The Joy Manufacturing Company was a major manufacturer of underground mining and materials handling machinery. The company was founded in 1920 by Joseph Francis Joy (1883-1957). Joy is remembered as an inventor and a pioneer who revolutionized the way minerals are mined. He holds 190 patents which improved safety and efficiency of mining.

Born in Cumberland, Maryland, Joy began working in the coal mines at the age of twelve. In adulthood he worked as an engineer for various companies while developing various inventions on the side. His invention of a practical mechanical solution to the coal-loading process eventually prompted him to start his own company.

Financial difficulties caused in part by a nationwide coal strike forced a refinancing of the company, and Joy resigned on April 2, 1925. Later he was contracted as a lifetime consultant. The company went through a period of expansion in the 1940s through the 1960s, acquiring several manufacturing companies.

By 1984, the Joy Manufacturing Company was one of the world’s leading producers of capital equipment for the extractive mineral industries with twenty-four manufacturing plants, several foreign manufacturing subsidiaries, and a sales presence in over fifteen countries. In 1987, Joy’s shareholders approved a $620 million leveraged buyout by a group of investors associated with the investment firm of Adler & Shaykin in order to escape a hostile takeover by Pullman-Peabody, a truck trailer and airline seating manufacturer. The purchasers reorganized the company as Joy Technologies, Inc.

The photographs were collected by retired corporate secretary James Packer (1920-2008) in 1985 for the purpose of writing a company history, but the project was cancelled following the hostile takeover in 1987.