Featured Events

Enjoy a family-style farm-to-table dinner at Hagley!

Cannon firings in the powder yards demonstrate how black powder was made and used.

Did you know that RCA was hard at work on a flat panel television in the 1950s? Ben Gross will explain how RCA’s imaginative leader David Sarnoff set his talented scientists and engineers to work on developing a television that could hang on a wall.

Celebrate the fall season and meet other Hagley Members! 

Join one of our Hagley guides for an introductory tour of Hagley’s patent model collection.

Take a hayride along the Brandywine to experience the beautiful fall foliage in the Powder Yard. 

Learn about pigments and diffusion. Experiment with different tree leaves to discover their hidden colors using chromatography.

Hagley's Craft Fair features works in wood, pottery, jewelry, fibers, metal, and other media, and includes a specialty outdoor food market with more than 15 vendors.

Attendees are encouraged to read Lunine's paper, “Groundbreaking Technology: California Dynamite and the Eastern Frontier, 1866-1886” which may be obtained by contacting Carol Lockman at clockman@hagley.org. 

Stop in anytime during one of our wedding open houses to visit the Soda House, Hagley's primary wedding venue.

GPS Address: 298 Buck Rd, Wilmington DE 19807

Learn about momentum and energy transfer before taking on the challenge of building a catapult to launch a "pumpkin pom pom."

Privacy – and the threats to it – are everyday items in our news, and a worry to many in our digital age. Sarah Igo, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, will explain how our concerns about privacy have a history stretching back to the late nineteenth century.

The 2018 fall conference of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society will explore the history of commercial surveillance in the United States.

Get a sneak peek at activities for Invention Convention 2018. 

Free admission for military veterans.

Experience the du Pont ancestral home decorated for the holidays and the “Magic of Miniatures” exhibition, featuring a whimsically detailed dollhouse inhabited by miniature teddy bears! 

Bring your family and friends to enjoy the holidays at Hagley.

Attendees are encouraged to read Murphy's paper, “Business Management Expertise in the Cold War U.S. Military” which may be obtained by contacting Carol Lockman at clockman@hagley.org.

Bring the kids to take photos with Santa! Santa will make appearances from 10 to 11 a.m., 1 to 2 p.m., and 3 to 4 p.m.

Sound is produced by vibrations.

Enjoy a rare opportunity to see Eleutherian Mills, the first du Pont family home built in America, dressed for the holidays and illuminated with softly glowing lights.

DOMESTICATING DISABILITY: THE CREATION OF ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR DISABLED HOMEMAKERS IN THE POST-WWII U.S.

This analysis of gender, technology, and disability will explore the creation and implementation of assistive devices for disabled homemakers in the post-World War II United States. In the two decades following the war’s end, new government funding and institutional support facilitated the development of new technologies, such as wheeled tables, lightweight pots, adjustable shelves, and accessible aprons that aimed to assist disabled women carry out work inside of the home and to fulfill their socially-prescribed family roles as mothers and wives. Many of these devices were created as part of larger vocational rehabilitation efforts that enjoyed increasing support in this era. Although vocational rehabilitation had historically focused on male veterans and wage earners, it was gradually expanded to include homemakers amidst the postwar marriage boom and baby boom.

A NEW DEAL FOR DIRECT SALES: HOW DIRECT SALES FIRMS HELPED CREATE MODERN NON-EMPLOYMENT, 1910–1935

Direct sales firms utilize a model of independent labor that can be traced back to the peddlers of the colonial period. With the creation of the New Deal, however, direct sales executives began to realize the value of independent contractors as a source of labor potentially free from the new financial and regulatory obligations that would be imposed on employers.

Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) rose from modest means as the son of a peddler to meteoric wealth at the helm of Sears, Roebuck. Yet his most important legacy stands not upon his business acumen but on the pioneering changes he introduced to the practice of philanthropy.

POLICING FAKES: EARLY TRADEMARK REGULATION IN THE U.S. 

This paper examines the problem of counterfeit goods in the antebellum years, contextualizing the rise of these products and their prosecution by the state within the "freewheeling marketplace" described by Stephen Mihm, Ed Balleisen, and others. Through several case studies, the chapter enumerates the issues at stake in the first trademark infringement lawsuits in the US, including the economic anxieties prompted by the Panic of 1837, the tenuous social position of the middle class, competition between domestic and foreign manufacturers, and the unregulated commercial marketplace. The judges in these lawsuits moralized economic behavior in ways that mirrored then-emergent credit reporting structures, infusing middle-class standards of behavior into commerce.  As the state struggled to keep pace, early regulatory measures adopted similar moral standards to separate legitimate from illegitimate competition.

THE SYNTHETICS REVOLUTION AND THE SENSES

This paper examines the synthetics revolution in fashion and fibers within the context of the new field of the history of the senses.  The story of the synthetics revolution—the introduction of man-made and test-tube fibers into the textile-fashion supply chain—has most often been told as the story of heroic inventors or the story of the judicious management investment in R&D.  In reality, DuPont and other fiber makers of the mid to late twentieth century were also innovative marketers who invested heavily in product development, advertising, motivational research, and promotion.  Those efforts, in turn, attempted to tap into and capitalize on the hopes, desires, and concerns of consumers on matters of comfort and convenience.