To help celebrate 250 years of American history, Hagley invites you to come to the library and preserve your own history! Bring photos, documents, letters, and other memories. Our staff will use our professional digitization equipment to create digital copies for your personal safekeeping. 

We’d love to preserve additional copies in a special community collection in the Hagley Digital Archives, if you wish to do so. Forms will be provided during the event to help us gather information about your items for the collection.

Step into the heart of history! Experience 25 rare and extraordinary artifacts—from personal journals and pamphlets to tintypes and telegrams—that bring to life 250 years of courage, struggle, and triumph in the pursuit of justice and equality. Join us on a guided journey to uncover the untold stories of local and national figures whose determination shaped our country’s destiny. Reserve your seat for an inspiring trip through America’s remarkable legacy!

$10 for Hagley Members and $20 for Non-Members.

Hand-made computer game planning on graph paper featuring the Starship Enterprise

It's all fun and (video) games at the Hagley Vault today thanks to the contributions of RCA engineer Joe Weisbecker (1932-1990). Weisbecker invented an 8-bit microcomputer architecture that would serve as the foundation of RCA’s future microprocessor business. 

During the 1970s, he contributed to the development of RCA’s programmable video game and educational systems: FRED, STUDIO II, STUDIO III, and STUDIO IV, and Microtutor. This ca. 1972 image shows a page from his computer game planning papers for a Star Trek themed game for the FRED system.

Dr. Wallace H. Carothers with neoprene

April 27th marks the birthdate of the chemist Wallace Hume Carothers, credited with leading the invention of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. Carothers worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937.

Carothers' work at the DuPont Experimental Station focused on polymerization and the ways in which polymers structurally analogous to cellulose and silk could be prepared. In early 1930 the chemists in Carothers' laboratory produced neoprene, the first laboratory-synthesized fiber and first commercially successful synthetic rubber. This ca. 1932 photograph from Hagley Library's DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341) shows Carothers demonstrating the properties of neoprene. Nylon, the first synthetic polymer fibre to be spun from a melt, was developed in 1934.  

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