E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was a chemical company and began a research program in dyes in 1916. By the late 1920s the DuPont Company was one of the four major U.S. dye producers and controlled twenty-five percent of the market. The records consist of notebooks and procedures on dyes, which describe the colors, uses, applications, tests, and fastness and dying properties for dyes manufactured by DuPont and its competitors.

Series II, Reports and Tests, contains twelve subseries: Armor Plate, Blast Furnaces, Financial, Processes & Equipment, Guns, Industrial Relations, Inspection Trips, Miscellaneous Reports, Notes & Notebooks, Plant Expansion, Rails, and Tool Steel.

The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard occupied two different locations. The second site at League Island was the larger of the two sites and saw the greatest amount of shipbuilding activity. The Dravo Wellman Company was a pioneer manufacturer of steel plant equipment with an international reputation for engineering some of the largest material-handling projects ever built. Photographs show tests of a revolving crane ship (perhaps manufactured by Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company) in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Professional career files of mechanical engineer Robert B. Watson (1931-) documenting his work on the development of high-speed trains in the years between 1966 and 1998, especially his involvement in the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project and the development of the first generation "Metroliners."

The Tests/experiments series is divided into three subseries: Equipment, Experiments, and Test equipment T.M.V. The images in these subseries are of equipment details, parts, test setups, experimental machinery, results from experiments, charts, and other test equipment. These materials date from the 1930s to 1977.