The Jenks family produced talented inventors over many generations. Between the 1820s and the 1870s the family businesses were the leading cotton textile machine builders in Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, the firm operated a rifle factory as part of the Union war effort. The collection consist of a series of fragments handed down in the Jenks family related to several of their business ventures.

The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (DL&W) Railroad was one of the largest and most prosperous anthracite transporting and mining companies in Pennsylvania. This collection consists of dated and undated views of a boiler, breakers, collieries, fan houses, hoist, mule barns, pumps, shafts, steam plant, tunnels and an electric power plant in the anthracite mining areas in Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties of eastern Pennsylvania.

The Geo D. Whitcomb Company was a manufacturer of coal mining machinery and industrial locomotives. The album is a factory salesman sample photograph album for the gasoline powered Whitcomb mining and switching engines. There are two Whitcomb catalogs and an original offprint from the 1932 Railway Age.

The Joy Manufacturing Company was a major manufacturer of underground mining and materials handling machinery. The photographs were collected by retired corporate secretary James Packer (1920-2008) in 1985 for the purpose of writing a company history. This small collection consists of photographs, mostly group portraits of staff. The collection dates range from the 1921 to 1988. The materials are so sporadic that there is no bulk date.

The Joy Manufacturing Company was a major manufacturer of mining and materials handling machinery built upon the invention of the first practical coal loading machine by Joseph F. Joy (1883-1957). It is a somewhat random collection of documents assembled and preserved by the former corporate secretary James Packer (1920-2008) for the purpose of writing a never-completed company history. They include the sorts of documents normally in possession of a corporate secretary, such as copies of meeting minutes, corporate family tree information, historical notes, and promotional publications.

The St. Clair Coal Company was a medium-sized independent anthracite producer located near Saint Clair, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Photographs from St. Clair Coal Company show miners at work, collieries, storage banks, an aerial view of the operation, strip mining, a yard locomotive (probably built by Vulcan Locomotive), and the office.

Vulcan Iron Works was a producer of mine and industrial locomotives, mine hoists, and other colliery machinery. Vulcan's locomotives were designed for mine, logging, plantation and factory work, including steam, electric and battery models for underground haulage. A large number were sold to strip mine and earth moving contractors. The majority of the collection consists of original negatives (glass plate and film) dating from about the 1880s to 1943. These are builder's photographs, recording the construction of locomotives and machinery, although there are some photographs of the plants themselves (interiors and exteriors), employees at work, the town of Wilkes-Barre, and equipment installed and in service, particularly at collieries in the anthracite fields. About half the pictures are of locomotives and the rest are of mining equipment. There are also 1,340 negatives of drawings and plans, chiefly of mining equipment hoists. The collection also contains about 2,400 copy photographs made to preserve the images on original nitrate negatives which had extensively deteriorated. The collection is organized into five series: Railroad; Mining and manufacturing equipment; Factory, mill, and shop views; Drawings; and People.