Finding Aids

The Berkshire Knitting Mills were once part of a triad of companies in Reading and Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, owned by Henry Janssen (1866-1948) and Ferdinand Thun (1866-1949), known as Wyomissing Industries, which also included the Textile Machine Works and the Narrow Fabric Company. Built and incorporated between 1892 and 1906, these companies expanded rapidly between 1900 and 1930, becoming the world’s largest manu­facturer of women’s hosiery. This item is a bound album of documentation and captioned photographs depicting the Berkshire Knitting Mills factory, workers, and manufacturing processes in the years 1906 to 1923, a period during which the mills were celebrated as the largest full-fashioned knitting mills in the world.

Bessie Gardner du Pont (1864-1949) wrote several publications on the du Pont family and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co's history. This collection contains photocopies and microfilm of "Notes for History," notes she compiled for her study E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., a history, 1802-1902 (Boston, 1920).

At the turn of the century, under the direction of Charles Schwab and Eugene Grace, Bethlehem Steel Corporation became the second largest American steel company; combined with its other venture, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., it became a leading 20th century American business. This item is a viewbook which contains exterior views of the Bethlehem Steel Works. These include numerous images of both the plant and office, most of which were taken at street level.

At the turn of the century, under the direction of Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939) and Eugene Grace (1876-1960), Bethlehem Steel Corporation became the second largest American steel company; combined with its other venture, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., it became a leading twentieth century American business. The collection includes a wide range of photography which documents the company’s long history and the breadth of its enterprises from east to west coasts and overseas. It contains eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century industrial and non-industrial images and of management and workers. As a research tool, its use will be as varied and extensive as the corporation itself was during its years as an American industrial giant.

The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was the number two steel producer in the United States between 1916 and 1984. For a time it was also the largest shipbuilding firm in the world. The records of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation (parent company) are a series of fragments, lacking the complete runs of corporate and executive documents that normally comprise a business archive, and largely consist of fragmentary corporate records and files from executive officers.

Better Living magazine was an E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (DuPont Company) employee magazine that features articles that highlight how the DuPont Company improved the lives of its employees and the American standards of living. Researchers can expect to find original photographs, proofs, contact sheets, and negatives taken for use in the Better Living magazine. The images included are both the ones used and unused in the publication and date from 1946 to 1972.

Betts & Seal was an iron foundry in Wilmington, Delaware that operated under that name from 1857 to 1867, but was established in 1828. The Betts family of Wilmington, Delaware, produced three generations of innovative founders and machinists. The records of Betts & Seal cover the operation of the foundry from 1828 to 1867. The result is a rare time-capsule look at the workings of a small but innovative foundry during the first phase of American industrialization.

Bill Mackey (1906-1996) was a chemical engineer and the plant manager of the Technical Division of the Explosives Department of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. His papers consist of a mix of personal and DuPont Company materials documenting his career as an explosives expert.

E. Sachse & Company was a nineteenth century printing company located in Baltimore, Maryland. This item is a color lithograph of an overview of Wilmington, Delaware, looking north from south of the Christiana River.

In its various iterations, the Boeing Vertol Company has been a major developer and builder of helicopters. These records reflect development, manufacture, testing, improvement, and sale of helicopters, especially for military use in Vietman. This includes information relating to reports on factories visited, military needs of the United States and foreign countries, sales, conferences, and meetings with military personnel, government agencies, and representatives of foreign countries.

This collection of glass-plate and acetate negatives of bottle caps was made by the Bond, Crown and Cork Company of Wilmington, Delaware. The designs are for various beer and soft drink labels. Some of the negatives are dated from 1939, and the remainder appear to be from that time period as well.

Bowlus-Du Pont Sailplane, Inc. was a short-lived company which combined the financing of record holding glider pilot, Richard du Pont (1911-1943), and the engineering skills of Hawley Bowlus. This reproduction drawing (there are two copies) includes elevations and cross sections of an Albatross II.

Boyertown Auto Body Works was a manufacturer of delivery truck bodies for commercial and industrial use, as well as specialty and military vehicles. The works manufactured electric, gas, and diesel vehicles and bodies on all types of vehicles. This small collection comprises photographs of food service vehicles manufactured by Boyertown Auto Body Works during the 1960s.

A small body of letters and fragments recovered from the Graystone mansion property at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, relating to the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory during the time when Rebecca Webb Pennock Lukens (1794-1854) was proprietor after the death of her husband.

The Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School (BMSS) was organized in 1817 as a non-sectarian school for the children of the local factory workers, with instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), founder of the DuPont Company, was one of its chief subscribers, and the school building was located on his property. Primarily generated and maintained by the du Pont women, the BMSS records include the school's constitution, and financial records such as bills, receipts, and accounts. Most of the records pertain to students with information about premiums which were given as rewards for attendance and scholarly excellence.

The Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School (BMSS) was organized in 1817 as a non-sectarian school for the children of the local factory workers, with instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. This collection contains eleven Kodachrome prints of exterior views of the school building taken by Nancy Wootten (of Wilmington), between 1963 and 1966.

Henry Belin du Pont (1873-1902) was a descendant of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) who founded the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company with his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834) in 1802. The E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The collection consists of views of and along the Brandywine Creek. These include the following du Pont family homes: Pelleport, Goodstay, Nemours, St. Amour, and Louviers. These photographs were possibly taken by Henry Belin du Pont (1873-1902).

Brandywine Springs, located on the Newport-Gap Turnpike about five miles west of Wilmington, Delaware, was first developed as a spa by the Brandywine Chalybeate Springs Company in 1827. Richard W. Crook (1850-1948) later leased the property in 1886 and converted it into a typical nineteenth-century streetcar amusement park, although he was unable to complete the streetcar connection with Wilmington until 1901. The entries in the ledger are in the hand of William Jenks Fell (1839-1903), the lessor of the park, and describe expenditures on improving the rides and concessions.

Brandywine Springs County Park was a popular amusement park in the rural countryside outside Wilmington from approximately 1890 to 1923. This collection consists of a postcard of the arched entrance to the park.

Hagley Museum staff conducted a series oral history interviews between 1954 and 1990, speaking primarily with individuals who had worked at the DuPont Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek during the yards’ final decades of operation or who had lived near the yards as spouses or children of DuPont Co. workers. Some of the individuals who were interviewed donated, lent for copying, or provided information on the photographs in this collection. The images primarily depict the worker communities which surrounded the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek or the powder yards themselves.

The Bridesburg Machine Works of Alfred Jenks & Son were manufacturers of cotton and wool carding spinning and weaving machinery, shafting and millgearing. The lithograph shows the plant exterior, people in the street, and a delivery wagon carrying textile machinery. Vignettes of machines surround the main view.

Brooke Hindle (1918-2001) was a prominent historian who wrote extensively on early American science and technology. Hindle was senior resident scholar at the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation (1969-1970), a member of its advisory committee (1971-1974), and a trustee (1974-1985). This essay, delivered at a conference held at Hagley in 1965, reviews the historiography of early American technology, suggesting various methods of approaching the subject and stressing the "Americanness" of American technology.

The International Film Service (IFS) was a motion picture production company and subsidiary of multinational media conglomerate Hearst Communications. IFS also included commercial and journalistic still photographers. This image depicts a group of women conductors of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company standing in a line at the pay window; a man at the window is barely visable. In December 1917, Brooklyn Rapid Transit, among other rail lines, began to hire and train women to be conductors during World War I. The photograph was published in Washington D.C. newspaper the Sunday Star (formerly the Evening Star) on February 3, 1918.

Brown & Hewett were merchants of Oneida County, New York. The journal contains the accounts of individuals doing business with the firm, which was a typical backcountry mercantile enterprise trading imported goods such as brandy, rum, tobacco, paper, textiles, and merchandise for local staples like wheat and lumber.

The Brown Instrument Company developed, manufactured, and sold industrial controls and measuring instruments, such as thermometers, pressure gauges, voltmeters, and pyrometers. The company was founded in 1857 by an English engineer and inventor, Edward Brown (1834-1905). The records of the Brown Instrument Company consist of research files documenting the development of measuring instruments and industrial control systems used in continuous process manufacturing.

Bruce A. Bydal (1937-) worked as a research engineer at the DuPont Company for over twenty years, is an expert in gun primers and chemicals, and an avid gun collector. He also worked with the Remington Arms Company, a subsidiary of the DuPont Company, to develop a new shotgun. The papers include descriptions of Bydal's work in DuPont's food and packaging division and his work at the Nylon plant in Martinsville, Virginia. However, approximately one-half of the records pertaining to his work in applied mathematics at Remington Arms, a gun manufacturing company acquired by DuPont during the great depression.

Buckley Music System, Inc. was a manufacturer and distributor of jukebox music systems for businesses. This album is a salesman sample catalogue marketing the Buckley jukebox system for restaurants, bars, and clubs. The album consists of thirty-two photographs showing the interiors establishments who have implemented the system.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. The company began in 1912 in Philadelphia as the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company, specializing in the manufacturing of all-steel body automobiles. This small collection of papers from the Braking Systems Division consists mainly of Budd Company engineering reports dating from 1946 to 1973. These reports examine brake drums, brake linings, and noise generation. There is also a small set of reports from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that dates from 1963 to 1967. Also included are materials from the Budd Institute, Phase II, a week-long training at Michigan State University Management Education Center in November 1993.

The collection consists of a synthetic historical file assembled for public relations purposes at Budd Company's Michigan headquarters.

The collection consists of a small group of legal documents of the Budd Company and its related firms preserved by a former employee. Also included are the papers of Budd Company's British and German affiliates, property leases, and agreements.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. This collection of photographs include railcar interiors, exteriors, and construction progress images of vehicles for the Budd Company customers between 1931 and 1987. Fifty-four railroads are represented in the collection, but half consist of only a small number of images.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. This collection’s photographs focuses on the Budd Company rail division with some images of automobiles and wheel products and manufacturing. The bulk of the materials date from the 1940s, 1950s and the 1980s. The collection is organized into five series: Company executives and employees; Plants and manufacturing; Products; Advertising; and Films and videos.

This album documents a fire test conducted by the Bureau of Standards concerning the effect of fire on steel furniture, possibly among other things. The Bureau of Standards, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a non-regulatory federal agency under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Its mission is "to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life."

C. Bruce Brooks (1931-2016) was a chemical engineer and program manager for Thiokol Chemical Corporation (later Morton-Thiokol) from 1958 until his retirement in 1995. Thiokol is a leader in aerospace research, design, manufacturing, and testing of solid propellant rocket motors. This small collection of Brooks' papers provides valuable information about the development of solid rocket motors and early space flight. Of particular interest are trial materials related to the 1984 loss of two communications satellites, the Westar VI and the Palapa B-2. Brooks was program manager for designing and manufacturing the STAR 48 motors used in the satellites. The collection has been arranged into six series: Space programs publications and reports; Solid rocket motors (SRM) files; McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Thiokol Corporation files; Newsletters, magazines, and technical papers; Company histories and personal papers; and Additional work papers.

C. Robert Werle (1893-1990) was an industrial engineer who worked for Cooley & Marvin Company of Boston conducting time studies, as well as analysis of accounting and plant methods for a variety of clients, mostly in the textile, leather, woodworking and metalworking industries. This collection consists of images, advertisements, and sales flyers, for various clients of Werle, specifically a metal packaging company, a cedar chest manufacturer, duplex homes for sale.

C. Robert Werle (1893-1990) was an industrial engineer who worked for Cooley & Marvin Company of Boston conducting time studies, as well as analysis of accounting and plant methods for a variety of clients, mostly in the textile, leather, woodworking, and metalworking industries. Werle's papers cover his career between 1917 and 1931, with emphasis on his employment at Cooley & Marvin; Bigelow, Kent, Willard & Co.; and Watsontown Door & Sash. The papers include correspondence, reports, and work papers, mostly connected with time studies. There are numerous examples of the standard forms, cards, and tags used to control reporting and the routing of materials in factories.

Campbell Soup Company is a processed food manufacturing corporation based in the United States. Founded in 1869, the Campbell Soup Company primarily sold canned vegetables, soups, and other non-perishable items until 1897, when the development of a method to produce flavorful condensed soup propelled the company to one of the largest food corporations in the world. The collection consists of five films produced by the Campbell Soup Company sales department from 1940 through the 1960s, focusing on sales personnel training and company promotions.

Canada Dry is a brand of soft drinks best known for its ginger ale. Canada Dry had its beginning when John McLaughlin (1865-1914) opened a small carbonated water plant in Toronto, Canada, in 1890 to manufacture soda water. In the 1930s the company introduced other Canada Dry mixers. Canada Dry expanded worldwide during this period. The album was created as a salesman's flip chart for Canada Dry distributors to show retailers. There are images of Canada Dry products, views of bottling plants and the manufacturing process, as well as advertisements and merchant testimonials.

Cape Charles was established in 1884 as the southern terminus of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad. The collection consists of photographs showing the early development of Cape Charles. Views of the wharf and harbor areas and the steamship "Cape Charles" built by Harlin and Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware, comprise nearly half the collection.

Capital Airlines was a commercial airline for the eastern, southern, southeastern, and midwestern United States from 1936 to 1961. In the 1950s, it was the fifth-largest airline in the United States. The airline was the first to offer service from the west to Washington D.C., coach class service, in-flight television, and jet-powered commercial aircraft. This collection is of material that would have been presented to a passenger on a flight around 1957, apparently from Buffalo, New York, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then back again.

Carl George Dietsch (1900-1978) was an electrical engineer who specialized in shortwave radio transmitters. He supervised the construction of radio stations for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from the 1930s to the 1960s, including locations in Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, Japan, and Morocco. This collection consists of materials relating to Dietsch’s projects for RCA and NBC, particularly concerning the construction of a radio station in Tangier, Morocco, as well as the World War II Voice of America project in Dixon, California. The bulk of the collection material spans from the 1920s to the 1960s, with some later material from Dietsch’s time as a private engineering consultant. The collection includes correspondence, patent material, trade catalogs and publications, manuscript material, photographs and negatives, blueprints, diazotypes, audiovisual material, and drafting tools. This collection would be useful to researchers interested in shortwave radio station construction.

Carnegie Steel Company was a large steel manufacturer primarily founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) in 1892, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lucy Furnaces were blast furnaces that initially produced iron, but switched to steel. This item is a time book registering the hours worked by Carnegie Steel Company Lucy Furnaces employees in 1904.

The Technical Department at DuPont's Carney's Point Works was established to collaborate with scientists at the DuPont Experimental Station and Eastern Laboratory of the Repauno Works to develop new products, maintain quality control, and improve products and processes. The collection focuses on the department's start-up period (1906-1910) and the two World Wars.

This collection includes ephemera, postcards, films, advertisements, photographs, documents and objects relating to the history of salt. The collection was assembled by Carol Litchfield (1936-2012), a biologist and biochemist with an interest in halophiles and salt history. These items document the history and development of salt manufacturing throughout the world. Historic and modern methods of salt harvesting are depicted from various areas around the world.

Additionally, this collection includes documentation of Carol’s personal research and participation in salt related conferences and programs.

Carolyn Mann Irving (1891-1987) was the wife of Evelyn du Pont Irving (1886-1968), nephew and one of the heirs of the prominent author Washington Irving's estate. The collection consists of forty-two prints (engravings or lithographs) and two photographic prints which were collected by Carolyn M. Irving. Subjects include animals; Andrew Jackson political cartoons; battle and war images; du Pont related images; European landscapes, town scenes and cathedrals; fashion and religious images.

The collection consists of a day book kept by an unidentified carpenter in the Philadelphia area from 1796 to 1799.

Carter Litchfield (1932-2007) an organic chemist who studied and specialized in edible fats and oils. This collection of photographs and ephemera relates to Litchfield's activities as a scientist, historian and collector of the history of fatty material. There is also a large amount of advertisements, letterheads, postcards and trade cards.

Carter Litchfield (1932-2007) an organic chemist who studied and specialized in edible fats and oils. In the course of his career Litchfield also built an interesting and significant collection of books, manuscripts, and ephemera relating to the history of fatty materials. The collection is arranged into seven series and includes his research with animal fats and fatty materials, collecting activities, research and publication on the history of oil mills around the world; the papers of Julius Lewkowitsch, the first authority on fats and fatty materials; the papers of Ellsworth C. Warner, founder of the Midland Linseed Products Company; and the correspondence of Frech Chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul

The Philadelphia chemical manufacturing firm of Carter & Scattergood was founded in 1834. It continued to do business under that name until 1911, when it was sold to the Henry Bower Chemical Manufacturing Company. Their records include day books, ledgers, receipt books, laboratory books containing records of wages, materials, processes and apparatus; production tables; correspondence including one describing in detail the first four years of the firm's operations; and receipts and bills.

Caspar Wistar (1696–1752) was a German-born Philadelphia merchant and brass button maker. He also founded the first glassworks in America near Salem, New Jersey, in 1739. The single volume contains a cash book of receipts of Wistar's estate (1752-1765).