William Henry Radebaugh (1909-1996), was a public relations executive at the DuPont Company for over twenty years. He wrote, produced and directed many films about the company during his tenure there and for several years after his retirement.He began his career in public relations and in 1942, founded and was executive director of, the South Jersey Manufacturer's Association in Camden, New Jersey. Radebaugh then took a position at the DuPont Company as a public relations consultant in 1952. He later became the Director of Public Relations for the Textile Fibers Department.

This #WorkerWednesday, we're making a visit to the Camphor Plantof E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Chambers Worksfacility.

The site, located on the Delaware River in Deepwater Point, New Jersey, was established by the DuPont Company in 1892 for the purpose of manufacturing gunpowder. Between then and when it closed in 2018, the site was used to develop, manufacture, and store a wide variety of chemical products, including Kevlar, nylon, Freon, leaded gasoline, and uranium processing for the Manhattan Project.

Camphor, an aromatic compound produced from the wood of camphor producing plants, or synthetically derived from turpentine, is a versatile product used in mothballs, embalming fluids, perfumes, medicinal products and, in the early years of the plastics industry, as a plasticizer used in the manufacturing of celluloid and plastic lacquers.

March 23rd is National Agriculture Day, and has been since 1973, when the date was established alongside its sponsor, the Agriculture Council of America. But prior to National Ag Day, we had u2018Tommy Looks at Farming', a ca. 1962 comic produced by the B.F. Goodrich Companyto inform young people about "the vital role of agriculture in our health, economy, and security" and, of course, the importance of B.F. Goodrich Company products to that system.

This comic is Pam 2017.0810 in Hagley Library's Published Collections, and is included in a collection of other promotional comic books in our Digital Archive. The items in this digital collection offer a selection of the promotional comic books held in our collection.

This #MotorMonday finds a new kind of car at the end of the rainbow; the Nash 600. This model was the first mass-produced American car featuring unibody construction. Pioneered by European manufacturers like Lambda in the early 1920s, unibody construction consisted of a manufacturing design in which the body of the vehicle, its floor plan, and its chassis all form a single structure. This allowed for a lighter vehicle with better fuel economy, as well as a vehicle that was able to absorb crash impacts more safely for passengers.

This approach to automobile construction would later become common among American automobile manufacturers, as would seat-belts, which Nash begin including in 1949, making them an early adopter of this technology as well. Nash's innovative 1936 u2018Bed-in-Car' system, however, yet remains to achieve the widespread acclaim of its other achievements.

This #WorkerWednesday, we're paying a visit to the staff of the furnace and cupola in the Westinghouse Machine Company's Melting Department foundry at the South Philadelphia Works in Essington and Lester, Pennsylvania.

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. These foundry workers were photographed by company photographer Charles Yessel on May 12, 1920, for the company's newsletter, Machine News.

In 1924, Colonel J. (John) Victor Dallin (1897-1991)founded the Dallin Aerial Surveys Company. Dallin was a Royal Flying Corps-trained pilot who served in World War One; in the latter stages of the war, he was sent on aerial photography service forreconnaissance missions.

After the war, in 1919, he put that experience to use when joined Bishop and Barker, a firm which did some aerial survey work. In the 1920s, he worked at the Philadelphia Aero Service Corporation, which operated a flying school in South Philadelphia. In 1924, he left to establish his own company and started Dallin Aerial Surveys as a single proprietorship.

Dallin Aerial Surveys produced photographs like this image of Center City Philadelphia, featuring City Hall, which was taken at 5:40 A.M. on June 24, 1934. Its clients included newspapers, businesses, municipalities, and private individuals, who contracted with the company for aerial images of factories, private estates, schools, country clubs, towns, airports, rivers, and newsworthy sites and events.

International Women's Day is being observed around the world today. The tradition dates back to February 28, 1909, when the Socialist Party of America, acting on the suggestion of party member Theresa Malkiel, held a "National Woman's Day" in New York City.

The following year, the observance was adopted by the International Socialist Women's Conference. In the ensuing years, activists for women's suffrage and other equal rights adopted the date in nations such as Australia, Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany, though the date varied from nation to nation and was sometimes celebrated as the Women's International Day of Struggle or by other names. However, the observance became most strongly associated with communist nations and the international communist movement; it was officially adopted by the Soviet Union in 1917 and the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Happy Industrial Design Day! Industrial design, the practice of optimizing the function, value, and appearance of products, is a central component in America's culture of consumerism as well as the source of many beautiful objects now in the collections of leading art and history museums.

Industrial Design Day first entered into the U.S. Congressional Record in 2015, marks the anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the result of a merger of several industrial design societies on March 5, 1965. As the home to a number of significant twentieth-century collections that chronicle the evolution of the concepts, products, and processes specific to industrial design, this is one of our favorite not-a-holiday holidays, so we're preparing a little festive toast.

When Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr. started at DuPont in 1964, he was only the fourth African American with a doctorate in chemistry to join the company.

Over the course of a thirty-two-year career, Memeger amassed fourteen patents and left his mark on some of DuPont's most famous products, like Kevlar, the synthetic fiber found in bulletproof vests. His passion for chemistry has also influenced his career as an artist; Memeger's pieces often explore geometrical themes reminiscent of molecular models. On February 24, Hagley Library, in partnership with Clark Atlanta University andBloomfield College, premiered Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., Science Into Art, a special documentary chronicling the lifeof Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr. Now, we're please to announce the debut of a digital exhibit to accompany that work.