Finding Aids

Allen P. Carter (1906-2006) was the manager of the Service Department of Du Pont Motors Inc. and then Du Pont Motors Service Company. His papers are a series of fragments covering his association with Du Pont Motors Inc. and automobile racing and restoration.

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.

Donaldson Brown (1885-1965) was an industrialist and business executive with E.I. du Pont de Nemours and the General Motors Corporation. These papers relate to Brown's association with GM, and reflect his concern with financial policy, organization and operation, and employee relations. They are especially concerned with the period of World War II. Files from the 1920s and 1930s describe Brown's effort to relate pricing policies to financial control.

Hoopes Brothers & Darlington was a firm that produced wooden wheels. It was founded by brothers Thomas Hoopes (1834-1925) and William Hoopes (1830-1917) on their farm about a mile northwest of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1866. Initially, they manufactured spokes for wagon wheels from local timber. In 1869, they established a factory in West Chester proper and, within three years, were manufacturing complete wooden wheels. In time the firm became the largest establishment of its kind east of the Allegheny Mountains. The records of Hoopes Brothers & Darlington, Inc. are relatively complete and give a full picture of the firm during its peak years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Hoopes Brothers & Darlington was a firm that produced wooden wheels. It was founded by brothers Thomas Hoopes (1834-1925) and William Hoopes (1830-1917) on their farm about a mile northwest of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1866. Initially, they manufactured spokes for wagon wheels from local timber. In 1869, they established a factory in West Chester proper and, within three years, were manufacturing complete wooden wheels. In time the firm became the largest establishment of its kind east of the Allegheny Mountains. This small collection consists of an account book of rim stock; a biography of one of the firm's founders, Thomas Hoopes; the autobiography of lime kiln owner John G. Robison; Edward S. Darlington's membership certificate in the Carriage Builders National Association; and board of directors' meeting minutes from 1903 to 1932.

Wayne W. Light (1882-) was a lawyer andlight delivery vehicle inventor. The collection consists of items amassed by Light to document his attempts to become an automotive inventor and manufacturer.

WorldAutoSteel is an institutional membership organization comprised of eighteen major global steel producers dedicated to innovative vehicle steel application technologies that are environmentally sustainable and meet the automotive industry's needs. This collection consists of records that document a series of projects conducted by WorldAutoSteel, a unit of the World Steel Association. The files come from WorldAutoSteel headquarters, primarily from Edward Opbroek, who was the director of WorldAutoSteel from 2006 to 2011 and the program director for UltraLight Steel Auto Body (ULSAB) and UltraLight Steel Auto Body - Advanced Vehicle Concepts (ULSAB-AVC). These records would be of value to researchers interested in the intersection of the steel and automobile industries, automotive benchmarking, innovations in steel design and engineering, and communications strategies.