Photograph of Westinghouse employees receiving influenza A (H2N2) shots at the dispensary

This week's Hagley Vault post is a little poke in the arm for all you procrastinators out there. This photograph, taken on November 7, 1957 shows employees of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's South Philadelphia Works lining up for flu shots at the company's dispensary. This photograph was taken by staff photographer Charles Yessel (1877-1953) for publication in the company’s newsletter, Machine News.

The Westinghouse Machine Company, which became the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945, manufactured gas and steam engines, turbines and mechanical stokers for use in railway systems, fire service pumping stations, the shipping industry, and other large scale industrial purposes. The South Philadelphia Works was constructed from 1917 to 1919 as a steam turbine manufacturing plant.

Close up view of a Campbell's Tomato Soup vending machine

Soup season has arrived, so this week in the Hagley Vault, we're grilling a cheese and hitting up our local Auto-Snak. 

This ca. 1955 photograph of a soup vending machine is from Hagley Library's Automatic Merchandising Company album (Accession 2017.202). The Automatic Merchandising Company operated and installed vending machines, and was best known for the Auto-Snak, a combined set of food vending machines which dispensed soda, coffee, milk, sandwiches, soup, salads, pastries and ice cream. These automat style vending machines emerged in America after the invention of the first coffee vendors in 1946 that allowed for the use of vending machines for coffee breaks, cutting needed catering staffs in large factories. 

Pay: $16.00 per hour

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Hagley Museum and Library is a unique place to work, where history, education, and community come together on a beautiful 235-acre campus along the Brandywine River. We are seeking a dependable and energetic Part-Time Custodian to help maintain our facilities and support the many visitors, staff, and events that make Hagley a special destination.

Photograph of a large group of men in hats waiting at a train station in East Pittsburg

This 1908 photograph shows employees of the Westinghouse Machine Company at East Pittsburg station, waiting for their evening train. The photograph is part of Hagley Library's Westinghouse Machine Company album (Accession 1983.247), which reported that it required six trains to accommodate their traffic.

The Westinghouse Machine Company was formally organized in 1881 by George Westinghouse, who was also the founder of a host of "Westinghouse Companies" bearing his name (including the Westinghouse Air Brake Co., Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, and Westinghouse Church Kerr & Co.) as well as other enterprises. 

The Westinghouse Machine Company's role in George Westinghouse's portfolio was to manufacture of gas and steam engines, turbines and mechanical stokers out of a 50-acre factory complex in East Pittsburgh (the 'h' in Pittsburgh was apparently largely optional until the early 1920s). Around the time this photograph was taken, the company employed approximately 3,500 workers at this location.

Man operating a mine haulage train

In 1854, the Westmoreland Coal Company began mining coal in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, primarily for sale to steelmakers, railroads, and coal gasification plants. Within a few decades, the company was providing coal to fifty-eight gasworks along the east coast. Today, the company is one of the coal industry’s oldest independent companies.

The company's biggest growth period occurred after World War I, when it began a period of acquisition and expansion well beyond its original Westmoreland County fields, beginning with a 1917 merger with the Penn Gas Coal Company and the Manor Gas Coal Company. 

This ca. 1935 photograph is from the company's colliery in Stonega, Virginia. The colliery was originally part of the Stonega Coke & Coal Company, a company on founded in 1902, for the purpose of acquiring an operating a colliery plant leased the Virginia Coal & Iron Co., a land company partly owned and managed by John S. Wentz, a coal magnate who was also a major shareholder in the the Westmoreland Coal Company.

Patents and patent models represent one person's unique solution to an everyday problem. When we think of nineteenth-century inventions, we tend to picture things like the locomotive, the steam engine, or the telephone. But these represent only a tiny fraction of the innovations that emerged during the Golden Age of Inventing. Nineteenth-century Americans used inventing to improve every aspect of their lives, turning to machines and industrial processes the way modern Americans turn to the internet, apps, or AI to make life easier, cheaper, or safer.

As we head into October and the year's "spooky season," many of us will begin to contemplate our Halloween costumes. No doubt a popular choice will be the timeless classic: witch. Unfortunately, witches, and the women who have been accused of being them, have a fraught history in the United States, as well as around the globe. Let's take a look at one such case highlighted by a film in Hagley's Cinecraft collection:

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