lighter sent back to the factory has always been repaired at no charge to the customer. According to the company's official history, the lighter's qualities, windproof and rugged, caught on big during World War II when just about every man in the service, dogface to Dwight D. Eisenhower, had one. There are numerous stories of the lighter being used to illuminate airplane instrument panels and as emergency signaling devices. There is a confirmed instance of a lighter working after being frozen in solid ice for four months, and one which survived an 1,100 foot fall. Zippo began diversifying in 1962 into such products as money clips, flashlights and pocket rules. The Case Cutlery Company has been a subsidiary of Zippo since 1993.
Related Materials:
Collected in conjunction with accession no. 1983.0394, Division of Home and Community Life (now Division of Cultural and Community Life).
Provenance:
Collection donated by William Jones, Vice President of Zippo, March 1983.
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.
Original documents and papers generated by William J. Hammer and by various companies and individuals with whom he was associated. Includes material related to the research and inventions of Edison, Bell, Tesla, the Curies, etc.
Scope and Contents:
This collection includes original documents and papers generated by Hammer and by various companies and individuals and various secondary sources assembled by Hammer between 1874 and 1934. Hammer's lifelong association with the foremost scientists of his day -- Edison, Bell, Maxim, the Curies, the Wright brothers, and others - afforded him a unique opportunity to collect materials about the development of science along many lines.
This collection, which includes rare historical, scientific, and research materials, was donated by the International Business Machine Corporation to the Museum of History and Technology in 1962 and held by the Division of Electricity. In 1983 it was transferred to the -Archives Center. The collection was badly disorganized when received and contained many fragile documents in poor condition. The collection was organized and arranged as reflected in this register.
The collection documents in photographs, manuscripts, notes, books, pamphlets, and excerpts, the beginnings of electrical technology. In its present state, it comprises four series: Series 1 contains twenty-two boxes of the William J. Hammer Papers, containing both biographical and autobiographical material; Series 2 has twenty boxes of material on Edison; Series 3 consists of thirty-three boxes of reference material; and Series 4 holds twenty-one boxes of photographs and portraits. See the container list beginning on page 39 for more detailed information on the contents of the collection.
Most of the material in the collection is chronologically arranged. However, in some cases alphabetical arrangement has been employed, for example, in the arrangement of portraits of eminent men of electrical science (Series 4, Boxes 78-80, 100-101), and the arrangement of publications (by authors' last names).
Hammer did original laboratory work upon selenium, radium, cathode rays, x-rays, ultra-violet rays, phosphorescence, fluorescence, cold light, and wireless. These aspects of his career are reflected in many parts of the collection: in Series 1 there are articles, notes, diagrams, sketches, graphs,, and correspondence; in Series 3 articles, magazines, news clippings, and bound pamphlets. Tie contributed many technical writings, some of which are found in Series 1.
Papers detailing Hammer's aeronautical activities were transferred to the National Air and Space Museum. They consist of two scrapbooks and one cubic foot of aeronautical photographs of balloons, airplanes, and gliders and one-half cubic foot of correspondence. For further information contact the National Air and Space Museum Archives at (202) 357-3133.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into four series.
Series 1: William J. Hammer Papers, 1851-1957
Series 2: Edisonia, 1847-1960
Series 3: Reference Materials, 1870-1989
Series 4: Photographs, 1880-1925
Biography of William J. Hammer:
William Joseph Hammer, assistant to Thomas Edison and a consulting electrical engineer, was born at Cressona, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1858, and died March 24, 1934. His parents were Martha Augusta Bech (1827-1861) and William Alexander Hammer (1827-1895). He attended private and public schools in Newark, New Jersey, and university and technical school lectures abroad.
On January 3, 1894, Hammer married Alice Maud White in Cleveland, Ohio. They had one daughter, Mabel (Mrs. Thomas Cleveland Asheton). Alice Hammer died in 1906.
In 1878 Hammer became an assistant to Edward Weston of the Weston Malleable Nickel Company. In December 1879 he began his duties as laboratory assistant to Thomas Edison at Menlo Park, New Jersey. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, he worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device. In 1880 he was appointed Chief Engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In this first year, the plant under general manager Francis Upton, turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of Incandescent Electric Lighting"! (Hammer's memoranda and notes, Series 2).
In 1881 Edison sent Hammer to London as Chief Engineer of the English Electric Light Co. In association with E. H. Johnson, general manager, Hammer constructed the Holborn Viaduct Central Electric Light Station in London. This plant included three, thirty-ton "Jumbo" steam-powered dynamos (generators), and operated 3,000 incandescent lamps. Holborn was the first central station ever constructed for incandescent electric lighting. Hammer began its operation on January 12, 1882, by lighting the Holborn Viaduct.
In 1882 Hammer also installed a large isolated lighting plant containing twelve Edison dynamos at the Crystal Palace Electric Exposition and the Edison Exhibit at the Paris Electrical Exposition.
At this time Hammer also designed and built the first electric sign. The sign spelled the name "Edison" in electric lights, and was operated by a hand controlled commutator and a large lever snap switch. It was erected over the organ in the Crystal Palace concert hall.
In 1883 Hammer became Chief Engineer for the German Edison Company (Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft), later known as Allegemeine Elektricitaets Gesellschaft. Hammer laid out and supervised the installations of all Edison plants in Germany. While in Berlin he invented the automatic motor-driven "flashing" electric lamp sign. The sign, which flashed "Edison" letter by letter and as a whole, was placed on the Edison Pavilion at the Berlin Health Exposition in 1883.
On his return to the United States in 1884, Hammer took charge of some of Edison's exhibits, including Edison's personal exhibit, at the International Electrical Exhibition held under the authority of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. There he built the first flashing "Column of Light." He also became confidential assistant to E. R. Johnson, president of the parent Edison Electric Light Company. Together with Johnson and Frank J. Sprague, he became an incorporator of the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor company. He also was elected a trustee and the company's first secretary.
Hammer installed an all-electric house at Newark, New Jersey in 1884 and he devised various electrical devices and contrivances for an unusual party for friends and colleagues. (See "Electrical Diablerie" beginning on page 6).
At the end of 1884 Hammer became chief inspector of central stations of the parent Edison Electric Light Company. For over two years he made financial, mechanical, and electrical reports on the various stations throughout the United States. During 1886-87 he was chief engineer and general manager of the Boston Edison Electric Illuminating Company. He also acted as contractor for the company. He laid $140,000 of underground tubing and installed Sprague Electric Motors.
In 1888, acting as an independent engineer, he was placed in charge of completing the 8,000 light plant of the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St.Augustine Florida. At the time this was the largest isolated incandescent lighting plant ever constructed. Also in 1888 Hammer was appointed consulting electrical engineer to the Cincinati Centennial Expostition, and as a contractor designed and installed over $40,000 worth of electrical effects.
Hammer was appointed Edison's personal representative remarked, "There are a lot of crowned heads in the Edison business. How many of them am I subservient to?" Mr. Edison answered "You take no instructions except from Thomas A. Edison." Hammer asked "What are your instructions?" Mr. Edison replied, 'Hammer, I haven't any. Go and make a success of it.' In Paris he set up and operated all of Edison's inventions, which embraced nineteen departments and covered 9,800 square feet of space. He also built a huge Edison lamp forty-five feet high employing 20,000 lamps. Edison remarked, 'He had entire charge of my exhibit at the Paris Exposition, which was very successful." This was the largest individual exhibit at the Exposition, costing $100,000. Mr. Edison replied, "I want you to go right out and have a card engraved William J. Hammer, Representative of Thomas A. Edison. You are the only representative I have here," and he complimented him on his work adding, "The French government will do something handsome for you for your work." Hammer replied that he would not raise his hand to get it and did not believe in giving such honors to people who seek them. Mr. Edison said, "You are wrong. You are a young man and such things are valuable. At any rate if there's anyone in this exhibition who deserves recognition, you do, and I'm going to see you get it' (Hammer's memoranda and notes, Series 2). Thirty-four years later, in 1925, through the personal influence of Edison, Hammer was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
In 1890 Hammer returned to the United States and opened an office as a consulting electrical engineer. He was in private practice until 1925, making reports, conducting tests, and giving expert testimony in patent suits.
On January 31, 1890, Hammer formed the Franklin Experimental Club of Newark where boys could come and carry on experiments, build apparatus, and listen to lectures. Hammer equipped the laboratory at his own expense. One side was an electrical laboratory and the other a chemical laboratory. About forty-five boys joined. Each boy had a key to the club and a section of a bench with his own drawer for keeping notes, tools, and other equipment. In 1892 the structure was destroyed by fire from a saloon next door, ending Hammer's plans for a large and useful institution.
In 1896 Hammer was elected president of the National Conference of Standard Electrical Rules, which prepared and promulgated the "National Electric Code."
In 1902 in Paris, Hammer visited Pierre and Marie Curie, the discoverers of radium and polonium. They gave him nine tubes of radium and one of polonium to bring back to the United States. He also acquired some sulphide of zinc, with which he mixed radium carbonates, producing a beautifully luminous powder. This was the first radium-luminous material ever made. By mixing the powder with Damar varnish he produced the first radium-luminous paint. He was also the first person to make colored (and white) luminous materials. In 1907 he invented and patented a process for producing colored phosphorescent materials by combining phosphorescent and fluorescent substances.
Back in the United States in the fall of 1902 and into 1903, Hammer applied his radium-luminous materials to thirty different objects: luminous dials for clocks and watches, toys, artificial flowers, radium luminous gun sights, taps and pulls for lamp sockets, switches, keyholes, push buttons, telephone transmitters, poison bottle labels, a small plaster figure, push pins, and writing implements among others. He did not patent the invention due to the scarcity and high cost of radium, but later in an important suit involving foreign and American patents of radium-luminous materials, his testimony and that of other noted scientists and professionals of the day who had visited his home and laboratory proved that his work completely anticipated that of all inventors both in the United States and abroad. In 1902 he was one of the first persons to be burned with radium.
Hammer gave eighty-eight lectures on the Curies' work and on radium and radioactive substances. He wrote the first book published on radium, Radium and other Radioactive Substances, 1903. Hammer proposed and used radium for cancer and tumor treatment, successfully treating and curing a tumor on his own hand in July 1903. Tie also supplied several hospitals with radioactive water he had made and conducted extensive experiments with x-rays, cathode-rays, radium-rays, ultraviolet lights, phosphorescence, fluorescence, and cold-light. He was probably the first to suggest many wartime uses for radium-luminous materials, such as airplanes, instruments, markers, barbed-wire, and landing fields.
Hammer also did important work with selenium, a nonmetallic element that resembles sulphur and tellurium chemically. It is obtained chiefly as a by-product in copper refining, and occurs in allotropic forms. A grey stable form varies in electrical conductivity depending on the intensity of its illumination and is used in electronic devices. Hammer invented selenium cells and apparatus, and suggested industrial uses for selenium and other light-sensitive cells.
In 1886 Hammer devised a system for automatically controlling street and other lights by use of a selenium cell. In 1892 he designed a torpedo that could be steered by searchlight and selenium cell. In the early 1900s he suggested many other uses for "light" cells, including burglar alarms, dynamo control, buoy, railroad signaling, automatic gun firing, transmission of music, stethoscope recorder, automatic operating shutters, automatic boiler feed, snow recorder, and electric motor control.
At the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 Hammer was Chairman of the Jury for Telegraphy, Telephony, and Wireless. He was also a member of the "Departmental" Jury ("Applied Science: Electricity") and of the committee appointed to organize the International Electrical Congress at St. Louis in 1904.
In 1906 Hammer received the "Elliott Cresson" gold medal from the Franklin Institute for his "Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps," accumulated over thirty-four years. This collection received a special silver medal at the International Electrical Exposition at the Crystal Palace, London, England, in 1882, and "the Grand Prize" at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904.
During the First World war Hammer served as a major on the General Staff of the, Army War College, Washington, D.C., where he was attached to the Inventions Section of the War Plans Division and later to the operations Division at the war Department in charge of electrical and aeronautical war inventions. He did special work at the U.S. Patent office, marking and delaying patents that might be useful to the enemy and served on the Advisory Board of Experts attached to the Alien Property Commission. He was elected Historian general of the Military order of the World War (1926-1928) and was a member of the Society of American Military Engineers.
Hammer was an early aeronautics enthusiast and became the owner of one of the first airplanes sold in the United States to an individual. Even in his last few years of his life, Hammer's interest in airplanes did not wane. In 1931, by the permission of the Secretary of the -Navy, Hammer made a twelve-hour flight in the Los Angeles dirigible from the Lakehurst, New Jersey airdrome along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to New York, flying over New York City at night.
Hammer served on numerous committees. In 1916 he was a member of a special committee, appointed by the Aeronautical Society of America. one of his responsibilities on this committee was to recommend methods for the formation of a reserve force of civilian aviators for the Army. At the start of World War I, Hammer was appointed chairman of a committee on camouflage by the Aeronautical Society. During the war, he flew airplanes and tested sound devices and was also among the first five selected out of thousands for the dissemination of propaganda into many countries. He also examined documents and papers captured from spies and prisoners of war to see if these material contained any technical matter of value to the U. S. Army.
Hammer traveled extensively as a delegate of the Military Order of World War I. For example, in 1922 he attended the aeronautical Congress and Flying Meet in Detroit, Michigan. In the same year he also attended Immigration Conferences of the National Civic Federation in New York.
Between 1922 and 1928 Hammer intensified his efforts in collecting and organizing autographed portraits of eminent scientific men, a project he had been working on for over forty-five years. Tie displayed many of these portraits with his Historical Collection of Incandescent Electrical Lamps in -his New York home. At this time he also prepared an elaborate bibliography on selenium and its industrial and scientific applications.
Major William Joseph Hammer, described by Edison as "my most valuable assistant at Menlo Park" died of pneumonia March 24, 1934.
'Electrical Diablerie':
"ELECTRICAL DIABLERIE"
N.Y. World, January 3, 1885 and Newark, N.J. Daily Advertiser and Journal, January 3, 1885
Some years ago, (1884) on New Year's eve, an entertainment was given at the home of Mr. William J. Hammer, in Newark, N.J., which, for the display of the powers of electricity has seldom, if ever, been equaled. Mr. Hammer, who has for years been associated with Mr. Edison, both in this country and in Europe, desiring to give his old classmates, the "Society of Seventy-Seven," a lively and interesting time, invited them to "an electrical dinner"at his home.
The invitations which were sent out were written upon Western Union telegram blanks with an Edison electric pen. When the guests arrived and entered the gate, the house appeared dark, but as they placed foot upon the lower step of the veranda a row of tiny electric lights over the door blazed out, and the number of the house appeared in bright relief. The next step taken rang the front door bell automatically, the third threw open the door, and at the same time made a connection which lit the gas in the hall by electricity.
Upon entering the house the visitor was invited to divest himself of his coat and hat, and by placing his foot upon an odd little foot-rest near the door, and pressing a pear-shaped pendant hanging from the wall by a silken cord, revolving brushes attached to an electric motor brushed the mud and snow from his shoes and polished them by electricity. As he was about to let go of the switch or button, a contact in it connected with a shocking coil, caused him to drop it like a hot potato. Up-stairs was a bedroom which would be a fortune to a lazy man; he had only to step on the door sill and the gas was instantly lighted. The ceiling was found to be covered with luminous stars, arranged to represent the principal constellations in the heavens-while comets, moons, etc., shone beautifully in the dark. By placing one's head on the pillow, the gas, fifteen feet away, would be extinguished and the phosphorescent stars on the ceiling would shine forth weirdly, and a phosphorescent moon rose from behind a cloud over the mantel and slowly describing a huge arch disappeared behind a bank of phosphorescent clouds on the other side of the room; by pressing the toe to the foot-board of the bed the gas could again be relit.
Pouring a teacup of water into the water clock on the mantel and setting the indicator would assure the awakening of the sleeper at whatever hour he might desire. There was also in the hall outside the room a large drum, which could be set to beat by electricity at the hour when the family wished to arise. The whole house was fitted throughout with electric bells, burglar alarms, fire alarms, telephones, electric cigar lighters, medical coils, phonographs, electric fans, thermostats, heat regulating devices, some seven musical instruments, operated by electricity, etc.
Upon the evening referred to nearly every. piece of furniture in the parlor was arranged to play its part. Sit on one chair and out went the gas, take another seat and it would light again; sitting on an ottoman produced a mysterious rapping under the floor; pressure on some chairs started off drums, triangles, tambourines, cymbals, chimes and other musical instruments; in fact, it seemed unsafe to sit down anywhere. The quests stood about in groups and whispered, each hoping to see his neighbor or a new comer caught napping.
One visitor (Brown) secured an apparently safe seat, and was telling a funny story--he had left electricity far behind--but just as he reached the climax, a pretty funnel-shaped Japanese affair like a big dunce cap, that seemed but a ceiling ornament which was held in place by an electromagnet, dropped from overhead and quietly covered him up, thus silently extinguishing the story and the story-teller.
A big easy chair placed invitingly between the folding doors joining the double, parlors sent the unwary sitter flying out of its recesses by the sudden deafening clamor of twenty-one electric bells hidden in the folds of the draperies hanging in the doorway. In a convenient position stood the silver lemonade pitcher and cup, the former was filled with the tempting beverage, but no matter how much a guest might desire to imbibe one touch convinced him that the pitcher and cup were so heavily charged with electricity as to render it impossible for him to pour out a drink or even to let go until the electricity was switched off from the hidden induction coil.
Some one proposed music, and half a selection had been enjoyed when something seemed to give way inside the piano, and suddenly there emanated from that bewitched instrument a conglomeration of sounds that drowned the voices of the singers, and the keys seemed to beat upon a horrible jangle of drums, gongs and various noise-producing implements which were fastened inside of and underneath the piano.
After the guest were treated to a beautiful display of electrical experiments, under the direction of Mr. Hammer, and Professor George C. Sonn, they were escorted to the dining-room, where an electrical dinner had been prepared and was presided over by 'Jupiter," who was in full dress, and sat at the head of the table, where by means of a small phonograph inside of his anatomy he shouted, "Welcome, society of Seventy-Seven and their friends to Jove's festive board." The menu was as follows: "Electric Toast," "Wizard Pie," "Sheol Pudding," "Magnetic Cake," "Telegraph Cake," "Telephone Pie," "Ohm-made Electric Current Pie," "Menlo Park Fruit," "Incandescent Lemonade," "'Electric Coffee" and "Cigars," etc., and music by Prof. Mephistopheles' Electric Orchestra.
About the table were pretty bouquets, and among the flowers shone tiny incandescent lamps, while near the center of the table was placed an electric fan which kept the air cool and pure, and at each end was a tiny Christmas tree lighted with small incandescent lamps, planted in a huge dish of assorted nuts and raisins. Each lamp had a dainty piece of ribbon attached to it upon which the initials of the Society and the date were printed, and each guest received a lamp to take away with him as a souvenir of the occasion. Plates of iced cakes made in the form of telephones, switches, bells, electric lamps, batteries, etc., stood on each side of the center piece.
Promptly at 12 o'clock, as the chimes of the distant churches came softly to the ears of the assembled quests, pandemonium seemed to change places with the modest dining-room. A cannon on the porch, just outside the door, and another inside the chimney, were unexpectedly discharged; and at this sudden roar, every man sprang back from the table; the lights disappeared; huge fire-gongs, under each chair beat a tattoo. The concussion produced by the cannon in the fireplace caused several bricks to come crashing down the chimney, and as the year of 1884 faded away, the table seemed bewitched. The "Sheol Pudding" blazed forth green and red flames illuminating the room, tiny tin boxes containing 'Greek" fire which had been placed over each window and door were electrically ignited by spirals of platinum iridium wire heated by a storage battery and blazed up suddenly; the "Telegraph Cake" clicked forth messages said to be press reports of the proceedings (it was also utilized to count the guests and click off the answers to various questions put to it); bells rang inside the pastry; incandescent lamps burned underneath the colored lemonade; the thunderbolt pudding discharged its long black bolts all over the room (long steel spiral springs covered with black cloth) and loud spirit rapping occurred under the table. The silver knives, forks and spoons were charged with electricity from a shocking coil and could not be touched, while the coffee and toast (made by electricity) were made rapidly absorbed; the "Magnetic Cake' disappeared; the "Wizard" and "Current Pies' vanished, and 'Jupiter" raising a glass to his lips began to imbibe.
The effect was astonishing! The gas instantly went out, a gigantic skeleton painted with luminous paint appeared and paraded about the room, while Jupiter's nose assumed the color of a genuine toper! His green eyes twinkled, the electric diamonds in his shirt front (tiny lamps) blazed forth and twinkled like stars, as he phonographically shouted "Happy New Year'. Happy New Year!" This "Master of Cererionies' now becoming more gentle, the guests turned their attention to the beautiful fruit piece, over four feet high, that stood in the center of the table. From the fruit hung tiny electric lamps, and the whole was surmounted by a bronze figure of Bartholdils "Statue of Liberty;" uplifted in "Miss Liberty's" right hand burned an Edison lamp no larger than a bean.
The dinner finished, and there was much that was good to eat, notwithstanding the "magical" dishes which they were first invited to partake of, speeches were delivered by Messrs. Hammer, Rutan, McDougall, 'Brown, Duneka, and Dawson, and an original poem was read by Mr. Van Wyck. Upon repairing to the parlors the guest saw Mr. Hammer's little sister, May, dressed in white and mounted upon a pedestal, representing the "Goddess of Electricity:" tiny electric lamps hung in her hair, and were also suspended as earrings, while she held a wand surmounted by a star, and containing a very small electric lamp.
Not the least interesting display of electricity took place in front of the house, where a fine display of bombs, rockets, Roman candles, Greek fire and other fireworks were set off by electricity, which was by the way, the first time this had been accomplished. The guests were requested to press button switches ranged along the front veranda railing thus causing electricity from a storage battery to heat to a red heat tiny platinum iridium spirals attached to each fuse of the various pieces of fireworks thus sending up rocket after rocket, as well as igniting the other pieces which had been placed in the roadway in front of the house.
An attempt was made to send up a large hot air balloon to which was attached a tiny storage battery and an incandescent signal lamp but a sudden gust of wind caused the ballon to take fire as it rose fr(xn the ground. This constituted the only experiment made during the evening which was not an unqualified success. The innumerable electrical devices shown during the progress of the dinner were all operated by Mr. Hammer, who controlled various switches fastened to the under side of the table and attached to a switchboard, which rested on his lap, while the two cannons were fired by lever switches on the floor, which he operated by the pressure of the foot. Electricity was supplied by primary and storage batteries placed under the table. After an exhibition of electrical apparatus and experiments with a large phonograph, the guests departed with a bewildered feeling that somehow they had been living half a century ahead of the new year."
Expositions and Exhibitions:
The many Expositions held at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries were important for the Edison Electric Company's future business. In particular the Paris Electrical Exposition, 1881, and the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1892 were introductions for the company's international business enterprises. Edison, therefore, sent his ablest men from the Menlo Park staff (Batchelor, Hammer, Jehl, Johnson) to Europe to oversee the installation and promotion of the company's exhibits.
THE INTERNATIONAL PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1881
The International Paris Electrical Exposition was held during the summer of 1881. Many of Edison's electric lighting systems, ranging from arc lights to incandescent devices, were exhibited. A model of the Edison central-station lighting system showed an arrangement of incandescent lights within a complete electrical distributing system, including novel appliances and controls of the Edison system. "The completeness of its conception made a profound impression on the foremost European electrical engineers of that era." (Josephson, Matthew. Edison, A Biography. p. 252). Edison also exhibited his first "Jumbon generator. It was "direct-connected" to its driving engine, another area in which Edison pioneered. Edison improved upon the original design of William Wallace's "Telemachon' - a generator coupled to a water-powered turbine. Wallace had earlier in the decade produced the first dynamo in America.
Charles Batchelor headed the Edison exhibits within Paris. Edison received many gold medals and diplomas and was awarded the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
The William J. Hammer Collection contains various reports and catalogues exhibited at the International Exposition of Electricity. (Series 3, Box 44, Folders 1-4)
THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION OF 1882
At the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1882 in London, Edison displayed a great many of his inventions, including: the steam dynamo; specimens of street pipes and service boxes used in the Edison underground system of conductors, and the system of house conductors with devices for preventing abnormal increase of energy in house circuits; apparatus for measuring the resistance of his lamps, for measuring the energy consumed in lamps, and rheostats for restoring currents; also thermogalvano-meters, carbon rheostats, dynamometers, photometers, carbon regulators, Weber meters,, current regulators, and circuit breakers for controlling electric light circuits; the carbon relay, the pressure relay, and the expansion relay; the telegraph system in Morse characters; and the Roman character automatic telegraph.
Thomas Edison also exhibited the carbon telephone, the musical telephonograph, telephone repeater, and numerous apparatus for demonstrating the method of varying the resistance of a closed circuit by contact with carbon, illustrative of the experimental factors of the Edison carbon transmitter. Incandescent lamps, the process of the manufacture of lamps, and various designs of electric light chandeliers were also on display.
Hammer won the silver medal at the exposition for the first complete development of the incandescent electric lamp from its initial stages to date. At the exhibition the first hand-operated flashing electric lamp sign was displayed, which was invented and built by Hammer.
The collection contains photographs of the Edison dynamo, and the Edison Electric Lighting Plant of 1882 erected by Hammer. The official Catalogue of the International Electric and Gas Exhibition, and various articles from the Daily Telegraph, Daily Chronicle, and Daily News are also included within the collection (Series 4, Box 99 and Series 3, Box 42, Folder 1-2).
THE BERLIN EXPOSITION OF 1883.
The Berlin Exposition of 1883 had the first motored flashing electric sign designed, built and operated by Hammer. The electric sign spelled out the word "Edison" letter by letter and was used on the Edison pavilion in the Health Exposition. It has most features of today's flashing sign.
The collection contains two photographs of the first flashing sign (Series 4, Box 99).
THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE INTERNATIONAL ELECTRICAL EXHIBITION OF 1884
The Franklin Institute International Electrical Exhibition was held in Philadelphia from September 2 to October 14, 1884. Many of Edison's companies had display booths at the exhibition. The Edison Electric Light Company showed in operation their system of house lighting as supplied from a central station. The Edison Company for Isolated Lighting exhibited their system of lighting factories, hotels, hospitals, and other places situated beyond the reach of a central lighting station. A full assortment of Edison lamps and dynamos also made up parts of other exhibits. Also displayed at the exhibition was the first flashing column of light, which Hammer designed and built.
Included within the collection are a variety of photographs of the exhibitions. Four pamphlets also are contained in the collection (Series 3, Box 1, Folder 3), (Series 4, Box 99).
THE EXPOSITION OF THE OHIO VALLEY AND THE CENTRAL STATES OF 1888
The Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States, in Cincinnati from July 4 to October 27, was in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Cincinnati. The exposition showed the progress and ramifications of the first hundred years of this settlement.
The space occupied by permanent buildings was greater than that covered by any building for exhibiting purposes on the Western continent. T',ie exposition developed the Electric Light Plant to make a special feature of electric lighting in the evening. Several companies used this opportunity to make exhibits of their apparatus and for their equipment to be used for illumination. The Edison Lamps were used for displays in showcases and pavilions of exhibitors of the Park Building.
The collection contains photographs of the halls of the exposition and a poster which is a souvenir of the electrical display of the exposition. An official Guide of the Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States is included within the collection. (Series 4, Box 99), (Series 3, Box 42, Folder 4).
THE SUMMER CARNIVAL AND ELECTRICAL EXHIBITION, ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, 1889
The Summer Carnival and Electric Exhibition held at St. John, New Brunswick, Canada was to celebrate the opening of the Canadian Pacific Short Line to St. John and Portland. The Electrical Exhibition was the most popular of the displays present, containing the Monster Edison Lanm, the Mysterious Electric Fountain, and many other inventions.
The William J. Hammer Collection contains a poster that illustrates some of the leading exhibits at the Electrical Exhibition (Series 4, Box 99).
PARIS UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION OF 1889
The Universal Exposition of 1889 held in Paris was larger than all previous expositions held there. The famous Eiffel Tower was its principal attraction.
A large portion of the exhibit hall within the Palace of Mechanical Industries contained Thomas Edison's electrical inventions, including various electric lamps for use in houses. Variations of the telephone also were shown. During the Paris Exposition Europeans were exposed to the phonograph for the first time. Hammer represented Edison's interests at the Paris Exhibition.
The collection contains articles from New York World, New York Herald and Electrical World on Edison's exhibits at the Paris Exposition (Series 3, Box 44, folder 6). A scrapbook of photographs from the exhibition showing exhibit buildings and halls and loose photographs showing Edison's exhibits are included in the collection (Series 4, Box 98).
THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION OF 1892
The Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1892 was held in London. Hammer displayed a great variety of products in the machine room of the Electrical Exhibition. Sockets for controlling individual incandescent lamps on alternating currents and the Ward Arc Lamp for use on incandescent circuits were just a few of the items displayed. Edison's companies displayed specimens of all types of incandescent electric lamps for public and private illumination. They also displayed primary batteries for use in telegraphy, telephony, household work, and engines.
The William, J. Hammer Collection contains a variety of photographs of the electrical exhibition. The Official Catalogue and Guide of the Electrical Exhibition is also contained within the collection (Series 4, Box 99), (Series 3, Folder 2, Box 42).
LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION, 1904
The Louisiana Purchase Expostition of 1904, held in St. Louis, Missouri from April 30 to December 1, celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The nineteen million people who attended made it the largest exposition ever. The year 1904 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Edison's invention of the carbon filament lamp and central power station system.
F.J.V. Skiff, the exhibits classifier for the fair, developed a twofold classificatory arrangement. He organized exhibits in a sequential synopsis corresponding to the sixteen different departments of the exposition. The principal exhibition buildings were built in the shape of a fan. The departments of education, art, liberal arts, and applied sciences-including electricity - headed the classification, Skiff noted, because they "equip man for the battle and prepare him for the enjoyments of life.' Departments devoted to displays of raw materials such as agriculture, horticulture, !inning, forestry, fish and game came next. Anthropology, social economy, and physical culture concluded the classification.
The Hammer collection contains photographs of Hammer with other Chairmen of Domestic and Foreign Jurors of the Electricity Section of the International Jury of Awards of the Louisiana Exposition and Hammer as chairman of the jury on telegraphy, telephony, and wireless. (Series 4, Box 102). A pamphlet by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company on the exhibit of the Radiophone at the Department of Applied Science is also part of the collection (Series 3, Box 42, Folder 5).
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION OF 1915
The Panama Pacific Exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and the four hundredth anniversary of the European discovery of the Pacific Ocean. It was held in San Francisco from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Approximately nineteen million people attended the exposition.
The eleven main buildings of the exposition were grouped around a central court of the Sun and Stars at the entrance of which was the famous Tower of Jewels. The main group of exhibits comprised the Palaces of Education, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Mines,
Transportation, Agriculture, Horticulture and all kinds of food products. During the exposition special days were set aside to honor industrialists Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company provided a large searchlight to flash out a Morse code greeting on the nighttime sky for their arrival.
The William J. Hammer Collection contains a pamphlet on the "Illumination of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition." The pamphlet describes the lighting of the exposition, and the use of arc lamps ' searchlights, incandescent electric lamps, and gas lamps (Series 4, Box 99), (Series 3, Box 43).
Provenance:
Collection donated by IBM, 1962.
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 Society for the History of Technology Records (SHOT) consists of documents relating to SHOT from its inception in 1958- [0ngoing]. The collection is divided into two subgroups: Subgroup I, General Records, 1956-2009 which consist of papers generated and received by Melvin Kranzberg in his various roles as an officer of SHOT, as well as papers of other SHOT officers. Subgroup II,Technology and Culture Records, 1958-2009, consists of documents relating to the Society's journal, Technology and Culture. T & C is a quarterly publication containing articles of interest to and written by historians and students of technology.
The records consist of material generated by Melvin Kranzberg in his role as founding editor-in-chief (1959-1981), first at Case Western Reserve and later at Georgia Institute of Technology, and was succeeded at the National Museum of American History by Robert Post (1981-1996) whose editorial assistants were Brooke Hindle, Helena Wright, Jeffrey Stine, Art Molella and Joan Mentzer. When the museum ended its support of the journal, it moved to the Henry Ford under the editorship of John Staudenmaier (1996-2010) and after that to the University of Oklahoma under the editorship of Suzanne Moon (2010-2020).
Scope and Contents:
The collection is divided into two subgroups: Subgroup I, General Records, 1956-2009 which consist of papers generated and received by Melvin Kranzberg in his various roles as an officer of SHOT, as well as papers of other SHOT officers. Subgroup II,Technology and Culture Records, 1958-2009, consists of documents relating to the Society's journal, Technology and Culture. T & C is a quarterly publication containing articles of interest to and written by historians and students of technology. The records consist of material generated by Melvin Kranzberg in his role as editor-in-chief, 1959-1981 and by succeeding T&C editors. The Melvin Kranzberg Papers (AC0266) consist of the personal papers of Dr. Kranzberg from his undergraduate years at Amherst College through his professional career. The collection documents his involvement with development of the new field of history of technology and his role as principal founder of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT); work as consultant and advisor to domestic and international agencies, colleges, and universities; personal affiliations, lectureships, publications; and teaching and administrative activities for more than forty years as a college professor.
Subgroup I: General Records, 1956-2009, consists of documents relating to SHOT from its inception in 1958 to 2009, papers generated and received by Melvin Kranzberg in his various roles as an officer of SHOT, as well as papers of other SHOT officers.
The General Records are divided into ten series based on the functions of this professional organization of scholars interested in the history of technology. Series one through three document committees and officers and their correspondence regarding day-to-day activities of the Society. Financial records and preparation for annual membership meetings and other more specialized meetings comprise other series. Newsletters and brochures describing SHOT's activities and the records of SHOT's relationships with other professional associations (such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science) complete the General Records.
Series 1: Organizational Records, 1956-1984, consists of materials documenting organizing work, including membership, officers, finances, publicity and drafting of a constitution for SHOT. Included are minutes of meetings to accomplish these purposes as well as for the first general membership meeting held in December, 1958. Papers incorporating SHOT and a history of the organization as of 1976 are included. These records are organized into three categories: the initial conceptualization and creation of SHOT; support activities in the early period; the constitution and history of SHOT. The material is arranged chronologically.
Series 2: Records Of Councils, Committees, and Other Groups, 1959-1989, consists of the records of SHOT councils, committees and other organizational groups. The Executive Council consists of nine elected voting members in addition to the officers of the Society, past presidents of the Society, and the editor-in-chief of the Society's journal. The Executive Council directs the affairs of the Society. In order to reflect the composition of the Society as an interdisciplinary organization which draws from both academe and the factory and industrial laboratory, the Executive Council has been made up of a combination of academicians and practicing engineers and industrialists.
Subseries 2.2a: Executive Council, 1959-1963; 1968; 1975-1978; 1983-1987, contain memoranda to the Executive Council from Melvin Kranzberg, Secretary, 1959-1974; correspondence to and from Secretary Carroll Pursell, 1975-1978; reports; minutes; and other memoranda regarding the SHOT Brochure and Museum Exhibit Awards Program. In addition, Series 5 contains the minutes of many Executive Council meetings, 1958-1992.
Subseries 2.2b: Advisory Council, 1960-1961, is composed of SHOT members selected on the basis of their distinquished scholarship or eminent service to the development of technological studies. The Advisory Council is consulted from time to time regarding the affairs of the Society. These records contain memoranda to the Advisory Council requesting advice, and a list and addresses of Council members as of March, 1961.
The Subseries 2.2c: Nominating Committee,1961-1984, is composed of three Society members appointed by the president; they serve for three years in rotation, one member being added and one retiring each year. Their duties are to nominate persons for the various offices, Executive Council, and the Advisory Council. In addition they make nominations to the Executive Council of candidates for corresponding membership. These records contain correspondence among Society officers, members and potential members of the Nominating Committee; memoranda to the Nominating Committee regarding the work of the committee; lists of officers and council members of the Society; and nominations and ballots.
The Subseries 2.2d: Editorial Committee,1980-1987, is chosen by members of the Executive Council and generally oversees and has ultimate responsibility for the Society's journal, Technology and Culture. The editor-in-chief of the journal is the chairman of the Editorial Committee. The records contain correspondence of the committee; annual reports of the committee; memoranda; and the editor's reports.
The Subseries 2.2e: Documents Committee,1961-1970; 1979-1985 mission was to monitor the preservation of important documents and archival materials that are or may be of value to historians of technology. A primary function is the encouragement of the maintenance and preservation of scientific and technological archives. These records contain correspondence to and from the chairman of the committee, Mel Kranzberg, and others regarding the committee's work and status.
The Subseries 2.2f: Program Committee, 1959; 1961; 1968; 1971; 1983-1984, has charge of arrangements for SHOT's annual meetings, any special meetings of the Society, and any other programs sponsored by the Society. For example, the committee has the responsibility of organizing SHOT sessions at annual meetings of the American Historical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and History of Science Society, among others. These records contain correspondence and memoranda among members of the committee--and with Kranzberg--regarding program sessions and participants at various meetings and other committee business and priorities; the program of the SHOT 1983 annual meeting; and various program reports, 1959-1985.
Subseries 2.2g: Other Committees, 1961-1987, consist of correspondence and memoranda regarding the myriad aspects of various small SHOT committees' work. Among the committees are: Fellowship Committee; Aims and Goals Committee; Industrial Archeology Committee; Electricity and Electronics Archives Committee; Bicentennial Committee; SHOT Research Committee; Technical Studies Committee; Museum Committee; Monograph Committee; Ad Hoc Committee on Library Services; Technical Studies and Educational Committee; Sites Committee; the Endowment Committee; and the Bibliographic Committee, which was organized to prepare an annual list of books and articles with critical comments or references to reviews when available. The bibliography is published annually in Technology and Culture. An analytical index is prepared annually to accompany the bibliography.
Subseries 2.2h: Officers and Committee Appointments, 1963;1966; 1970-1977; 19080; 1982, contains lists of SHOT committee officers, as well as correspondence and memoranda regarding committee and SHOT officers' appointments and acceptances.
Since SHOT's inception in 1958, members have formed special interest groups (SIGs) for the purpose of bringing together scholars and professionals with interests in specific fields of the history of technology.
Subseries 2.2i: Special Interest Groups, 1961-1988, material includes correspondence, memoranda, newsletters, directories, reports of chairmen, and articles of various special interest groups. These special interest groups are composed of SHOT members who have a common interest, e.g., women's roles in technological history and military technology.
The Subseries 2.2j: Awards Committee (Committee on Honors), 1961-1988, was an advisory committee created to establish conditions and to recommend recipients for various SHOT medals and awards, such as the Usher, Dexter and da Vinci. The power to confer the awards rests with the Executive Council of SHOT. The committee is also responsible for developing citations for the medals and carrying out the nomination process for awards. These records contain correspondence between committee members and Kranzberg regarding awards to recipients, vitae of award recipients, and edited copies of the "awards/honors section" of Technology and Culture.
The Subseries 2.2k: Leonardo da Vinci Medal, 1966-1986, is the Society's highest honor, presented to an individual who has greatly contributed to the history of technology through research, teaching, publications, and other activities. This material consists mostly of correspondence among officers of SHOT and the medal recipients. Also included is biographical material on three recipients of the medal. Photographs of the medal are also included.
The Subseries 2.2l: Dexter Prize, sponsored by the Dexter Chemical Corporation of New York City, is an annual prize of $1,000 dollars for the best book on the history of technology. This material is mainly correspondence regarding the establishment of the prize, development of the plaque, correspondence to and from the recipients, a photo of one recipient, and original illustrations of the plaque.
The Subseries 2.2m: Robinson Prize, 1968-1987, was established by the Executive Council and is awarded annually. It consists of a certificate and a check for $150 dollars for the best paper presented at a SHOT annual meeting by a person under thirty years of age. The material includes correspondence and memoranda regarding this prize. In addition, copies of many submission papers are included.
The Subseries 2.2n: Levinson Prize, 1984-1986, is awarded for an author's first manuscript intended for publication. There is a cash award of $250 dollars and an appropriate plaque. Included is correspondence to and from SHOT officers regarding the establishment and the awarding of this prize.
Subseries 2o: Miscellaneous Awards, 1984-1986, consists of correspondence and memoranda related to various small awards and prizes, including the Usher prize, a special certification award for meritorious work not covered by established prizes, and the IEEE Life Member's Prize in Electrical History, administered by SHOT.
Series 3: Correspondence, 1963-1988, contains correspondence of SHOT officers and is divided into three subseries: general correspondence, correspondence of SHOT presidents, and correspondence dealing with particularly important subjects. The general correspondence deals with routine administrative matters from 1966-1988. The presidential letters and the letters to which they reply relate to the official responsibilities of the SHOT president 1978-1986. The final category contains correspondence, 1975-1985, on subjects such as preparations for commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage and the offer of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History to be the repository for the records of SHOT.
Series 4: Financial Records (Budget), 1959-1993, consists of financial statements and bank records, 1960-1993, including reports of SHOT treasurers to the membership and to appropriate committees regarding SHOT finances, as well as bank statements, check stubs, and other records of transactions and investments. Copies of required reports to the Internal Revenue Service, 1960-1991 are filed separately as is the general correspondence of SHOT Treasurers, 1985-1991. Financial reports on individual SHOT Meetings, 1976-1993 consititute a final category.
Series 5: Meetings, 1958-1992, contains minutes of the Executive Council and annual general membership meetings, as well as records of preparatory work for annual meetings of SHOT, and is arranged chronologically. Records of other membership meetings concerned with particular subjects are listed separately. Correspondence relating to a conference on "Critical Issues in the History of Technology" organized by SHOT in Roanoke, Virginia in 1978, is also included.
Series 6: Secretary's Membership Records, 1958-1984, consists of reports and correspondence to and from officers and members of SHOT, and is arranged chronologically. Included are inquiries from prospective members, responses by the SHOT secretary, statistics of membership, questionnaires, and invitations to join SHOT.
Series 7: Newsletter, 1958-1997, contains the SHOT newsletter and records of its publication and is arranged chronologically for 1977-1989. Materials for the years preceding 1977 include the actual newsletters for 1958-1964, arranged chronologically, and the rough draft of the 1960 newsletter. Series 9 contains additional copies of the SHOT newsletter.
Series 8: Publication of Monographs, 1961-1984, contains correspondence and committee meeting minutes relating to editorial review, printing problems and royalties. These are arranged by subject.
Series 9: SHOT Professional Relations with Other Organizations, 1964-1988, consists of materials documenting SHOT's numerous official contacts with other professional societies, including joint meetings, correspondence, and minutes. These records are arranged chronologically. Papers relating to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Council of Learned Societies are grouped separately.
Series 10, Officers Files, 1958-2009, contains materials submitted periodically by former officers of SHOT, beginning in the mid-1980s. Included are documents relating to their administrative functions, as well as their correspondence conducted while in office. Received material which obviously fits into the body of the collections has been so incorporated, in the order of their donation.
Subgroup II: Technology and Culture Records, 1958-1995, consists of documents relating to the Society's journal, Technology and Culture. T & C is a quarterly publication containing articles of interest to and written by historians and students of technology. The records consist of material generated by Melvin Kranzberg in his role as editor-in-chief, 1959-1981 and by succeeding T&C editors.
The papers are divided into ten subseries according to the editorial and other activities involved in producing T & C. In addition to the Organizational Records, 1958-1962, the Technology and Culture records include book reviews, editorial reviews of articles, indexes and tables of contents, printing (by the University of Chicago Press), costs, promotions, and special projects.
Series 1: Organizational Records, 1958-1962 , contains correspondence, minutes of meetings and memoranda relating to the creation of the quarterly journal, T&C, and its first issue. the series includes records of a membership poll to choose the journal's name. A speech by Melvin Kranzberg in 1981 entitled "Quirks and Jerks of Editing Technology and Culture" outlines the early considerations in publication and later editorial problems.
Series 2: Correspondence, 1965-1988, is restricted and contains articles and reviews of articles submitted to T&C for publication. This material is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. The folder dates represent the dates of all the correspondence in the folder. The older date usually represents the date when the correspondence was initiated regarding the submission of an article to T&C. However, the latest date does not always represent correspondence regarding a submission to T&C, since Kranzberg sometimes included general correspondence in the folders.
All articles went through a refereeing process, during which referees wrote recommendations, either for or against publication. These judges wrote their recommendations with the understanding that their identities and their evaluations would remain confidential. In order to maintain the confidentiality of all parties, this separate correspondence series and the confidential referee reviews have been restricted for thirty years from the most recent date of the correspondence. Exceptions will be made if written permission is obtained from SHOT's Editorial Board.The majority of folders contain correspondence between Kranzberg and the referees about articles, but not the articles themselves. The judges' recommendations contain a great deal of information. Some papers were revised two, three, or more times in preparation for publication and referees' reports follow each revision.
Series 3: Book Reviews, 1969-1995, consists of drafts of reviews which appeared inT&C with correspondence relating to those reviews. The material is arranged chronologically according to theT&C issue in which they appeared.
Series 4: Editorial Review of Articles, 1960-1993, consists of drafts of articles considered for publication and other editorial material, for example, exhibit reviews, communications, notes and announcements, correspondence (with authors and reviewers; the latter included comments on the draft articles) and email printouts. The material is arranged alphabetically by name of author and is restricted. Judges wrote their recommendations with the understanding that their identities and their evaluations, would remain confidential. In order to maintain the confidentiality of all parties, this series and the confidential referee reviews have been restricted for thirty years from the most recent date of the correspondence. Exceptions will be made if written permission is obtained from SHOT's Editorial Board.
Series 5: Indexes (Cumulative) and Tables of Contents, 1965-1987 (Boxes 54-56), contains tables of contents of each quarterly edition of T&C, 1965-1981, together with cumulative indexes through 1987.
Series 6: Technology and Culture Printing and Costs, 1959-1994, consists of correspondence with printers of the T&C quarterly journal (primarily the University of Chicago Press), including instructions for printing and negotiation of costs. Also included are arrangements for reprints, cover designs and membership lists. Correspondence relating to campaigns to promote sales of T&C and annual reports of revenues and costs is arranged chronologically.
Series 7: Special Projects, 1962-1986, includes materials documenting miscellaneous projects related to T&C and its editing and publication, and is arranged chronologically.
Series 8: Technology and Culture Editor, 1982-1995, consists of records of the editor documenting the functions of soliciting, reviewing, refereeing and giving final approval for articles and book reviews appearing in T&C. Correspondence with members of SHOT and others is arranged alphabetically. Letters relate to proposed articles and comments on them, as well as other subjects. Also included is correspondence relating to Post's own publications, exhibits, and public presentations, assessments of grant applications, records of his involvement in the affairs of the National Museum of American History and other museums, and correspondence with other periodicals with which he was editorially involved, such as Invention and Technology and Railroad History.
Series 9: Published Files, 1982-1994,contains edited typescript (as submitted to publisher) for articles, research notes, conference reports, organizational notes, reviews, obituaries, and all other material published in Technology and Culture for one calendar year. Correspondence with authors, advisory editors, referees (between two and five for each article), and editorial and production staff of the University of Chicago Press is also included. The materials are arranged chronologically by year. These files are closed for thirty years from the date of the last correspondence in the individual folder. They may be opened, on a case-by-case basis, through appeal to the SHOT Editorial Committee.
Series 10: Office Business Files, 1983-2007, consists of files from the Technology and Culture offices. Many of the files relate to the journal's redesign, editors, and search for a university press to publish the journal.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into two subgroups.
Subgroup I: General Records, 1956-2009
Subgroup II:Technology and Culture Records, 1958-2010
Subgroup I: General Records, 1956-2009
Series 1: Organizational Records, 1956-1984
Subseries 1.1a: Conceptualization and Creation of SHOT, 1956-1959
Subseries 1.1b: Support Activities, 1958-1972
Subseries 1.1c: Constitution and History of SHOT, 1958-1976
Series 2: Records of Councils, Committees, and Other Groups, 1959-1989
Subgroup II:Technology and Culture Records, 1958-2012
Series 1: Organizational Records, 1958-1962
Series 2: Correspondence, 1965-1988
Series 3: Book Reviews, 1969-1995
Series 4: Editorial Review of Articles, 1960-1993
Series 5: Indexes (cumulative and tables of contents), 1965-1987
Series 6:Technology and Culture, 1959-1994
Series 7, Special Projects, 1962-1986
Series 8, Technology and Culture Editor, 1982-2010
Series 9: Published Files, 1982-1994
Series 10: Office Business Files, 1983-2007
Series 11:Technology and Culture (journal), 1992, 1994, 2005-2012
Biographical / Historical:
The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) was formed in 1958 to encourage the study of the development of technology and its relations with politics, economics, labor, business, the environment, public policy, science, and the arts. The Society is incorporated in the State of Ohio as a nonprofit educational organization. Membership is international, open to individuals, organizations, corporations, and institutions interested in the purposes and activities of the Society. An international society, SHOT meets annually in North America or Europe and also sponsors smaller conferences focused on specialized topics, often jointly with other scholarly societies and organizations. The Society's quarterly journal, Technology and Culture, is published by the Johns Hopkins University Press (http://www.techculture.org/). In addition to Technology and Culture, SHOT publishes a quarterly newsletter and, jointly with the American Historical Association, a booklet series, Historical Perspectives on Technology, Society, and Culture.
Melvin Kranzberg was the driving force behind the organization of SHOT. He chaired its Executive Council, 1958-1959, and also served as secretary of the organization, 1959-1974; vice president, 1981-1982; president, 1983-1984; and chairman of the editorial committee, 1985-1988. From 1959 to 1981, he was editor-in-chief of SHOT's quarterly journal, Technology and Culture (T&C). In addition to his long, intimate involvement with SHOT, Kranzberg, as a professor at Case Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology, 1952-1988, was deeply engaged in studying aspects of technological development over the course of human history. Kranzberg participated in many scholarly committees and other organizations, both domestic and international. He also contributed to governmental commissions and international bodies. His correspondence, speeches and published articles constitute the Melvin Kranzberg Papers, 1934-1988 (AC0266), in the National Museum of American History's Archives Center.
The Archives Center was officially designated the respository for the SHOT records and the editorial records of Technology and Culture in October 1994.
Related Materials:
Material in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Melvin Kranzberg Papers (AC0266)
Personal papers of Dr. Kranzberg from his undergraduate years at Amherst College through his professional career. Collection documents his involvement with development of the new field of history of technology and his role as principal founder of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT); work as consultant and advisor to domestic and international agencies, colleges, and universities; personal affiliations, lectureships, publications; and teaching and administrative activities for more than forty years as a college professor.
S. Colum Gilfillan Papers (AC0461)
Gilfillan was a charter member of SHOT in 1958. The papers include correspondence with Melvin Kranzberg concerning articles that he published in SHOT's journal, Technology and Culture.
Materials in Smithsonian Institution Archives
Brooke Hindle Papers, 1944-1985 (RU 7363)
These papers document Hindle's teaching career; his tenure as an academic dean, historian, and professor of science and technology at New York University; his service as president of SHOT; and, to a lesser extent, his years as director of the National Museum of the History of Technology (NMHT). Papers consist of correspondence and memoranda with historical, scientific, and technological institutes and societies concerning research; correspondence and memoranda with prominent historians of science and technology, particularly Carl Bridenbaugh, Whitfield J. Bell, and A. Hunter Dupree; historical research proposals, manuscripts, publications, index cards, and related material; biographical information; slides and photographs of scientific illustrations and portraits of historic American figures; files concerning his presidency of SHOT and as a member of various visiting committees to review academic programs in the history of science and technology; and copies of course materials prepared during his teaching career at New York University.
Provenance:
Dr. Melvin Kranzberg donated the collection on August 29, 1988.
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.
Subgroup II: Technology and Culture Records
Series 2: Correspondence, 1965-1988
Files are restricted for thirty years from the most recent date of the correspondence. They may be opened, on a case-by-case basis, through appeal to the SHOT Editorial Committee.
Series 4: Editorial Review of Articles, 1960-1993
Files are restricted for thirty years from the most recent date of the review. They may be opened, on a case-by-case basis, through appeal to the SHOT Editorial Committee.
Series 9: Published Files, 1982-1994
Files are restricted for thirty years from the date of the last correspondence in the individual folder. They may be opened, on a case-by-case basis, through appeal to the SHOT Editorial Committee.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees apply when requesting reproductions.
Diaries and memoirs, profusely illustrated with photographs and other mementos, which describe Craton's life, education and work experience as an engineer at General Electric in minute detail, and include his comments on the culture, current events and politics of the times; and correspondence, mostly letters from Craton to his wife and to his mother.
Scope and Contents:
This memoir is the autobiography of a man whose entire career from college graduation to retirement was spent working in one of the giants of American industry, the General Electric Company. His life spanned more than three quarters of the twentieth century and the detail in which it has been recorded provides much scattered historical, cultural, social and economic information about the period.
It is part contemporaneous diary written on a daily or weekly basis, part a record of chronological periods of Mr. Craton's life reconstructed from notes, scattered diary entries, sketches, photographs and memory and part a record of specific experiences, for example the family's boating years, Mr. Craton's time at the War Production Board, his religious life. Mr. Craton referred to it as "my 40-volume autobiography-----a continuous story of my life since birth. I estimate there are at least three million words in this record-----" in a two page autobiographical account written November 28, 1978 for Milton Wise, a former classmate.
References to Mr. Craton's work at G.E. appear in the daily and weekly diary entries but are in separate sections in the record of Mr. Craton's life that was written after his retirement. The story of those years is divided into two sections, one relating to home, family and friends and another to his career at G.E. These sections on his work contain a significant amount of information on the company's transportation interests and the manufacture and merchandising of locomotives and locomotives parts as well as descriptions of Mr. Craton's colleagues.
The year 1942 spent in Washington as a dollar-a-year man at the War Production Board and his account of his trips to Washington immediately before and immediately afterwards paint an interesting picture of war-time Washington, its hotels, restaurants, and cocktail lounges and the social life of which they were a part. They also give some indication of a Federal government rapidly expanding to meet war-time needs at home and abroad.
Major current events occurring during Mr. Craton's lifetime are also noted. They begin with the arrival of the Graf Zeppelin in New York In October 1928; the election of Herbert Hoover as president in that year as well as subsequent presidential elections were recorded as were the depression of the thirties and its effect on family life, and World War II. Developments in the space program and the landing of the astronauts on the moon were watched on television and noted in the memoirs.
The record is replete with Mr. Craton's disapproval of labor unions and their activities and his bias about Jews and Blacks, and reference to social classes that he considered his inferiors. Entries throughout the years from childhood on describe friends, acquaintances and fellow workers in minute detail. They also describe every woman with a pretty face or good figure noticed on the street, in a store, restaurant or hotel and document the drinking that was one aspect of recreational life at the time among some groups.
Looking back on the period from 1949 to 1963 from the vantage point of 1977 Mr. Craton divided it into 3 periods. In the one he entitled "Emancipation" there is a lengthy description of their friendship with the Brightmans, biographical details of the members of the Dinner Club, a detailed account of Bab's wedding and the birth of the first grandchild. This record of friends, family and activities is heavily illustrated with photographs and clippings.
Numerous references to the family's daily living and travel expenses show the changes that occurred in the price level over the years and caused Mr. Craton major concern about inflation.
The memoirs are profusely illustrated with photographs of family, friends and places visited as well as with magazine pictures, menus, programs, and other mementos.
Much of the collection is typed on 8-1/2 by 5 inch notebook sheets. Much is handwritten in a small, neat script. Photographs are labeled.
The Container List indicates by folder whether the contents are diary or memoirs written after the fact.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into two series.
Series 1: Memoirs, 1902-1983
Series 2: Correspondence, 1923-1982
Biographical / Historical:
Childhood and Youth
Forman Craton, an only child, was born on June 23, 1902 in Syracuse, New York. His mother, Annie Fairbanks Hutchison was the granddaughter of General Orrin Hutchison, a man of some prominence in Onondaga County, New York. His father, Dr. Samuel Boyce Craton, was the great grandson of Joshua Forman, the founder of Syracuse, New York. Dr. Forman earned his medical degree at Syracuse University and became an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist. Somewhat later he confined his practice to diseases of the eye.
Mr. Craton's memoirs recount several unpleasant memories of a dark, gloomy house on McClennan Ave. in Syracuse where he spent his earliest years. Among them were the death of a brother who was a "blue" baby, a series of colds, coughs, sore throats and other respiratory complaints, getting sick on street cars, fear of dogs, and fear of being banished from home for misbehavior.
About April 1, 1908 the family moved to 326 Highland Ave., a socially better neighborhood where they spent the next 7 years which are described by Mr. Craton as among the happiest in his life. The long winters offered a multitude of winter activities for children. They built snowmen, snow forts, snow houses. There were few cars so the streets were not cleared and youngsters went sledding and tobogganing on nearby hills. The tennis court at the Sedgwick Farm Club was flooded for skating and hockey. Indoors the children played "house" with appropriate rearrangement of the furniture or hide-and-seek in houses with large attics. In good weather, hopscotch, baseball and football took over along with climbing trees and riding bicycles.
Burten Holmes' travel pictures, special movies such as "Birth of a Nation" and later Jack London's "The Sea Wolf" as well as books and records were part of the cultural scene. Magazines too, "St. Nicholas", "Boys' Life" and "American Boy" were available. At his mother's instigation young Craton began a stamp collection.
Most of the neighborhood families, including his, belonged to the Sedgwick Farm Club, two and a half blocks from his house. It had large rooms, bowling alleys, a squash court, tennis courts, a children's playground. Dancing school which he attended was held at the club once a week. He also attended Sunday School regularly.
After one term at a private school young Craton transferred to Lincoln, the neighborhood public school, where he finished the 8 grades in 6 years. In summarizing his early years Mr. Craton remarked on the varied backgrounds of his school friends and the fact that rich and poor children mixed well and played together. He mentioned being conscious of class distinctions as early as 1912 and this awareness reappears throughout his life.
The comfortable life of young Forman's early years changed abruptly with the untimely death of his father, Dr. Craton, on February 26, 1915. The family income dropped from $10,000 to $12,000 annually, a very good one for that period, to about $1,500 a year from his father's estate. Shortly after his father's death the boy and his mother moved to 410 Douglas St. It was a "nice flat" but the lad was aware that the neighborhood was not as good as Highland St. Forman gradually lost touch with his old playmates (his mother resigned from the Sedgwick Farm Club to save money) and the boy soon became part of the Douglas St. crowd.
The young Forman began his high school days at North High School. Two of the city's characteristics were important to him during this period. The NY Central R.R. ran through downtown Syracuse and watching the trains was a fascinating pastime. The Erie Canal on which boats were hauled by horse through the city competed with the NY Central for by his attention. Although too slight for competitive sports he was an enthusiastic fan of the football and baseball teams at school. His lone outside activity at school was dramatics.
Work experience during his high school years included several one or two day-at-a-time jobs shoveling snow for the NY Central, laboring work at a steel company, tips for errands at the State Fair, and Christmas clerking at a men's store. His first full time job was as gardener for the Calthop sisters during the summer of 1919, at 20¢ an hour. In the fall of 1919 he got a job working after school and on Saturdays at Bardeen's, a book publishing company. The summer before university he was a machinist's helper at Solrag Process Co. That summer he and his mother moved to a flat at 205 Waverly Ave, a block from Syracuse University where he enrolled in the fall.
To his bitter disappointment the young man was not asked to join Phi Delta Theta, his father's fraternity and this caused great unhappiness in his early days at the university. Because of the necessity to be practical about earning a living for himself and his mother he put aside his interest in writing and cartooning, and majored in mechanical engineering. He excelled in his college work, and was invited to join several honorary fraternities in engineering and mathematics. He made a number of friends both male and female and in spite of his early bitterness over his rejection by his father's fraternity had a satisfying college career. After intercession by a friend of his father's about which Forman later wrote that he was ashamed, he received and accepted a bid from Phi Delta Theta in the middle of his college years.
In August 1923 the Cratons vacationed at Star Island, in the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire, where young Forman quickly became friends with Willette Flitschner, from Louisville, KY. whom he would marry in a few years.
Young Manhood
During his final year at college an interview with Mr. George Pfeiff who was recruiting for a new course in Factory Management at the General Electric Co. led to a job offer in Schenectady, NY. After some soul searching about leaving his mother in Syracuse he left for the job at General Electric in Schenectady. His career at General Electric lasted 38 years.
Homesickness was a serious problem as Forman Craton began his career with the company. With the exception of vacations he had spent all of his young life, including his college years, in Syracuse. He went directly from a vacation at Star Island where Willette was also vacationing to a plant employing 22,000 people in a city in which he was a stranger. His proclivity for introspection, always strong, and his sensitivity to people and his surroundings are clearly evident in his letters to his mother and to Willie in August and September, and recur frequently throughout the years. He turned to poetry at this time for solace, particularly Sara Teasdale. The year 1924 ends with two letters to Willie declaring his love.
Because the young man had been recruited for the Factory Management Course he was moved from spot to spot in the plant, some assignments lasting a week, others several weeks. In 1925 Forman enrolled in an accounting course at G.E. that involved home work. That and almost daily letters to his mother and Willie left him little free time. Still troubled by home-sickness and unhappy in his work, after much agonizing he asked for a transfer to "test" which in effect meant starting again.
He had become convinced that his interests lay in engineering rather than in manufacturing and the test course pointed its members toward design, application engineering and technical sales.
A young Mr. Craton left for the General Electric facility in Erie, a plant with 5000 employees, on January 10, 1926 and never looked back. The transfer brought him immediate satisfaction and pleasure in his work and began a lifetime career. He found Erie and its people interesting, began attending the Unitarian Church where he met and enjoyed knowing a number of young people. His early months there were spent in rented rooms but late in the year he rented an apartment at 1308 W 9th Street in preparation for his marriage to Willie.
Family Life
Forman Craton and Willie Flitschner were married January 27, 1927. He made his first trip for the company, the first of an endless number, in 1927. The year 1928 was a banner year for the young couple. A daughter named Barbara and always called Bab was born on August 28 at Hamot Hospital. His salary having been increased to $42.00 a week in February, they bought a secondhand, dearly beloved Dodge for $225. In late June Forman wrote the first paragraph of his first short story, in an endeavor to follow through on his interest in writing. The year 1928 was also the year that the Graf Zeppelin which had left Germany in October 13 arrived in New York on October 15. In November the Cratons voted for Herbert Hoover who won the presidency by a large electoral majority. His Democratic opponent was Al Smith.
On May 24, 1932 a new baby, Roger Phelps Craton, was born. As the depression hit bottom Mr. Craton's salary was cut to $1900 a year, his work week to 4 days and he felt lucky to still have a job.
The death of Willie's mother made 1935 a sad year for the family. Increasing responsibilities at GE as business improved kept Mr. Craton busy at the plant and frequently out of town. As his responsibilities increased the necessary and expected business entertaining increased keeping him away from home often during the evenings in Erie. He was out of town more frequently also and business entertaining often involved drinking and late nights.
The war years meant greater responsibility at the plant and long working hours for Mr. Craton and the restrictions felt by all families as rationing affected family eating habits and recreation, especially the use of automobiles.
For several years after the children were born Mr. Craton's mother either lived with the family or visited for long periods of time. His mother had become harassed by worry, fears and discontent
and no effort by Mr. Craton seemed to assuage these. This situation continued through out the thirties. On November 19, 1939 Mr. Craton wrote "all of this makes life at home unnatural, strained, unpleasant and nerve wracking."
Mr. Craton's frequent and long business trips made the responsibility for his mother especially difficult for his wife. It was January 1944 before the elder Mrs. Craton left the Craton house to reside at St. Margaret's Home with many misgivings on her part and Mr. Craton's.
His mother's death occurred on September 28, 1947 and an inheritance of about $20,000 from her made building a longed for new home possible in 1948.
Another crisis in their family life was the suicide of Willette Craton's father, "the Colonel", on April 10, 1946. Long widowed he had remarried at age 70, apparently not very successfully. He was also driven by financial worries. What estate there was went to the second wife with only the proceeds of a $1,000 insurance policy to Willette Craton, causing some feeling of resentment.
Graduation from university were important family occasions as were the children's marriages.
Thanksgiving was generally spent with Bab and Tom Moore and their family, Christmas with Roger and Joan and theirs.
Children and Grandchildren
A daughter named Barbara and always called Bab or Babbie was born on August 28, 1928 at Hamont Hospital. Her brother, Roger Phelps Craton was born on May 24, 1932.
Both children did well in school, received good grades, and were a source of pride and satisfaction with their behavior, appearance, and accomplishments. Bab wanted a year at Southern Seminary in Buena Vista, Virginia before entering college. Despite their concern about the expense the Cratons agreed because they feared she could not get all the necessary credits in the Erie public school. Her graduation from Southern Seminary was an important family occasion which involved visiting the Robeys and other relatives living in the area.
Bab left Erie in late September 1946 for her first year at Syracuse University. By 1949 she was a senior at Syracuse University and Roger was a senior at Strong Vincent High School and well-thought of as a young sailor at the Erie Yacht Club.
Bab graduated from college in June, 1950 and she and Tom Moore, an architectural student, were married in August. Since he had one more year for his degree in architecture she went to work in an office in Syracuse. Roger graduated from high school that year and entered the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1975.
The first grandchild, Elizabeth Forman Moore, was born on September 15, 1952. Her father Tom joined an architectural firm in Berea, Ohio where they lived for a time before moving to Brecksville, Ohio. A second grandchild, Peter Moore born in 1955 was followed by another girl, Margaret Joanna Moore, born October 2, 1957 and called Peggy.
Another Moore grandchild, Charles Andrew, born July 3, 1965 shortly became a cause of much
family concern and anxiety because of his failure to thrive and respond developmentally. By April 1970 he was placed in the Sunnyhaven Home in Columbus, Ohio. He was transferred to a state hospital in Breckville in the spring of 1973. Sunnyhaven felt he could no longer be helped there and he had become more difficult to manage. Mr. Craton never became reconciled to Charles' retardation or the fact that he was born to his adored daughter.
Peg Moore the youngest child was thinking about college during the annual Thanksgiving visit in 1974-she was interested in one with a strong art curriculum. Peter Moore was an increasingly excellent football player in high school, winning several awards. He planned to enter Wooster College in the fall, having graduated from high school in 1975 the same year Elizabeth graduated from Bowling Green University. She was attending classes at the Univ. of Georgia, working in the Admissions Office and living at 2511 Planthersville Road in Decatur.
Roger Craton at the University of Pennsylvania joined the fraternity to which his father and grandfather belonged. He was active in Masks and Wigs and also played lacrosse. He graduated with high honors in 1954 and married Joan Gibson the following November.
Roger and Joan Craton moved to Detroit, he to work in a bank and finish his M.A. degree at night.
By 1960 Roger was working for the Ford Motor Company. His first child, a boy named Lincoln after Joan's father, was born May 30, 1960. Cynthia, his second child was born on August 1, 1962. Both of these children attended private schools and lived in London for the several years during which Roger Craton worked for Ford in London.
By 1971 Roger had returned to Ford in Detroit, and had bought a large home in Bloomfield Village, Birmingham, Michigan. He had been appointed comptroller of Ford's North American Automotive Operations, a 30 million dollar a year business.
On July 5, 1980 Roger phoned his parents that he was leaving Ford to become chief finance officer with a seat on the board of directors of Chesebrough-Pond Corporation effective August 1, 1980. His new annual compensation was to be $300,000. Thus meant that the Roger Craton family would move to Greenwich, Connecticut in June 1981 when Cynthia Craton would graduate from high school.
A Thirty Eight Year Career At The General Electric Co.
The following account of Mr. Craton's career was written by him in November 1978 at the request of Milton Wise of the class of 1924 of Syracuse University, who was compiling a book on the surviving members of their class at the College of Applied Science.
"On July 7, 1924 I reported in Schenectady for General Electric's new Factory Management Course and thus began a rewarding GE career that was to span the next 38 years. However, a year on this course convinced me I was slanted more toward engineering than manufacturing. So I transferred to the "test" course, which pointed its members toward both design and application engineering as well as technical sales. It proved to be a good move.
Long fascinated by trains and discovering GE's deep involvement in rail transportation apparatus, I soon transferred to the Erie, Pa. plant where I finally headed traction motor test nights and later took locomotive test. The latter was an impossible dream come true, involving electric locomotive riding and operation on the 4-mile test track. In November 1926 I moved into railway control engineering at Erie to design circuitry for gasoline-electric cars and various types of electric-drive locomotives. Also I had an indoctrination course on traction motor design and application.
In 1930 the Lackawanna suburban electrification out of Hoboken was inaugurated. It included two 3,000-volt trolley-battery-diesel locomotives for transfer freight service between the Jersey City and Secaucus yards. I'd done the control engineering on these locomotives and helped put them into service, This included the thrill of operating the locomotive pulling a 105-car freight train up grade out of Jersey City, through the Bergen Hill tunnel and on to Secaucus, to me an incredible experience. This assignment was my first intimate exposure to railroading and years later I wrote an article about it which appeared in TRAINS Magazine.
In 1931 I moved from design into locomotive application engineering and commercial work, the two functions being combined at Erie. However we were fast sinking into the abyss of the Depression. By 1932 the only active job we had was apparatus for the Pennsylvania Railroad electrification; if you weren't fortunate enough to be working on that, and I wasn't, it was touch and go whether you'd be short-timed or dismissed. I got down to four days a week and 157 per month with a wife and two children to support but I hung onto my job. That was the bottom. In 1933 things began to improve slowly, I was assigned the New Haven Railroad commercial work at Erie. The New Haven was progressive and interested in dieselization as well as possibly extending their electrification to Boston. We made extensive diesel-switcher studies culminated by an initial order for ten units. This was followed in 1937 by an order for six 3,600-hp 216-ton 11,000/600-volt AC/DC passenger locomotives for operation into Grand Central. On September 21, 1938 while running freight tests on these, we found ourselves in the middle of the hurricane of that date, another experience I wrote about for TRAINS.
In the late 1930s GE and American Locomotive Co. were partners in the diesel business; they built 100 tons and up using our equipment and we anything below 100. I was assigned promotion of our diesels with the New England railroads. This meant extensive traveling involving memorable episodes. My experiences on the Boston & Maine, where we had a demonstrator, were particularly noteworthy and were covered by a TRAINS article entitled "Joy & Pain on the Boston & Maine."
In 1940 I became manager of Industrial Haulage at Erie which had responsibility for the GE mining and industrial locomotive business, about to come on strong with World War II in the immediate offing. This was my first managerial job. I became active in the Mining & Industrial Electric Locomotive Section of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and was chairman of the section. Also I spent much of 1942 in Washington as a dollar-a-year man on the War Production Board and was responsible for scheduling the manufacture of all locomotives in the U.S. below 100-tons; these included both diesel and steam as well as the military requirements. I made a 2-month trip to Hawaii in early 1945 to appraise the postwar market for diesels in the sugar industry.
In 1945 I became assistant general sales manager and in 1947 general sales manager of GE's locomotive and transportation equipment business. The product line included electric-drive locomotives of all types and sizes, electrical propulsion equipments sold to other builders for locomotives, subway and rapid-transit cars, trolley cars and coaches, off-highway vehicles, and a large parts business. After the war we had a period of inflation and labor trouble including a 9-week strike which made pricing and shipping promises difficult. Also as 1950 approached we struggled to get our business up to $100,000,000 annually, which would keep about 5,000 employees busy at Erie. So it was a challenging and interesting time.
In the early 1950s due to rapid growth the Company was reorganizing, decentralizing and establishing new measurements. In 1953 a study team was formed to recommend how the Company's foreign operations could be blended smoothly into all this. On the team were four from international operations, four from domestic, and the chairman, an international man. On this team I represented the Company's heavy apparatus business. The nine of us holed up in a New York hotel for over a year on this when we weren't traveling around on interviews including a 3-week trip to Central and South America. It was one of the most fascinating of my business experiences.
After this I returned to my marketing job at Erie, the position having been upgraded slightly from "sales" to "marketing" in the reorganization. In 1956 I spent three months taking the Company's Advanced Management Course. Back in Erie again, I headed a team to study the reorganization of our own business. we spent four months on this and presented our report in May 1957. We recommended the business be split up into three decentralized sections: 1) Locomotives; 2) Equipments; 3) Parts sales. Our recommendations were adopted and the department reorganized. I became general manager of the equipment business, a position I held until my retirement o July 1, 1962 at age 60.
Equipment doesn't sound as glamorous as locomotives but actually is more so. We'd adapted our locomotive propulsion apparatus to oil-well drilling which put us into that business; I've visited an oil-well drilling platform 60 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. With expansion of open-pit mining and the proliferation of heavy off-highway vehicles, our motorized-wheel business was booming. Mass transit was promising an even greater future. Also we supplied electrical equipments to Alco and Baldwin as well as our own associates in the Erie Plant. These lines along with parts kept some 2,500 people busy in our Equipment Section."
Finances
It took 17 years thanks to his early career change and the depression for Mr. Craton's salary to reach %5,000. The next step up meant that he was eligible to join Elfun, an investment fund for G.E. managers and executives.
With the end of the depression and the increasing industrial activity caused by war production Mr. Craton's salary had risen to $6,700 a year. Overtime and extra compensation brought this to $8,500. By November 1946 several increases had raised his base salary to $9,000 and following a long strike at the plant this figure was raised to $9,720. A March 13, 1946 journal entry noted that Mr. Craton's income tax for 1945 was $1,800 -- "more than he used to make". One of the satisfactions of these increases was the purchase of a small boat that added a great deal to the family's recreation.
Mr. Craton became eligible for the GE stock plan in 1953 and was authorized to purchase 900 shares of company stock over the next 10 years at $71.00 a share. His stock in GE enabled him to retire at age 60 instead of 65. He noted that the 2500 shares he owned in 1965 for which he had paid about $60,000 over the years had a market value of $300,000. It was the income from the Elfun trusts and the dividends from G.E. stock, substantial contributions to his retirement income, that made the extensive travel during his early retirement years possible.
Despite the post-war salary increases and his investment income that appeared to keep pace with the inflation of those years, inflation was an abiding concern for Mr. Craton.
Leisure Time
As a young single man much of Mr. Craton's social life revolved around the Unitarian Church. He enjoyed the young people he met at church-related social affairs and found them interesting.
After their marriage the Cratons played bridge with friends, occasionally played poker for small stakes, went to movies, and attended lectures and concerts at Chautauqua during the season. They entertained and were entertained by friends for cocktails and dinner and made weekend visits to friends living out of town. Swimming, walking the beach and picnics at Peninsula, a local recreation area, were important when the children were young. They were regular television viewers with a number of favorite programs. The Watergate hearings were watched daily during the second Nixon administration and all space shots were followed with interest. The week-end sports programs were watched with anticipation and pleasure. Mr. Craton's interest in opera is well-documented and he was a regular radio and television fan of the Metropolitan Opera performances. He also bought and played frequently recorded arias.
A friendship with the Brightmans developed into a more active social life than usual but this subsided after the Brightmans left Erie.
Recreation during the years from 1945 to 1964 was centered in the Yacht Club which Mr. Craton joined when he bought a small boat. Boating then became a major recreational activity. Young Roger quickly became an excellent sailor, participating in sail boat races with skill and enthusiasm. The first boat was replaced by a larger but still modest one. Mr. Craton's interest eventually resulted in his being elected commodore of the Erie Yacht Club, a highly prized distinction. The Cratons participated in all of the Yacht Club activities, using it for dinner, dancing, and special occasions, even after Mr. Craton sold his boat.
Mrs. Craton joined a local book club in 1928 and was still a member in 1982.
Most of the home repair and upkeep was done by Mr. Craton, a careful and persistent workman who was proud of his results. He was indefatigable in searching for parts and pleased to avoid what he considered outrageous charges, particularly by plumbers. Mrs. Craton did most of the gardening but he helped with the heavy work.
During periods when Mr. Craton was keeping a diary on a daily or weekly basis much of his spare time was devoted to writing it. He also spent many hours in creative writing in an effort to get published and for a brief period in drawing cartoons for possible publication.
Mr. Craton became an avid photographer and gave it special emphasis after the children were born and during vacations. He also used a movie camera for some occasions.
During his retirement years Mr. Craton was a regular attendant at the YMCA Friday speakers luncheon, lunched with a friend on a weekly basis and he and Willie enjoyed frequent dinners out with the Reeds and the Ogdens, friends of long-standing.
For a period of years immediately following retirement Mr. Craton was actively engaged in fundraising for the United charities campaign, particularly among G.E. retirees and played a major role in a capital fund drive for the Booker T. Washington YMCA.
Religious Life
As a small child Mr. Craton went to Sunday School at the May Memorial Unitarian Church in Syracuse where the minister was the Reverend John H. Applebee. After his father's death when he was twelve years old he went to the church service with his mother. In his teens he also belonged to the Young People's Religious Union. He was one of two delegates from May Memorial selected to attend the Unitarian Laymen's Third Annual Institute at Star Island, Isles of Shoal, off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 28 - August 11, 1923 where he first met and fell in love with Willette, his wife.
In Schenectady as a young man on his first job Mr. Craton attended All Souls Unitarian Church. He liked the people and the minister, the Reverend Ernest Caldecott, very much and depended heavily on the church for his religious and social life during a period of severe loneliness and homesickness. He began however to have some problems with Unitarianism. Although he enjoyed the sermons as lectures he found them lacking in spirituality. During this period Mr. Craton was also unhappy with the factory management course at General Electric. He felt he was not suited to the manufacturing part of the General Electric Co. although he was much impressed by the vast scope of the company. He finally worked out a transfer from factory management to "test" that resulted in a transfer from Schenectady to Erie, PA and the real beginning of a satisfying career in GE.
The Unitarian church in Erie was neither as large nor as socially well-connected as that in Schenectady but the people were hospitable and the Reverend Charles Judson Dutton an interesting minister. Despite his concerns about the lack of spirituality he continued to attend the church until the children were ready for Sunday School. Both Cratons felt that the children needed a different Sunday School for their religious initiation.
The Cratons tried St Paul's Episcopal for a time and then the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in the early 40's. There they remained first they attended without joining the church. His attendance was spotty because he was overwhelmed with work and travel. Later the yacht club activity took up the weekends and attendance dropped to Christmas and Easter. The Cratons finally joined the Presbyterian Church because they wanted Bab and Tom Moore to be married there. His retirement did not get Mr. Craton to resume regular attendance but Mrs. Craton was a faithful volunteer in the church library for many years.
Health
Mr. Craton's health as a child seems to have been unexceptional. There were coughs, colds, upper respiratory complaints and several of the common childhood diseases but nothing out of the ordinary.
As a young man he developed an intermittent bladder problem that medication helped some and that seemed to be more nuisance than serious. This was life-long. There was also a chronic urethritis that he noted with concern. While he recorded a number of minor ailments in his journal he lost little or no time from work. The first hospitalization was for an appendectomy in 1947. Mr. Craton's care and concern about his own health carried over to his wife and children. He seemed excessively upset about the children's routine childhood illnesses.
Once Mr. Craton reached the management level at the Corporation he made annual visits to the Mayo Clinic for physical examinations paid for by the company. These were continued for many years after his retirement when Mrs. Craton became a Mayo patient also. The Clinic findings for both of the Cratons are recorded in some detail.
Having disregarded a doctor's advice about a car trip to Florida in 1969 Mr. Craton spent several weeks hospitalized there and several more recovering enough to return to Erie. A detached retina in the summer of 1970 resulted in hospitalization, surgery and a long period wrestling with double vision. Much dreaded prostate surgery occurred in 1971 successfully.
The annual visit to the Mayo Clinic in 1973 brought a diagnosis of angina pectoris, use of nitroglycerine, orders to cut his drinking to one drink a day, to cut down on sweets and to walk every day.
Chronic emphysema was beginning to interfere with Mr. Craton's physical activity and to diminish his pleasure in those he pursued.
Another detached retina meant another hospitalization and recovery period. This was followed by ambulatory surgery for a fracture of a hand. A severe bronchitis took Mr. Craton back to Hamot Hospital again in the first week of February. By this time Mr. Craton was almost living the life of an invalid whose physical condition dictated his activity or lack of it. In May of 1982 there was another hospitalization for tests all of which negative. Following the second retina surgery Mr. Craton in his words "developed a post-operative nervous condition that lasted for months, that required doctoring, extensive use of Valium...For months I had to fight depression, apprehension and the jitters. I had no appetite and lost perhaps as much as twenty pounds". (Special note at beginning of Diary for the year 1978)
During his working and retirement years there were a number of dental problems that seemed to be exacerbated by his objections to the dentist's charges. He continued with the same dentist year after year and also continued complaining about him.
Mr. Craton's Writing
Mr. Craton had interests from a very young age in writing and in drawing cartoons. The interest in writing was life-long, that in cartoons short-lived. Because of the necessity to be practical about earning a living for himself and his mother, Mr. Craton put aside his interest in writing and cartoons and majored in mechanical engineering. Throughout his life however he continued to try to write for publication and document his life whenever he could find the time to do so. In June 1927 for example, six months after his marriage he wrote his first short story. In 1934 after a vacation trip to Canada he tried another short story. The memoir itself is testament to his writing interest. The diary sometimes abandoned for lack of time was always returned to -- once after a lapse of 27 years. This gap was filled during his retirement years when he also wrote extensively on particular periods of his life or special activities such as boating.
A number of statements scattered throughout the memoirs indicate that regular entries were important to him, helped him cope with problems and enhanced his enjoyment of his good times.
Mr. Craton also tried persistently when he could find the time to write and rewrite for publication. While he had no success with his interest in short-story writing and none with the cartoons he submitted to Collier and the Saturday Evening Post for publication, he did succeed with several articles about trains and railroads. An article about diesel electric locomotives in industry resulted in a check for $35.00 and publication in the magazine Purchasing in 1944. Another milestone was the publication in Steel of an article for which he was paid $55.00.
Yankee, a magazine with a circulation of about 350,000 accepted and paid $250 for an article entitled "Candle Light" that was based on visits to the Isles of Shoals when Mr. Craton was a young man. Trains also accepted a railroading article "Joy and Pain on the Boston and Maine" for which it paid $45.00 and in December 1970 published "Tarzan Jr." and paid $125.00 for it. The published articles were a source of pride and satisfaction.
Travel
Travel was an important part of Mr. Craton's life. His business trips were frequent and often lengthy, taking him away from wife and family. They included time spent in Hawaii, Australia, Mexico and Venezuela on G.E. business.
Family travel included frequent trips of short duration to visit family or friends, annual trips to the Mayo Clinic combined with visits to family or friends, and trips to Buena Vista, Virginia where cousins, the Robeys lived and operated Southern Seminary, a girls preparatory school. The earliest vacation trip of note was in 1931 to Colorado. This was by car, driving an average 300 miles per day for a total mileage of 3,940 miles. Gasoline averaged 15¢ a gallon, oil 25¢ a quart. There was a trip to Canada in 1933, a Great Lakes Cruise in 1936.
During the war Mr. Craton was sales manager for locomotives for industry, the military, the Maritime Commission and underground mining. Because G.E. thought there was a potential post-war market in Hawaii, particularly in the sugar fields Mr. Craton was sent there while wartime travel restrictions were still in effect to determine the design of a standard diesel electric unit for use in Hawaii.
This trip began a life long love affair with the islands that resulted in seven more trips of several months each with Mrs. Craton after he retired.
During those seven years the Cratons spent two or three of the worst months of the Erie winter in Hawaii.
Mr. Craton's retirement at age 60 meant a real emphasis on travel that started with a nine week trip to Europe in 1962 and included Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy and was followed by several months in Florida in early 1963. In 1964 there was a South Sea Island cruise followed by several months in Hawaii, in 1966 a trip of 80 days around the world and in 1967 a return to Europe, with close friends, Barbara and Charles Reed. 1968 saw a trip to the North Cape, the Scandinavian countries, Russia and Ireland.
A trip to Florida in 1969 was an unfortunate one. Mr. Craton spent much of it in hospital and recovering from a back problem. There was a return to Hawaii in 1971 but a planned return in 1972 had to be cancelled because a bleeding intestinal tract sent Mr. Craton into the hospital again. Several months were required for recuperation.
In June 1972 the Cratons returned to Canada, this time to Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper and Vancouver, and again in January 1973 returned to Kappa Sands, Kauai, Hawaii where they spent Erie's worst winter months each year from 1973 through 1977.
A second detached retina for Mr. Craton prevented any winter travel in 1978 but by June of 1978 the Cratons were able to visit Joan and Roger Craton who by then were living outside London. It was a memorable trip with a number of short trips beyond the London area.
Mid March of 1979 took the Cratons on a trip to the American south. Their first stop was to see their great-grandchild Carrie, and then on to Charleston, Savannah, Hilton Head and Jekyll Island, where they visited their friends the Bauschards. Mr. Craton did not enjoy much of this trip, would have preferred being home but realized that his wife needed both a change and less work and more rest than she got at home. They cut the trip short by a week and returned home.
The last recorded trips were to see Joan and Roger and their new home in Connecticut in late March and Roger's summer place in Good Hart in July 1982.
Provenance:
Gift to Smithsonian from Mrs. Willette Craton, October 9, 1992
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.
