Finding Aids

Jill Jonnes (1952-) is a freelance writer who has published a number of books on technology and society, including Conquering Gotham in 2007, which is an account of the design and construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad's New York improvements. The collection is comprised of Jonnes' research notes for writing the book, almost entirely of photocopies of letters, reports, newspaper articles, and extracts from books.

James "Jim" Joseph Dallas, Sr. (1932-2019) was a photographer employed by the DuPont Company, a chemical company. He worked at DuPont for ten years before opening his own industrial and commercial photography business, Dallas Studios based in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1968, Dallas also worked as a freelance commercial and industrial photographer. Companies such as the Speakman Company, Strescon Industries, Cytometrics Incorporated, and ICI America Incorporated are just a few of the industries he worked for. This collection consists of images from Jim Dallas’ assignments primarily for the DuPont Company. The collection of negatives and photographic prints are arranged into five different sereis: I. Sites, II. Products, III. Advertisements and publications, IV. Events and meetings, and V. People.

Job T. Pugh, Inc. was a small specialty tool manufacturer of augers and bits located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The firm was incorporated under the laws of Delaware on August 30, 1917, succeeding a partnership of the same name. It was dissolved in 1954. The records of Job T. Pugh, Inc., and its unincorporated predecessors are a series of fragments. The collection documents the financial and legal matters associated with operating a tool manufacturing business in the early twentieth century.

John A. Bader II (1895-1961) was a Wilmington, Delaware, building contractor active during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The records are primarily Bader's business papers. The collection includes engineer's field books, diaries of trips, and job notes. Eight volumes contain profit and loss statements, cost accounting for jobs, records of checks paid, and files on individual construction jobs.

John B. Lovis (1935-2015) was a longtime employee of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where he assisted in the design and engineering of the Burns Harbor Plant and held various positions in the company's Corporate Engineering and Planning Department before his retirement as Director, Strategic Planning, in 1995. The collection consists of an unpublished paper prepared in 2007 on the closure of the steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a revision of that paper delivered at Lehigh University in 2014.

The records consist of materials collected by John B. Lovis (1935-2015) for the writing of his book on the history of the Sparrows Point Plant, plus original Bethlehem Steel documents from his tenure in the Corporate Planning Department.

The John B. Stetson Company was a manufacturer of hats. The company was founded in 1865 by John B. Stetson (1830-1906) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company's Kensington plant consisted of twenty-five buildings covering nine acres at Germantown and Montgomery Avenues. During its heyday in the 1920s it employed over 5,000 people to make its hats. This is a small collection of photographs and other material relating to the company. The photographs focus on the workers in and around the factory and its amenities.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802. The du Pont family purchased a mill site on the banks of the Brandywine River just North of Wilmington, Delaware for the production of black powder. In 1902 the DuPont Company acquired the Smith Electric Fuze Company and some other properties in the Pompton Lakes, New Jersey area. The DuPont Company also operated a dynamite plant near Hancock, Michigan. This collection consists of snapshot photographs from the works at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and others from a plant in Michigan, most likely the Senter dynamite works near Hancock, Michigan.

John Elgar was a Quaker master mechanic employed in the York, Pa., foundry of Phineas Davis, Israel Gartner and James Webb. The letter is an order for sheet iron used to build the hull of the steamboat Codorus.

John Foster Tucker III (1950-2008) was a Philadelphia-born rail transit operating official and rail history enthusiast. This collection consists of photographs of trolleys, trains, rails lines, and rail stations in Philadelphia and the city's Pennsylvania suburbs, as well as offices, maintenance shops, and garages used by transit authorities. Most of the collection is devoted to SEPTA, but predecessor companies PTC (Philadelphia Transportation Company) and PSTC (Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company) are also represented.

The John F. Tucker Transit History Collection consists of official documents produced or used by Mr. Tucker during his career as a public transit official, records of the pre-SEPTA Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (1907-1939) and the Philadelphia Transportation Company (1940-1968) that he preserved from loss or destruction, and materials collected out of his interest in the history of transit systems, particularly electric traction lines. The collection traces the evolution of the Philadelphia transit system, its extent, routes and services, and of North American rail rapid transit generally.

John Farrell Metten (1873-1968) was a marine engineer and shipbuilding industry executive. This collection contains photographic prints, postcards, documents, drawings, and an identification card pertaining to the career of John Farrell Metten and views of Naval ships built at the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey.

John G. Townsend Jr. (1871-1964) was a politician, a businessman, and a banker. He served as Governor of Delaware from 1917 to 1921 and as Delaware’s U.S. Senator from 1929 to 1941. He operated a lumber business, cannery, orchard, and then a large poultry farm called Townsend Inc. Farms. This small collection documents Townsend’s work in politics and in the poultry industry. There is a fair amount of biographical information authored by Louise Stanton Johnson, who worked as Townsend’s secretary during his time as Senator. The collection has been arranged into four series: Governor and Senatorial papers; Townsend Inc. Farms records; Louise Stanton Johnson papers and Printing plates and seals. The materials in the collection date from 1908 to 1977, with a bulk of the materials from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The John Gordon Rideout papers illustrate the career of John Gordon "Jack" Rideout (1898-1951), a noted industrial designer. Rideout began his career in sales, moved into advertising, and eventually opened industrial design firms in Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. Highlights of the collection are images of Skippy Racer, perfume atomizers designed for DeVilbiss, the Shell-Back metal chair designed for Calumet Chair Company, and his classic re-design of Magnalite Cookware for the Wagner Manufacturing Company.

The John Horn Printing Company was a printing firm that specialized in printing labels and ribbons. This sample album contains 131 embossed die-cut labels pasted on thirty-two pages for a variety of products.

John Joseph Beer (1927-) was a professor of the history of science and chemistry at the University of Delaware until his retirement in 1992. Beer played a major role in developing the university’s program in the history of technology and the Hagley Fellowship Program. The bulk of the papers consists of correspondence, notes, research materials, and drafts for a projected book or article on "Russia iron," a highly finished, wear-resistant iron produced in Russia during the nineteenth century.

John J. Raskob (1879-1950) was a prominent business and political figure in the early twentieth century. A top financial executive for both E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the General Motors Corporation, Raskob was heavily involved in politics, serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1928 to 1932. Meyer Blumenthal (1888-1951) founded Blumenthal Brothers, a Philadelphia chocolate company. In this letter, Raskob urges Blumenthal to join the American Liberty League.

The collection documents Raskob's business and political careers as well as his personal life. The papers document significant aspects of the histories of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the General Motors Corporation during the first half of the twentieth century.

John Raskob (1879-1950) was a financial executive for the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and General Motors, and builder of the Empire State Building. The collection primarily consists of construction progress photographs of the Durant Building in Detroit, Michighan in 1919 and 1920. There is a small set of images of a renovation at Raskob's Archmere estate in 1916, and a few portraits and snapshots of Raskob.

John K. Jenney (1904-2005) was the director of the Foreign Relations Department at DuPont Company. In the oral history, Jenney reminiscences on his early life in Syracuse, New York; his time at Princeton University; and his career with the DuPont Company, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This collection consists of two bank books and a ledger.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. L. C. Siner & Co. was the successor company that continued Krider's business into the 1930s. This small collection of business papers documents Krider's and L. C. Siner & Co.'s gunsmith and sporting goods shop. It includes bills and receipts for guns, fishing equipment, ammunition, lumber, and other items sold in the store.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This collection consists of fifty-nine account books (1840-1939), including wage accounts (1853-1857), accounts for the repairs of guns (1904-1909), records of daily powder sales (1891-1893), and the treasurer's record for an unidentified gun club.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This item is a receipt book containing the signatures of numerous Philadelphia merchants.

John M. Barineau (1950-) worked at the DuPont Company for more than forty-five years, serving in a variety of capacities, including operations, product and process development, quality management, product management, capital project management, process safety management, Six Sigma improvements of supply chains, and purchasing, as well as with customers and suppliers working at or visiting approximately seventy DuPont Company sites and contract operations in sixteen countries. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. This small collection of Barineau's papers provides insight into product development. The materials are public information associated with operations that have been sold or terminated or are outdated. These documents show a "behind-the-scenes" view of what was happening within DuPont. The collection has been arranged into five series: Engineering Polymers/Nylon Resins files, Engineering Polymers/Hytrel Polyester Elastomer files, Engineering Polymers improvement initiatives files, DuPont corporate improvement initiatives files, and General files.

John M. Tinker (1897-1974) was the director of Jackson Laboratory, the main research unit of the Organic Chemicals Department of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, from 1943 to 1962. After his retirement, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service and worked for three years as the science attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. This small collection of Tinker's papers is related to both his time at Jackson Laboratory and his work for the U.S. government.

John Margolies (1940-2016) was an American photographer and architecture critic with a fondness for novelty architecture. This is his personal collection of travel ephemera that he collected from across North America. These materials primarily cover the United States’ most popular tourist spots with an emphasis on the Northeast region of the United States.

John Margolies (1940-2016) was an American photographer and architecture critic with a fondness for novelty architecture. This is his personal collection of postcards and photographs from across North America. These materials primarily cover the United States’ most popular tourist spots along with various businesses. There is heavy coverage of the Northeast region of the United States, where Margolies lived most of his life. Postcards are primarily from the first half of the twentieth century, and photographs primarily span circa 1890-1920s. Postcards cover a wide range of subjects from famous attractions to local businesses, and photographs are almost entirely local businesses, many being interior views of family owned businesses with their owners. Few objects are contained within the collection, including signs from local businesses and a scrapbook from the honeymoon of an unidentified couple. A small amount of transparencies and negatives conclude the collection, which were used for the planning of some of Margolies books. It is important to note that this collection does not contain John Margolies original photography, except for the few postcards that advertise his exhibits.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.,-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fiftieth largest construction firm in the United States, with contracts in excess of $100,000,000. John McShain's personal and business papers document his business career, the construction industry, and his investments in hotels, car dealerships, parking garages, transit lines, and racehorses.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fifth largest construction firm in the United States. The collection contains graphic materials documenting John McShain's family life and personal interests, his career as a building contractor, and his involvement in horse racing.

Advertising, both print and radio, developed as a prominent industry in the early decades of the twentieth century as popular magazine circulation exploded and the radio became ubiquitous in American households. This collection consists of digital access copies of publications, including employee magazines, and magazine advertisements for radios and other related household electronics dating from 1912 to 1980.

John Oscar Skiles (1895-1960) was a longtime employee of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where he worked as an analyst in the Metallurgical Department of the company's Sparrows Point, Maryland, plant, beginning in the 1920s until his retirement in 1960. This small collection consists of one folder of materials related to Skiles' employment at Bethlehem Steel.

His business records consist of four time and board books and one day book from the Greenwood Iron Works and a single day book from the District Forge.

John Potts (1760-1809) was a Pennsylvania businessman and member of the Potts family of ironmasters. This collection documents copper and iron ore mining and land speculation in Pennsylvania and Virginia by John Potts Jr. between 1767 and 1830. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence between Potts and his brother-in-law, Robert E. Hobart (1768-1826). It describes the initial operation of the Keeptryst Furnace and the operations of the Copper Mine Company of Pennsylvania.

John Raven Johnson (1900-1988) was a professor of chemistry at Cornell University from 1930 until his retirement in 1965. He also served as a consultant to E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company from 1937 until 1951, where he worked for the Organic Chemicals Department. Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937) was a chemist and inventor of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. He worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937. This collection consists of correspondence between Johnson and Carothers, who were close friends as well as colleagues. The letters are both professional and personal in nature. Several letters discuss laboratory research work in polymer chemistry and the role of the catalyst.

John T. Houlihan (1944-) is an industrial designer who worked for General Motors, SCM Corporation, General Electric, South Bend Toy, and Timex. His papers consist of sketches, drawings, and renderings from those companies, spanning nearly forty years.

John Trageser Steam Copper Works manufactured galvanized and copper range boilers, expansion tanks, hot water tanks, as well as; sinks, drainboards and bathtubs. This item is a page (March 1926) from a calendar of the John Trageser Steam Copper Works of New York. A humorous color illustration by Tony Sarg shows four men golfers "Limbering up at the first tee."

John W. Macklem (1867-1948) began working for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company as an errand boy at a young age and remained with the company his entire career. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. This collection comprises photographs of buildings and scenes in DuPont Company explosives manufacturing plants along the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, including the Eleutherian Mills (or Upper) yard, the Upper Hagley yard, and the Lower Hagley yard.

In 1875, Philadelphia merchant, John Wanamaker, bought a freight railroad depot at 13th and Market Streets and made it Philadelphia’s first department store. In 1909, Wanamaker bought a huge pipe organ and installed it in Grand Court of the new building. Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet (1872-1967) was a French painter and medallic artist. This collection is a folded momento with of a reproduction of "Adoration of the Magi" triptych painted by O. D. V. Guillonnet which was exhibited in the Organ Loft, Grand Court of the John Wanamaker store, Philadelphia.

John Watson (1774-1864), a Quaker, worked as a land surveyor in Pennsylvania during the early nineteenth century. The collection consists of five volumes relating to the construction of the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal.

John Zimmermann & Sons, Inc. was a manufacturer of upholstery fabrics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for more than fifty years. This collection consists primarily of financial records from the company's founding through its sale to Merion Securities, Inc. It contains rich payroll and pension data of potential interest to labor historians. The collection also contains records from Zimmermann Mills, Inc. and J-Z, Inc., a division of Merion Securities. These materials are also primarily financial in nature.

Jonathan H. Klein (1949-) spent his professional career as a specialist in passenger railroad and rail transit equipment economics. The papers consist of a small sample of reports and memoranda written or collected by Klein in his role as a manager in charge of rail passenger equipment procurement, performance and maintenance. The agencies represented are SEPTA, Chicago Transit Authority, BART, LAMTA and Amtrak.

The Jones Brokerage Company was a food brokerage business founded by Otis V. Jones Jr. (1915-2003) in 1946, as Associated Foods in Raleigh, North Carolina. This small collection contains samples of packaging for bread, coffee, desserts, produce, meats, sausages, and salt.

Joseph A. Speel (1810?-1891) was a bookbinder in Philadelphia. This advertisement shows an interior view of the bindery printed in at least two colors with hand tinting.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company began operation in 1831 as a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware. After the Civil War, the company concentrated on finishing cotton cloth. In later years it became famous for its Ban-lon artificial fiber but eventually withdrew from manufacturing in favor of licensing its processes and trademarks to other companies. The records consist of miscellaneous correspondence and reports, possibly from W. Ralph MacIntyre (1897-1984), president. The records include research reports and notebooks on dyeing, bleaching, printing, and finishing of fabrics.

Joseph Bancroft, an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware in 1831. This operation became the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889, and in 1929 it absorbed the Eddystone Manufacturing Co. These images include plant exteriors and interiors, officials and employees, aerials, workers' housing, machinery, floods, and dams and races on Brandywine Creek as well as many Ban-Lon and Miss America fashion photographs. This collection includes approximately 1060 images covering a period from the late 19th century to the 1960s.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. In July of 1958, The Spunize Company of America filed a lawsuit against one of Bancroft's licensees, the Duplan Corporation. The Spunize Company alleged that Duplan Corp. had committed patent infringement of a yarn crimping process that Duplan licensed from Bancroft. This collection consists of photographs and motion picture film depicting the yarn crimping process and the crimped yarn. A majority of the materials were created with the intention of being submitted as evidence in the court case.

Joseph Bancroft (1803-1874), an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington in 1831. The operation became the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889. The photographs consist of images related to the Joseph Bancroft & Sons textile mills in the Rockford and, later, Kentmere areas on the banks of the Brandywine River. These images include plant exteriors and interiors, officials and employees, aerials, workers' housing, machinery, floods, and dams and races on Brandywine Creek.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. A panoramic view of Bancroft Mills in Wilmington, Delaware.

A small sample of engineering sketch sheets from a large Wilmington, Delaware, cotton textile and textile finishing firm.