The Hagley Vault

Selections from Hagley Museum and Library's archives and published collections on the history of American business, technology, and innovation.

Archive

For posts prior to October 2020, visit the Hagley Vault on Tumblr.

Black and white photograph of a group of workers posed inside a large dredge dipper.
There's always room for one more at the Hagley Vault ....
There's always room for one more at the Hagley Vault! This week, we're cozying up with workers inside a 5 cu. yard dipper being used on one of the big dipper dredges during the construction of the Panama Canal. This photograph, taken between 1904 and 1914, is part of Hagley Library's collection of Chamber of Commerce of the United States…
A black and white photograph depicts a group of men and women on the beach in 1920s swimwear
Hagley's staff may be at work today, but the Hagley Vault can go to the beach whenever it wants ...
Hagley's staff may be at work today, but the Hagley Vault can go to the beach whenever it wants. This week, it's traveling to 1930 to join the employees of Joseph Bancroft & Sons' Eddystone Print Works Division in Wildwood, New Jersey. The Eddystone Manufacturing Company began its corporate life in 1877, when William Simpson and John Halliday…
Sticker with black and red text reading "Come on / Let's go / Chicago / Roller Skate / Just for Fun / Skate your date at the Crescent Roller Rink / Cedar Lake, Indiana"
This week's Hagley Vault post is just for fun ....
Here's a Hagley Vault post that's just for fun. This ca. 1940s sticker for the Crescent Roller Rink in Cedar Lake, Indiana was collected by Genevieve Pittner of Monroe, Michigan. This is one of over 500 roller rink stickers collected by Pittner through exchanging stickers by mail with other collectors in groups like the Universal Roller Skating…
All aboard for summer fashion!
When does ANY party start? When you get there! This week's party comes to you via the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, whose 1969 short industrial film "Dresswear Potpourri", filmed on luxury liner the 'Hamburg', featured resort wear fashions made of the company's Orlon and Dacron fibers. The full 9-minute film is now part of Hagley Library'…
Cover of a pamphlet titled "Manufactured Weather". Abstract design.
Oops! This Hagley Vault post is a bit belated ....
Oops! This Hagley Vault post is a bit belated. In our defense, time moves differently when you're living on the surface of the sun. This week's heatwave has inspired this post; a love letter to air conditioning.'Manufactured Weather: Nothing More Modern' is a ca. 1932 pamphlet that promotes the modern heating and cooling systems of the…
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Here's to making falling asleep on the bus look classy.
Here's to making falling asleep on the bus look classy. This ca. 1930s photograph of the inaugural run of the New York City to Chicago sleeping coach operated by the Great Lakes Stages company is from Hagley Library's collection of Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 1993.230).…
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Spring weather means wonderful things for the Hagley Museum and Library grounds ...
Spring weather means wonderful things for the Hagley Museum and Library grounds, so this week's post is for all the gardeners, grounds crew, and green thumbs here at Hagley. This ca. 1880s glass negative shows a woman, likely to be Elise Wigfall du Pont  (1849-1919), the wife of Francis Gurney du Pont (1850-1904) wielding a shovel in a…
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Some famous architecture is celebrating an anniversary this week ...
Some famous architecture is celebrating an anniversary this week. The lights went on for the first time at the Empire State Building on May 1, 1931 when President Hoover pressed a button to electrify the building as part of its dedication ceremony. The 102-story building, which had begun construction on January 1930, was the first skyscraper…
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This week's visitor to the Hagley Vault is the E.S. Wells Medical Company ...
This week's visitor to the Hagley Vault is the E.S. Wells Medical Company, which produced this ca. 1890 advertising card for it's "Rough on Rats" pesticide. The New Jersey firm manufactured a strange combination of products: medicines for the general public, as well as rat poison. The company's founder, Ephraim S. Wells (1841-1913) began…
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Still dawdling over those W-2s? 
Still dawdling over those W-2s? Need a reminder to dig up those 1099s? Tuesday's tax deadline is the inspiration for this week's Hagley Vault post.  Published by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in 1957, The Story of Taxes provided a brief, business-friendly overview of the history of taxation worldwide, along with the current…
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Marital ... well, something short of bliss, at just 0.25 cents a bottle.
Marital ... well, something short of bliss, at just 0.25 cents a bottle. This trade card was produced by the Tenexine Company, a Boston company that was founded in 1880 by Charles H. Brown. The company promised on the back of the card that its Egyptian Te-Nex-Ine glue was "the most powerful adhesive known", but it was not quite strong enough to…
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This week's Hagley Vault post documents a train wreck that occurred in February 1917 ...
This week's Hagley Vault post documents a train wreck that occurred in February 1917 in Mount Union, Pennsylvania. The accident occurred when the locomotive shown in this photograph, engine No. 614 carrying a freight train of coal cars, collided with the sleeper car of the Mercantile Express No. 6 passenger train. The impact killed all …
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This week will mark the March 22, 1895 anniversary of the Lumière brothers' Paris premiere of Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory ...
This week will mark the March 22, 1895 anniversary of the Lumière brothers' Paris premiere of Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, a short film screened for a ten members of the Society for the Development of the National Industry. What the film may have lacked in plot development was made up for by being one of the…
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Happy Saint Patrick's Day from your friends at Philco Corporation ...
Happy Saint Patrick's Day from your friends at Philco Corporation's Department 43-506 (and Hagley too, of course)! This image of employee Danny Dugan and his coworkers celebrating the holiday was published in an April 1952 issue of Philco News, the monthly employee newsletter of the Philco Corporation, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania firm that…
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​Signs of Spring abound on the grounds of Hagley Museum & Library today ...
Signs of Spring abound on the grounds of Hagley Museum & Library today. So this week, we're bringing them online as well with this 1926 advertisement for Graybar Electric Company vacuum cleaners. The Graybar Electric Company, a merchandiser of electrical equipment and household appliances, was founded in 1926 out of a supply division…
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This image of a worker at the Pennsylvania Railroad's car shops ...
This image of a worker at the Pennsylvania Railroad's car shops at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania was taken 106 years ago this week, on March 3, 1919. The woman in this image is using a lathe to machine a railroad car wheel and axle. The Pennsylvania Railroad was chartered in 1846 to complete an all-railroad network across the state. In 1857, the…