View of Solon Plant with employees and executives on the site of Harris Farm

This week's Hagley Vault is visiting Ohio to take a look at the Austin Powder Company's mills under construction in Glenwillow, Cuyahoga County, on the southern end of Solon, Ohio.

The company, now the oldest manufacturing enterprise in the Cleveland area, produces industrial explosives and detonators, as well as blasting services. But back when it was founded in 1833 by brothers Daniel Hudson Austin (1804-1878), Alvin Austin (1806-1872), Cyrus Austin (1809-1842), Lorenzo Buchard Austin (1812-1886), and Linus Austin (1817-1887), it produced black powder explosives.

A man in an apron stands by a horse-drawn delivery wagon labeled "RAYNOR & BRO."

This week's Hagley Vault delivery comes with a side of old beef; the reverse side of this photograph, taken on February 23, 1897, notes that Raynor had "reputation of being a fast talker and a short weigher".

Raynor & Bro. was a butcher shop that operated out of a storefront at 4465 Frankford Ave. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the city's Frankford neighborhood. Raynor & Bro. was founded and operated by Orlando Raynor (1851-1908) and Samuel Webster C. Raynor (1853-1910). On February 10, 1853, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported brothers were charged with peddling "bogus butter" for having been busted by detectives from the National Dairymen's Association for selling oleomargarine without paying appropriate taxes and licenses to do so.

This photograph was taken in the mill village of Cedar Grove, around two miles away from the Raynor & Bro. business, which delivered to the village on a weekly basis. The mill village was located in what is now the Olney neighborhood of the city. 

This conference will explore the networks of creative and intellectual labor in American advertising and marketing, broadly defined, from the colonial period through the twentieth century.

Arch Oboloer (center), NBC author, producer, and director, oversees falling tree sound effects using a real tree and real undergrowth for episode No. 262, 'An American is Born'.

The broadcasting industry has a major milestone to celebrate this week - September 9th marks the 100th anniversary of the formation of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as a radio network.

The broadcasting company was formed when the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), which had been operating a collection or radio stations in major cities of several states decided to withdraw from the business, and so sold it's radio broadcasting division to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for approximately $1 million. 

The new network began broadcasting out of New York City on November 15, 1926, with a four-hour program featuring Will Rogers and the Metropolitan Opera. The program was transmitted through twenty-two stations across the nation to homes as far west as Kansas City, Missouri.

Hagley is pleased to release a newly restored copy of Invitation to Ohio. The film is a promotional piece sponsored by Ohio Bell Telephone and the Ohio Department of Development, created to attract businesses to the state by highlighting Ohio's advantages across a range of industries. Hollywood actors Wally Cox and John Dehner star in the film. The restoration was made possible by a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, which funded a new 16mm preservation print and a digital version.

Cover of a 1954 issue of Lukens Life featuring majorettes and drum major of the Scott High School band

Summer vacation time is wrapping up for the year, and we're getting into the school spirit with a back to school season issue of Lukens Life from September 1954.

This issue's cover celebrated the "crowded football stadiums and snappy bands" of Scott High School with the school band's majorettes and drum major (also drum major of the Lukens band). 

Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized producer of specialty steel products and one of the top three producers of steel plate in the United States. The company operated continuously out of its Coatesville, Pennsylvania site since 1810 and was one of the few successful survivors of the many nineteenth-​​century iron works that once dotted Southeastern Pennsylvania.

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