Hagley History Hangout: Recent Episodes
Hagley Museum and Library
Twentieth-century Chile relied heavily on its copper mining industry, which was vulnerable to disruption due to its dependance on foreign supplies of blasting powder. It was to address this strategic weakness that Chilean leaders formulated a plan to lure a powder manufacturer from the Global North to open a plant in Chile.In her latest research, Dr. Ángela Vergara, professor at California State University at Los Angeles, uncovers the story of DuPont in Chile, including its plant built to supply the domestic copper mining industry, and other business ventures like licensing DuPont synthetic textile technology to Chilean manufacturers. DuPont promoted its plant as a safe workplace with reduced risk of harm, but Dr. Vergara found evidence that workers suffered from respiratory and dermatological conditions, and blamed the plant environment.In support of her research, Dr. Vergara received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
From the 1750s to the present day, Salem Township in northeastern Pennsylvania has been a site of financial speculation and the social changes it sets in motion.In her latest book project, Dr. Nancy Campbell, professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, uncovers the many superimposed layers of speculation and extraction that have left Salem Township with a complex series of social legacies and infrastructures. From land wars and coal mines, to nuclear plants and data centers, Campbell traces three centuries of speculation in one small location.In support of her research Dr. Campbell received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Images of bathers have recurred in art through the ages, and their depictions tell us something about attitudes toward human bodies, sex, gender, cleanliness, and much more. In his dissertation research, art historian Jay Buchanan, PhD candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, analyses images of bathers in bathtubs, swimming pools, beaches, and bathhouses to understand the changing cultural valence of bathing relevant to its sensual and sexual dimensions. Buchanan used several collections in the Hagley Library, including Ernst Dichter, Fingerman, William Pahlmann, and more, to recreate the material culture of bathing and swimming in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. In support of his research, Buchanan received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us at hagley.org.
Does a strong economy serve the interests of the few or the many? The policy pendulum has swung in either direction over the long term.In his new book, The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865-1981, Dr. Daniel Wortel-London, visiting assistant professor at Bard College, explores the debates over economic development strategies that raged in New York City over more than a century. Punctuated by fiscal crises, the history is one of competing claims on city resources, and more keenly, competing ideas of what policies best serve the city and its people.In support of his work, Wortel-London received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Geophysics, or the study of Earth using the tools and methods of physics, is often understood to have begun in the post-WWII period. However, the period between the world wars saw ferment and innovation in the field, and the emergence of the term geophysics itself.In his latest research, Dr. Erik Isberg, postdoctoral researcher at the KTH Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, uncovers the emergence of geophysics as a science and an international industry during the interwar period. Using the Sun oil collection held in the Hagley Library, Isberg found that intense basic research between the wars laid the foundation for the postwar revolutions in how we view and govern our world.In support of his work, Isberg received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
What happens when industrial towns lose their defining industries? How do the remaining communities and infrastructures find meaning and a future among the postindustrial remains. The key often lies in heritagization, the process by which certain aspects of the past are identified, preserved, and presented as heritage. In her dissertation research, Julia Silva de Medeiros, associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, compares the postindustrial heritagization processes in Serra do Navio, Brazil and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, both of which once had major metallurgical industries, mining manganese and making steel respectively. Silva de Medeiros shows that the values prevailing among decision makers get embedded in the heritage passed down to future generations.In support of her work Silva de Medeiros received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Iowa State University historian Simon Cordery talks about his recently published biography of Albert Pullman with Hagley’s Ben Spohn. From the publisher: “Simon Cordery's Gilded Age Entrepreneur illuminates the fascinating and chaotic business world of Albert Pullman. The influential but little-known older brother of George Pullman and the craftsman of the family, Albert designed the first luxurious Pullman railroad cars and hosted promotional trips to show them off. In those heady early days, he met national business and political leaders and hired the first Pullman porters. “Albert and George made a formidable team, but as the Pullman Company grew, Albert's role shrank. He turned to his own investment portfolio, often with disastrous results. Beginning with the industrial laundry that cleaned sleeping-car linens, Albert appeared before the Supreme Court after a catastrophic insurance investment, ran afoul of federal banking regulations, and failed in an attempt to corner wheat futures. With evermore unsuccessful speculations, Albert was tempted by extralegal land sales and entered the silver-mining game. Finally, his own family in crisis and his relationship with George shattered, Albert Pullman launched into one last round of adventurous investments with mixed results. “Gilded Age Entrepreneur demonstrates that Albert Pullman embodied the small-time investors who were legion after the Civil War. From banking and insurance to manufacturing and mining, a host of hopeful dreamers like Albert Pullman fueled the circulation of capital by forging political connections, creating and losing businesses, issuing shares, and longing for profit.” For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
The overtly intimate relationship between tech industry leaders and politicians is on frequent display in newspapers and on screens today. In an international context, this builds on a long history of corporate involvement in shaping favorable policy.In his latest research, André Dao, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne, traces the long history of IBM and its predecessor the Tabulator Machine Company, as actors on the international stage, especially with respect to countries in the Global South. Using multiple collections held in the Hagley Library, Dao reveals a potential revolution amongst Third World countries vying to control multinational corporations and to foster their own computer industries, that was met and reversed by a counter revolution led by major Western firms and their institutional allies.In support of his work, Dr. Dao received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
O and Ernst Dichter archives, Haberl charts shifts in foodways, consumer habits, and cultural values around health.In support of her work Haberl received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
In her new book, Black Power Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics Jessica Ann Levy traces Black empowerment’s rise in 20th century American politics and its contradictions as a form of African American political activity. By closely following minister Leon Sullivan in his influential and varied career, Levi shows how white and Black businesspeople and government officials championed Black empowerment as a means to simultaneously offer meaningful opportunities for African Americans and to blunt the more radical aspects of the Black Power movement. Black empowerment politics similarly found application overseas in Cold War efforts to promote American-style free enterprise in Africa. In South Africa US corporate executives and government officials wielded Black empowerment politics to oppose apartheid and divestment even as they sought greater opportunities for Africans. By the early twenty-first century, the notion that private enterprise should play a leading role in combating racial inequality and empowering African Americans was widely accepted. By tracing Black empowerment politics’ evolution, Black Power, Inc. explains its popularity, championed by leaders from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela, while also revealing its role in expanding US corporate power, locally and globally.For more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Americans had established schools, hospitals, and businesses in China prior to the 1949 triumph of the Communists under Mao. What would be the fate of these institutions and their staff under the new dispensation? In his latest research, Dr. Sanjiao Tang, fellow at the National Library of Australia, explores the actions and reactions of Americans facing the advent of the People’s Republic of China. Using the DuPont firm as a representative American business of the period, Sanjiao finds that most Americans had a “wait and see” attitude toward Mao’s initial triumph. DuPont China only shut down its Shanghai headquarters a year after the Communist victory, doing so shortly before a wave of Anti-American sentiment expropriated the remaining American institutions in China.In support of his research, Dr. Sanjiao received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
New York City was the focus of the early American television industry. In TV’s early years NYC had the highest concentration of television sets, viewers, broadcasters, and infrastructure. In NYC many Americans had their first encounter with TV.In his latest book project, Dr. Richard Popp, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, tunes into the tangled relationship between televisions and the urban fabric and lived experience of NYC. Using several collections held in the Hagley Library, including those of RCA, David Sarnoff, and Ernest Dichter, Popp explores the history of television screens in public spaces, and the many misadventures of the television repair industry.In support of his research, Dr. Popp received funding from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Film has played a role in America’s world’s fairs since the 1893 Chicago exhibition where a horse galloping was the big cinematic draw. In her latest book project, Dr. Dominique Bregent-Heald, professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, explores the history of film at American world’s fairs, such as the educational and industrial films shown by corporate sponsors. These spectacles were conceived of as a means to make industrial products and processes entertaining, and to induce fair goers to identify with the film subjects.In support of her work Dr. Bregent-Heald received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Infrastructure projects have frequently generated controversies in American history, and railroads in particular have been the cause of many a political fracas. In her latest project, journalist and independent scholar Elizabeth Moore is uncovering the history of controversies over the Long Island Railroad. The politics are complex and multi-layered. From hyper-local concerns about noise, safety, and property values, to community-wide concerns about development and accessibility, to state-level concerns for tax revenue, popular approbation, and power. Every train, every rail, every station, and every commuter is bound up in these problems.In support of her work Moore received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Nitrogen feeds both war and peace, represents both fecundity and strength, and accordingly, nitrogen capture technology gained a symbolic potency in the ideologically charged atmosphere of fascist Italy. In her latest research, Dr. Rebecca Falkoff, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is uncovering the story of nitrogen capture in fascist Italy and considering what it can tell us about the atmosphere, literal and figurative, in which fascism and right-wing extremism operate.In support of her work Dr. Falkoff received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
In this episode we interview Mark Aldrich about his new book, The Rise and Fall of King Coal: American Energy Transitions in an Age of Markets, 1800-1940. From the publisher: “A history of the dynamic role of coal in the energy landscape of the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In The Rise and Fall of King Coal, Mark Aldrich explores the pivotal role of coal in the historical energy landscape of the United States. Meticulously researched and clearly written, this analysis of the rise, dominance, and eventual decline of coal as a primary fuel source traces its evolution from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Aldrich explains the factors that contributed to coal's ascendancy and decline, including efficiency, marketing, and the technological advancements that facilitated both its widespread adoption and later languishing. A complex interplay among market forces, government policies, and societal attitudes profoundly shaped the coal industry's trajectory. Challenges and controversies have surrounded the production of coal since its inception, including labor issues, environmental concerns, and resource scarcity. Aldrich's comprehensive approach—which combines historical analysis, economic perspectives, and a deep appreciation for the technological and scientific advancements that transformed the energy landscape—also emphasizes the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in driving energy transitions. By providing a bottom-up history that underscores the pivotal role of individual choices and market dynamics, The Rise and Fall of King Coal offers valuable insights into the dynamic nature of energy transitions. In lively discussions of domestic cooking and heating, Aldrich emphasizes the importance of women in shaping households' energy choices, and he gives voice to individual women and men as they describe how these decisions raised their standard of living. This book represents a seminal contribution to the field of energy history and highlights the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the evolution of energy use in the United States.” To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Kemp drug company records, Zhao uncovers the development of an American export industry in ginseng with global connections and an orientation to the Chinese market. Ginseng imported through Canton challenged the imperial monopoly on the coveted commodity, triggering changes across the political economy of China.In support of her work, Zhao received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
From the eighteenth-century Moravians singing hymns on communal farms, to twentieth-century steelworkers laboring in blazing furnaces, to twenty-first century healthcare and warehouse workers cutting loose at Musikfest, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has moved to many beats.In her latest project, Dr. Kimberly Andrews, associate professor at the University of Ottawa, investigates the history of Bethlehem as a creative writing challenge. Learning about the past through archival materials, oral histories, and living landscapes, Andrews seeks to make meaning of the many changes and challenges faced by the people and places of Bethlehem.In support of her work, Dr. Andrews received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Techology, and Society at that Hagley Musuem and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Working parents rely on childcare infrastructure, and as working parent became an ever-larger proportion of the American workforce from the 1960s onward, the lack of accessible, affordable, quality childcare became a major political and cultural issue.In her dissertation research, Julia Fournier, PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, traces the history of childcare in the United States from the late-1960s to the mid-1990s. Among Fournier’s sources is the archive of Catalyst, Inc., an advocacy group promoting women’s interest in the workplace, held in the Hagley Library. Her findings suggest that a confluence of public and private pressures has prevented the development of a coherent federal childcare policy, much less a universal childcare infrastructure.In support of her work, Fournier received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
In this episode we interview Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl about her new book Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945. From the publisher: “The first book to shed light on what caused corporate executives to pursue a pro-globalization agenda over the last eight decades. Crusading for Globalization tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives at the helms of the largest US multinational corporations and their quest to drive globalization forward over the last eight decades. Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl argues that the spectacular expansion of international investment, trade, and production after 1945 cannot be understood without considering the role played by these corporate globalizers and the organization they created, the US Council (today’s United States Council for International Business). By shaping governmental policy through their congressional lobbying and close connections to successive presidential administrations, US Council members, including executives from General Electric, Coca Cola, and IBM, among others, consistently fought for ever more market deregulation, culminating in the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Crusading for Globalization is also a book about those who opposed the growing might of multinationals. In the years immediately after World War II, resistance came from business protectionists, before labor and policymakers from the Global South joined the effort in the early 1970s. Schaufelbuehl breaks new ground by offering a panorama of this early anti-globalization movement, and by showing how the leaders of multinationals organized to limit its political influence. She also examines continuities between this early movement and the opposition to globalization that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century from the left and the populist right and discusses how business responded by promoting corporate social responsibility and voluntary guidelines. The first book to shed light on what caused corporate executives to pursue a pro-globalization agenda and to examine their methods for dealing with their opponents, Crusading for Globalization reveals the historical roots of today’s disparities in wealth and income distribution.”
The United States drug tests its citizens more than any other country and ties the rights one enjoys, rights to keep one’s baby, to do one’s job, or to vote or move freely, to the results of a given drug test. While Americans lead the world in drug consumption, they also lead the world in drug testing.In her latest book project, Dr. Laura Browder, professor at the University of Richmond, uncovers the history of drug testing in the United States. From 1930s concerns about drunk drivers and heroin addled horses, to 21st century legacies of the War on Drugs that link child custody and job security to drug test results, Browder shows how American citizenship became tied to the chemical composition of one’s blood. In support of her work, Dr. Browder received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Innovation plays a role in the beauty and fashion industry as it does in any line of business. New products, new techniques, and new markets animate the industry, and punctuate its history.In her latest book project, Dr. Denise Sutton, associate professor at the City University of New York, examines several case studies in fashion and beauty innovation. From ready-to-wear apparel for pregnant women, to beauty products for people of color, to Kevlar attire in hazardous workplaces, each case demonstrates the centrality of innovation to the business of fashion.In support of her work Dr. Sutton received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Businesses tell stories about themselves, in their advertising, in their marketing, and in their corporate biographies. Official or authorized histories of corporations form a distinctive thread in the literature in business history. In his latest book project, Dr. Lee McGuigan, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, is researching the official corporate history as a distinctive form of media and mode of communication. His initial findings suggest that corporations used their official histories for various purposes; to reify their identity, to promote their accomplishments, or to define their internal culture, depending on the intended audience.In support of his work, Dr. McGuigan received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.
American labor unions struggled to adjust to the changing dynamics of the world economy during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Charting this complex process is Dr. Melanie Sheehan, assistant professor of history at Hartwick College and recent Hagley-NEH postdoctoral fellow. Sheehan has discovered that during the post-WWII moment, union economists supported trade liberalization as a means of multiplying the comparative advantages enjoyed by U.S. producers and exporters so long as it was accompanied by aid to impacted industries and displaced workers. However, while trade liberalization proceeded apace, and foreign competition rapidly gained ground against American made goods, the planned and hoped-for aid failed to materialize. This forced unions to reassess their commitment to liberal trade policies, as their industries, first textiles, then steel, and finally automotives, faced the implications of increasingly efficient foreign competition.In support of her work Dr. Sheehan received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Building international cooperation is a slow, painstaking process, one made more difficult when some people don’t see the need for it. To businesses, however, international cooperation is positively necessary as a means to secure intellectual property rights, market share, and profit opportunities. In his dissertation research, Joël Praz, PhD student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is uncovering the significance of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, an international patents union today administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Using numerous collections held in the Hagley Library, Praz has found that private businesses in the United States began to value international cooperation around patent law increasingly after the Second World War.In support of his work Praz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
Our previously scheduled episode featuring Alessandra La Rocca Link has been postponed. In lieu of which, we present this recording made during the Hagley Author Talk featuring David Suisman hosted on February 27th, 2025 by the Hagley Museum and Library. Suisman discusses his latest book, "Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers."From the publisher: "Since the Civil War, music has coursed through the United States military. Soldiers have sung while marching, listened to phonographs and armed forces radio, and packed the seats at large-scale USO shows. “Reveille” has roused soldiers in the morning and “Taps” has marked the end of a long day. Whether the sounds came from brass instruments, weary and homesick singers, or a pair of heavily used earbuds, where there was war, there was music, too. Instrument of War is a first-of-its-kind study of music in the lives of American soldiers. Although musical activity has been part of war since time immemorial, the significance of the US military as a musical institution has generally gone unnoticed. Historian David Suisman traces how the US military used—and continues to use—music to train soldiers and regulate military life, and how soldiers themselves have turned to music to cope with war’s emotional and psychological realities. Opening our ears to these practices, Suisman reveals how music has enabled more than a century and a half of American war-making. Instrument of War unsettles assumptions about music as a force of uplift and beauty, demonstrating how it has also been entangled in large-scale state violence. Whether it involves chanting “Sound off!” in basic training, switching on a phonograph or radio, or cueing up an iPod playlist while out on patrol, the sound of music has long resonated in soldiers’ wartime experiences. Now we all can finally hear it."For more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, and for more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
While popular memory may have forgotten them, about half of the sailors, soldiers, missionaries, tradesmen, and colonists that made up the Spanish Empire were black, people who were part of the African diaspora. Studying their history allows scholars new ways to research and interpret Spanish colonialism, perhaps especially in the Pacific context.Dr. Leo Garofalo, Virginia Eason Weinmann 1951 Professor of History at Connecticut College, is laying the foundation for generations of new research on the Black Pacific. In his work on Afro-Andeans he has illuminated the central role played by the black people of Spanish Peru in the expansion of Iberian power across the Pacific Ocean. As skilled sailors and shipbuilders they built and operated the ships, charted the routes, and advanced the missions that formed the very marrow of imperial might. Focus on the African diaspora as it emanated across the Atlantic and Indian oceans accompanying and staffing Iberian imperial projects, underscores the intersection of the two streams in the Pacific and the creation of a Black Pacific world.In support of his work Garofalo received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org. To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
During the Cold War, rival superpowers the USA and the USSR vied with one another for world dominion in many arenas: military, diplomatic, and even haute coture. In the latter connection, French designers played arbiter, judging the synthetic textiles developed under capitalist and communist systems for their value in fashion.In her dissertation project, Monica Geraffo, PhD candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles, discovers why synthetic textiles played such a central role in the Cold War rivalry between political blocs. Using the extensive DuPont company records held in the Hagley Library, Geraffo highlights the shared interests of chemical firms, fashion houses, and political leaders, which aligned around synthetic textiles in the Cold War context.In support of her research, Geraffo received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
In this interview with Roger Horowitz, Ana Maria Otero-Cleves discusses the place of important objects in her book Plebian Consumers, especially textiles, machetes, and patent medicine. Otero-Cleves also elaborates on the crucial importance of Hagley’s Lanman and Kemp collection due to its extensive correspondence with Colombian merchants in the late 19th century to obtain supplies for its patent medicines.From the publisher: “Plebeian Consumers is both a global and local study. It tells the story of how peasants, day workers, formerly enslaved people, and small landholders became the largest consumers of foreign commodities in nineteenth-century Colombia, and dynamic participants of an increasingly interconnected world. By studying how plebeian consumers altered global processes from below, Ana María Otero-Cleves challenges ongoing stereotypes about Latin America's peripheral role in the world economy through the nineteenth century, and its undisputed dependency on the Global North. By exploring Colombians' everyday practices of consumption, Otero-Cleves also invites historians to pay close attention to the intimate relationship between the political world and the economic world in nineteenth-century Latin America. She also sheds light on new methodologies and approaches for studying the material world of men and women who left little record of their own experiences.”In support of her work, Otero-Cleves received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/underwriting-donation-tickets-1470779985529?aff=oddtdtcreator
In this episode of the Hagley History Hangout we interview Simone M. Muller, professor of global environmental history at the University of Augsburg and author of the Hagley Award-winning book The Toxic Ship: The Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade. From the publisher: “An infamous voyage explores the hazardous waste trade and environmental justice - In 1986 the Khian Sea, carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia, began a two-year journey, roaming the world's oceans in search of a dumping ground. Its initial destination and then country after country refused to accept the waste. The ship ended up dumping part of its load in Haiti under false pretenses, and the remaining waste was illegally dumped in the ocean. Two shipping company officials eventually received criminal convictions. Simone M. Müller uses the Khian Sea's voyage as a lens to elucidate the global trade in hazardous waste—the movement of material ranging from outdated consumer products and pesticides to barges filled with all sorts of toxic discards—from the 1970s to the present day, exploring the story's international nodes and detailing the downside of environmental conscientiousness among industrial nations as waste is pushed outward. Müller also highlights the significance of the trip's start in Philadelphia, a city with a significant African American population. The geographical origins shed light on environmental racism within the United States in the context of the global story of environmental justice. Activism in response to the ship's journey set an important precedent, and this book brings together the many voices that shaped the international trade in hazardous waste.” For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
Kodak enjoyed dominance over the international photography market for much of the twentieth century. Part and parcel of that success was dominance over the science of photography, achieved and maintained by a worldwide network of research laboratories. In his latest research Joris Mercelis, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, finds that the international network of Kodak research laboratories had two primary functions. In the shorter term their function was problem solve the tricky process of manufacturing photographic film in the different environmental conditions prevailing in different world regions, a process that proved difficult to standardize. In the longer term, and perhaps more significantly, Kodak laboratories conducted novel and cutting-edge research into the fundamentals and applications of photographic science. In support of his work Dr. Mercelis received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, including a NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellowship. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
Americans, understandably, have an emotionally fraught relationship with firearms, and American gun culture bears the marks of this emotional complexity. When, and perhaps more important, why did the firearm, a tool for killing, come to bear this unique cultural baggage in America? Between 1870 and 1920, when firearms were no longer seen as a tool first, but a consumer good laden with symbolic meaning and community associations. So argues Courtney Slavin, PhD candidate at Clark University, in her dissertation project. Using a combination of primary sources, including business records, catalogs, and consumer correspondence, all held in the Hagley Library collections, Slavin reconstructs a time when Americans began thinking about and using guns less as functional firearms and more as symbols. Fitting into a cultural milieu of anxiety over masculinity, fears of over civilization, perceived loss of tradition and community, guns accreted a load of cultural meanings atop of and around their physical objects. The consequences of this cultural baggage have been profound for Americans in the twenty first century.In support of her work Slavin received funding from the Center from the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org
Hagley’s Ben Spohn interviews Albert Churella about the final volume in his landmark trilogy on the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the publisher: “The final volume of Albert J. Churella's landmark series, The Pennsylvania Railroad, concludes the story of the iconic transportation company, covering its long decline from the 1930s to its merger with the New York Central Railroad in 1968. Despite some parallels with World War I, the experience of World War II had a substantially different impact on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The introduction of new technologies, personnel, and commuter routes had significant effects on this giant of American transportation. The recession of 1958 sparked a period of decline from which it and many other railroads struggled to fully recover. The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Long Decline, 1933-1968 provides an unparalleled look at the final years of this legendary company, which in its prime was the largest corporation in the world, with a budget second only to that of the US federal government.” In support of his work Dr. Churella received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts please visit us online at hagley.org.
Where can you find music in the archive? Everywhere, if you know how to look. So argues our guest musicologist Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden, associate professor at the University of North Texas and former NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellow.In this episode, Dr. Geoffroy-Schwinden discusses her latest book project about amateur music making in the Francophone world during the Age of Revolution. Her particular focus is on the meaning of music in the private lives of women around the Atlantic world, women like those in the du Pont family. When Geoffroy-Schwinden delved into the archive she was stunned and delighted to find music everywhere, hidden in plain sight.In support of her work Geoffroy-Schwinden received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on our research funding opportunities, please visit us at Hagley.org.
The mid-twentieth century emergence of multinational corporations wealthier and more powerful than many nations presented a problem for organizations tasked with overseeing international cooperation and development. How to create a regulatory framework around multinationals that would protect the interests of disadvantaged peoples and regions, while not limiting the ability of multinational corporations to deliver economic development. In turn, international business associations reacted to this push toward regulation with a well-organized opposition.In her dissertation research, Maia Müller, PhD candidate at the University of Lausanne, examines the role of business associations in the struggle over regulation of multinational corporations between the 1960s and 1990s. These powerful lobbying organizations provided a unified and legitimizing voice advocating for the perceived interests of the business community, one increasingly dominated by multinational corporations. Her transnational study reveals the secret influence had by lobbyists in the construction and operation of the world economy.In support of her work Müller received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at haglye.org.
Ice, ice, baby. In nineteenth-century America ice was everywhere. Extracted from northern ponds and shipped around the world, ice became a valuable commodity and a vital input in numerous industries. In his latest research Dr. Andrew Robichaud, Associate Professor of History at Boston University, explores the ice industry in nineteenth-century America and its many and complex impacts. From fruit to beer, from cattle carcasses to human cadavers, American ice had its role to play. In support of his work, Dr. Robichaud received funding from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, join us online at Hagley.org.
Roger Horowitz talks with Katherine Epstein about her new book Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State (University of Chicago Press, 2024). From the publisher: “A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships. These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire. Seeing the need to account for a plethora of variables, Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked “smart” systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood’s invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Analog Superpowers analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries’ commitment to individual rights and the free market. Katherine C. Epstein deftly sets out Pollen’s and Isherwood’s pioneering achievements, the patent questions raised, the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the legal precedents each country developed to control military tools built by private contractors. Epstein’s account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn’t yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.” For more Hagley History Hangouts, more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
Far from the battlefield the First World War spurred a massive increase in industrial output in the United States. Arms and armaments, ships and steel, a vast stream of materiel poured from American factories, mines, and mills to feed the insatiable maw of war. The consequent strain placed on American railroad infrastructure left it vulnerable to environmental disruption, such as that caused by the great blizzard of 1916-17. These developments marked a significant chapter in the environmental history of American industry. In this episode of the Hagley History Hangout we chat with Gerard Fitzgerald, visiting fellow at the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger and lecturer in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, whose latest research considers the environmental context of industrialization in the United States during World War One. In support of his work Fitzgerald has received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The experience of girlhood in early national and antebellum America was both circumscribed and liberated by geography. Spaces defined who American girls were expected to be. Spaces, too, allowed girls to redefine themselves and to defend themselves against irksome expectations. Looking backward, the geographies of girlhood can be read as evidence of lives both intimate and public.While the “Southern Belle” occupies an outsized position in the popular imagination of the American past, does this caricature reflect actual lived experiences and identities? In her dissertation research Emily Wells, PhD candidate at the College of William & Mary, aims to find out. By investigating and recreating the geographies of girlhood in the American South, as defined by the legal practice of chattel slavery, among upper class white families, Wells seeks to go beyond the Scarlet O’Hara archetype to understand how girls defined themselves and understood their worlds. Wells suggests that before the Civil War, girls in the American South identified more strongly with their local, class, and extended family than with the South per se.In support of her research Wells received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
Chinese plastic is cheap and abundant. It wasn’t always. The ubiquity of plastic in twenty-first century consumer culture belies its past rarity and the many cultural meanings it has borne over time. How did plastic come to play such a central role in the economy of China?In her dissertation research Yaxi Liu, PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, reveals the story of plastic’s introduction to the Chinese market and the varied political and cultural meanings assigned to plastic in China. The first plastic introduced to China was acrylic fiber. The technology transfer necessary derived from Britain and from Dupont in the USA. The state reserved for itself a monopoly on plastic production for decades, and the material gained a reputation for scarcity and luxury. Following the emergence of plastic recycling and secondary manufacturing in rural districts, the material came to be associated with cheapness and low status. The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society supports research in the Hagley Museum and Library collections with grants and fellowships. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Large technological systems can be vulnerable to manipulation, perhaps especially when they are centralized, monopolistic, and complacent. That was the situation in American telecommunications in the early 1960s when a generation of hackers developed techniques to manipulate the Bell telephone system to their advantage, a practice known as phone phreaking. In his dissertation research, Jacob Bruggeman, PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University, digs into the technology and politics of hackers, tracing their trajectory from anti-establishment actors on the fringes of technological systems, to positions of influence and control over the very same systems. In parallel to these developments in the hacker community, major organizations, both public and private, adopted new positions and policies designed to secure the system.In support of his research, Bruggeman received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org
What is jazz and when did it begin? Music scholars do not agree. Taking an archival perspective, however, clarifies the dilemma and allows us to see jazz where people at the time performed, recorded, consumed, and discussed what they thought of as jazz music. The emergence of jazz as an economic force, and a defining cultural aspect of an era, were tightly bound up in the prevailing system of racism, segregation, and inequality in the early twentieth-century United States.In her latest book project, Stephanie Doktor, assistant professor of Music Studies at Temple University, explores the racial context within which the jazz recording industry developed, and the indelible mark left by the systemic racism of the period upon the music industry to the present day. Using the Victor-RCA records held in the Hagley Library, Dr. Doktor reveals how race, class, and gender mutually shaped the political economy of early jazz. In support of her work, Dr. Doktor received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.
Tracing the circulation of ideas can cast light on patterns of interaction between various people and institutions in the past. During the mid-late twentieth century, a circuit of ideas linked business culture, industrial designers, academia, and related professional organizations. The movement of values, techniques, and perspectives between these distinct but interpenetrative spaces illuminates how they related to one another in historical context. In her latest research Penelope Dean, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, uncovers this movement of ideas and uses it to bring business and design histories into conversation. Using numerous collections held in the Hagley Library, including the Raymond Loewy and Ernest Dichter collections, Dean identifies the spread of ideas between business and design, and the development of a shared language capable of communicating complex concepts across professional groups.In support of her work Dr. Dean received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.
The positive image cannot exist without the negative, and the relationship between the two reveals the fundamental nature of the image as fungible, media as a process, and truth value as a matter of interpretation. Scholarship and conservation therefore have a profound responsibility to collect, preserve, and interpret media negatives for what they reveal about the relationship between positive images and the truth.In her latest project, Dr. Stefka Hristova, associate professor at Michigan Technological University, theorizes the relationship between media negatives, their positive counterparts, and the truth value accessible through a careful study of both. Using the collections held in the Hagley Library, Hristova demonstrates that a photographic image cannot be understood without reference to its negative. Likewise, and with profound implications for our present moment, the images and other media generated algorithmically cannot be properly judged or interpreted without an understanding of their negatives, the data used as the means of generating the final image. In support of her work, Dr. Hristova received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
In this episode of Hagley History Hangout Roger Horowitz interviews Margot Canaday about her remarkable book Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America that received the received 2024 Hagley Prize for the best book in business history that year. Canaday’s Queer Career’s rincipal focus is on the private sector, business enterprises large and small, and traces the opportunities, obstacles, and accomplishments of LGBT+ people as they sought to make a living from the 1950s through today. She emphasizes that as federal and many state agencies routinely refused to hire LGBT+ people, their most important sources of employment was in the private sector. Still facing pressures to keep their sexuality hidden in their jobs, their precarity lead them to accept lesser positions and pay than they might otherwise would have qualified for. Once stablished, they nonetheless made great strides in economic opportunity over these decades in white collar and blue collar jobs, and by creating their own firms. Her analysis is leavened by the personal stories of the many remarkable men and women who fill the pages of Queer Career. Canaday plants her feet firmly in business history by tracing firms ranging from “movement” enterprises such as Olivia Records and Diana Press that were vehicles for empowerment to large corporations Bell Labs and Lotus, where organizations of LGBT+ employees stepped out of the closet and secured health benefits for domestic partners. With sources ranging from over 100 oral histories, to legal proceedings, government records, and materials from private collections, she tells a story that has not been told before, in many areas not even touched. In support of her work, Canaday received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, please visit us online at hagley.org.
Excessive heat has presented a problem for public health officials in New York City since the mid-nineteenth century building boom that covered the island of Manhattan in bricks, concrete, and other heat-storing materials. Prior to that, however, Americans had noticed that cities were warmer than their surrounding countryside as early as the 1790s. The phenomenon now known as the “urban heat island” has shaped the bodily experiences and collective destinies of millions. In her latest research, Dr. Kara Schlichting, associate professor at the City University of New York, uncovers the complex relationship between the evolving built environment of the city, the macro-climatic conditions prevailing globally, and the socially-differentiated lived experiences of heat had by city residents. By digging into Hagley collections, including trade catalogs and the Willis Carrier collection, Schlichting is able to tell a history that links multiple scales of time and space, an act of scholarly imagination that allows us to assess the technological and political systems that shape the climate we all must live with. In support of her research, Dr. Schlichting received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The political meaning of industry depends upon its context. Following the Second World War, Native American tribal governments engaged in a program of industrial development meant to secure the political self-determination of their nations. Initially concerned with attracting capital investment to reservation communities, by the 1970s native governments had moved on to become investors in wholly owned tribal enterprises. In his dissertation research, Sam Schirvar, PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania uncovers a story that is both surprising and revealing of deeper patterns in American history. While outsiders saw industrial development as a means to efface native communities and tribal governments, tribal leaders themselves saw it as a means to self-determination. While the wider American economy was moving toward privatization of enterprise, Native Americans were creating publicly owned industries. Industry can mean different things to different people at different times. In support of his research Schirvar received the Louis Galambos National Fellowship in Business and Politics from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Ben Spohn interviews Mark Aldrich about his 2018 book, Back on Track American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1965-2015. This period marked a decline in safe operating on American railroads through the 1970s which were followed by a period of increased safety and profitability for American railroads. Aldrich makes the case that the joint factors of economic deregulation through the Staggers Act and the federalization of railroad safety via the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) drew attention to safety issues on the railroad like poor track condition, unsafe grade crossings, or engineer fatigue and left railroads with not only incentives to become safer, but enough money in their coffers to adequately shore up these safety concerns. Mark Aldrich is the Marilyn Carlson Nelson Professor of Economics emeritus at Smith College. Back on Track American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1965-2015 is a sequel to Aldrich’s earlier book on railroad safety, Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965. As part of his research for Back on Track Aldrich visited the archives at Hagley. His upcoming book on energy transitions: The Rise and Fall of King Coal American Energy Transitions in an Age of Markets 1800-1940 will be out in early 2025. In support of his research Aldrich received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
The DuPont firm was a leader in workplace and community safety communications during the twentieth century. This had been baked into the company culture from the first, as gunpowder manufacturing made essential. What changed over time were the techniques and media of communication, and the intended audience targeted by the company’s messaging.In her latest research, Madison Krall, assistant professor of communication studies at Seton Hall University, explores the wealth of health and safety materials generated by the DuPont company during the twentieth century. From posters to motion pictures, the firm deployed a wide array of media to promote safety in the workplace and beyond. DuPont wished to convince the public that its products were safe, and to convince employees and community members that safety was their responsibility. In support of her work Dr. Krall received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information visit hagley.org.
Scholars often think and write about business diplomacy as something that happens between firms and national governments. But the historical pattern is more complex than that, with contacts between businesses forming a significant portion of the international circuit of communication about business and economic matters.As part of his doctoral research, Grigorios Antoniou, PhD candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, is exploring the significance of international industrial conferences to the development of a global network that linked high-level business leaders from across boundaries between industries, sectors, and countries. Using collections held in the Hagley Library, including the National Industrial Conference Board and trade catalog collections, Antoniou uncovers a milieu in which elites met to mingle, cut deals, and burnish their status.For more Hagley History Hangouts, more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, and our many research funding opportunities, visit us online at hagley.org.
American households are awash in expensive credit card debt. But where did all this debt come from? In this history of the rise of postwar American finance, Sean H. Vanatta shows how bankers created our credit card economy and, with it, the indebted nation we know today. America’s consumer debt machine was not inevitable. In the years after World War II, state and federal regulations ensured that many Americans enjoyed safe banks and inexpensive credit. Bankers, though, grew restless amid restrictive rules that made profits scarce. They experimented with new services and new technologies. They settled on credit cards, and in the 1960s mailed out reams of high-interest plastic to build a debt industry from scratch. In the 1960s and ’70s consumers fought back, using federal and state policy to make credit cards safer and more affordable. But bankers found ways to work around local rules. Beginning in 1980, Citibank and its peers relocated their card plans to South Dakota and Delaware, states with the weakest consumer regulations, creating “on-shore” financial havens and drawing consumers into an exploitative credit economy over which they had little control. We live in the world these bankers made.In support of his work, Dr. Vanatta received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Hagley’s Ben Spohn interviews David Alff about his recent book: The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region. In this comprehensive history of America’s most heavily-traveled rail line, Alff shows ow what began as a series of disconnected nineteenth century rail lines became the spine connecting America’s Megalopolis, the dense urban forest connecting Boston with Washington D.C., with New York,Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore in between. As Alff explains, the Northeast Corridor is always arriving as the many small railroads that provided service to the Corridor, after over a century of corporate mergers, and laying new rails and electrifying old ones, came to fall under the stewardship of one railroad, the Penn Central before it fell into bankruptcy. The U.S. government created Amtrak, partly in response to this crisis and it took on passenger service on the Northeast Corridor and nationwide. The Northeast Corridor remains a work in progress with the latest link in the chain, Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass tunnel set to arrive in 2032. Dr. Alff is an assistant professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Dr. Alff will be giving an author talk at Hagley on December 5, 2024 at 7:00 PM, in-person at Hagley’s Soda House. You can register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-northeast-corridor-the-trains-the-people-the-history-the-region-tickets-912699337287For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society visit us online at hagley.org
In the United States, courts make policy through their interpretation of law and regulations. Through litigation, policy decisions are given the force of law. When litigation fails, then the object of regulation is often lost. This applies to the world of digital technologies, where corporate consolidation and the churn of ever-evolving technology makes anti-trust action both essential and difficult. In her latest research, Dr. Andrea Matwyshyn, professor of law and innovation studies at Pennsylvania State University, delves into the U.S. vs IBM trial which pitted anti-trust regulators against the emergent champion firm of American computing. At issue in the trial were the anti-competitive actions taken by IBM, and the impacts they would have on the American economy, and more significantly, the American society more broadly. When the Reagan administration dropped the case, it cut off a possible future of increased competition.In support of her research Dr. Matwyshyn received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit hagley.org.
The Channel Islands lie between Britain and France, and historically occupied a space between Europe and the Americas within circuits of movement around the Atlantic world of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This position as a place in-between gave the Channel Islands special significance to migrants, refugees, smugglers, and pirates. In her latest book project, Dr. Sydney Watts, associate professor of history at the University of Richmond, uncovers the story of the Channel Islands as a locus of trade and migration. Her particular focus is on French refugees and migrants who left France during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars for political and economic reasons. Among this group were the du Ponts, an aristocratic French family who fled an inhospitable environment in France in favor of entrepreneurial adventures in the new United States. Watts uses the du Pont family records held at the Hagley Library for her research.In support of her research, Dr. Watts received funding from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.
The organization “Junior Achievement” was first conceived in 1916 when three wealthy, influential men decided that American youth needed to be educated on the values of hard work, thrift, and the developing hierarchy of corporate management. From that beginning, however, the organization’s purpose evolved to promote the American system of free enterprise and eventually entrepreneurialism to the youth of the United States and several other countries. In his dissertation project Maxwell Greenberg, PhD student in history and educational policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, charts the history of Junior Achievement from its inception to 1998, when it had successfully exported its model and values to the former Soviet bloc. Greenberg’s work demonstrates how the history of education must look beyond the school as an institution to gain a broader understanding of the diverse locations and organizations involved in the education of every individual and every generation.In support of his work, Greenberg received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The “attention economy” has gotten lots of press in recent years as tech companies and advertising firms have begun to perceive human attention as a limited resource and to fight for their share of the potential revenue to be generated by it. However, the concept of human attention as an economically valuable resource goes back well beyond digital technologies at least to the early years of mass media and motivational psychology.In his dissertation project, Jacob Saindon, PhD candidate in geography at the University of Kentucky, explores the historical and spatial aspects of the American attention economy in its present digital form and its analog predecessors. Using historical collections held in the Hagley Library, including the Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBD&O) collection, Saindon illuminates the relationships between digital “spaces,” human perception, and the material world. In support of his work, Saindon received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
While it is often assumed that early industrialization was a spatially and socially concentrated phenomenon, associated primarily with white capitalists in the northwestern and northeastern corners of Europe and North America respectively, the historical reality was much more complex, and more interesting. While Britain and New England played significant roles in the global textile industry, they did so within the context of a wider world of rapidly circulating ideas, people, and technologies.As part of his dissertation research, Hunter Moskowitz, PhD candidate at Northeastern University, adds to the richness and texture of our understanding of industrialization in general and the textile industry in particular. Moskowitz takes a comparative, transnational approach, using case studies of Lowell, Massachusetts, Concord, North Carolina, and Monterrey, Mexico to uncover the circulation and contestation of techniques, personnel, and social attitudes around the world. In support of his research, Moskowitz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on our funding opportunities, visit us online at hagley.org.
In this episode, Ben Spohn Interviews Kevin Kenny on his book Making Sense of the Molly Maguires which recently had a special 25th anniversary release. The Molly Maguires were a secret organization operating in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region during a period of labor unrest in the 1860s and 1870s. This period culminated in the execution of twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires executed for the murder of sixteen men during this period. Since then there has been disagreement, over who the Molly Maguire’s were, what they did, and their motivations. Kenny argues that this is an inadequate understanding of the Molly Maguires and points out that most of the histories describing the Molly Maguires in this light, as some sort of sinister, secret organization were written by their detractors. Kenny’s work offers a new explanation of the Molly Maguires drawing from American and Irish sources and traces the labor unrest in the pattern of the Molly Maguires back to similar groups in Ireland that operated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Keeping that in mind, Kenny’s work is a history of labor and immigration in America. While there is no denying the Molly Maguire’s involvement in violent labor unrest, this adds context to their motivations and provides an explanation for why they embraced the methods of protest that they did. Kevin Kenny is the Glucksman Professor of History and Director of Glucksman Ireland House at NYU. For some of his research Kenny consulted the Reading Company records at Hagley, which included material related to James McParland’s investigation of the Molly Maguires and other materials related to the Molly Maguire trials. In support of his work, Kenny received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews Vilja Hulden (University of Colorado-Boulder) about her new book, The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal. Her book explores how business organizations, especially the National Association of Manufacturers, sought to weaken labor unions in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inventing the term closed shop, employers mounted what they called an open-shop campaign to undermine union demands that workers at unionized workplaces join the union and thereby depict labor as tyrannical and anti-democratic. These efforts continued through the 1910s and especially following the First World War. Over time employer organizations developed more nuanced strategies and publicity methods than in the early days of the century, but their inveterate opposition to organized labor persisted underneath. Hulden especially shows how the attacks on the closed shop formed the centerpiece of NAM’s anti-union strategy throughout. The book is available for a free download on the University of Illinois site. The link to the book page is https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p086922. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
The self-employed have many motivations for choosing or accepting their working arrangements. A business model that taps into the desire for people to “work for themselves” can mobilize the capital, networks, and labor of large numbers of people at comparatively low cost. Whether through franchising, direct-selling, or other methods, major firms became enablers, advocates, and beneficiaries of self-employment. The latest research by Dr. Amy Edwards, senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, focuses on the tangle of personal and corporate interests around self-employment. While the top-down element of the franchise or direct-sales relationship is evident, the personal motives of the self-employed franchisee or direct-sales representative could make the arrangement mutually profitable. Bringing her family’s story into conversation with archival materials, including the Avon collection at the Hagley Library, Edwards explores the cultural as well as political and economic aspects of self-employment in late twentieth-century Britain.In support of her work, Dr. Edwards received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Tehcnology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org
Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is essential to life and biological processes, and yet it is virtually impossible to access nitrogen absent the mediation of something or someone that can “fix” gaseous atmospheric nitrogen into a stable form. Historically, these mediators were biological organisms, such as cyanobacteria, that can fix nitrogen and make it available in the ecosystem and economy. Not until the advent of modern chemistry and chemical industries did a method for synthetically fixing nitrogen exist, but once developed, it became an essential component of the human economies of agriculture and warfare. In his latest research, Chris Morris, professor of history at the University of Texas – Arlington, explores the long history of nitrogen, from the guano islands of Peru to its modern re-creation as an industrially-produced, globally-traded commodity. Using Hagley Library collections including the DuPont Company archives, Morris reveals a hidden history that connects sharecroppers in Alabama, soldiers on World War battlefields, chemists in laboratories, and diplomats in world capitals. In support of his work, Morris received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
When miners go underground, they enter a spiritual realm distinct from that aboveground. Across time, places, and cultures, miners have made religious observance part of their work, building shrines, making offerings, and naming places after sacred personages. What connects these practices, and how can we access the meaning behind them?The latest research of Rebecca Janzen, professor of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of South Carolina, addresses this cultural phenomenon as it has been manifested by miners in the Americas from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Studying cases in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and others, Janzen pulls together numerous kinds of sources, including church documents, public records, and corporate archives such as the Bethlehem Steel collection held at the Hagley Library. Janzen offers us a glimpse underground and into the hearts of miners and mining communities.In support of her work Dr. Janzen received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and for more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Even the standard railroad of the world had limits. At the dawn of the twentieth century the Pennsylvania Railroad was at the most powerful it had been. As they began to learn, even that power could only reach so far. Albert Churella’s The Pennsylvania Railroad Volume 2: The Age of Limits 1917-1933 is the recently released middle volume in his trilogy on the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In this interview Churella discusses how the railroad grew and changed in the early twentieth century as it faced increasing competition from other methods of transit, government oversight, and the realities of a world that was rapidly changing. Churella does this by interweaving corporate with personal history tracing the life and career of WW. Atterbury who began his career in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Altoona shops and retired as president in 1935. Atterbury oversaw many projects during his time leading the railroad ranging from the development of the M1 steam locomotive to electrification between New York City and Washington D.C. He also pioneered early experiments in intermodal shipping while advocating for railroad consolidation and abandoning lesser used railines. Churella also describes his writing and research process explaining how his railroad history became a trilogy. He also offers his thoughts on writing that a text of interest to academic and general audiences. Dr. Albert Churella is a professor of history at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, prior to consolidation he taught at Southern Polytechnic State University. Dr. Churella’s other books are The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume I: Building an Empire, 1846-1917 and From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in the Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry. In support of his work, Churella received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
Work tires folks, and if fatigue is allowed to continue unabated, it can wear them right out. Studies of industrial and workplace fatigue during the first half of the twentieth century sought to address this pressing social and economic problem. But for whose benefit: labor or capital?The dissertation research of Tina Wei, PhD candidate at Harvard University, demonstrates that this matter was of real concern to labor unions, business owners, management, and research scientists. Using multiple sources, including the records of the National Industrial Conference Board held at the Hagley Library, Wei explores how concept of industrial fatigue changed over time from a primarily physical matter to one focused on mental and emotional states. In support of her work, Wei received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The Weberian definition of the state is an institution with a monopoly over legitimate violence within a defined territory. Eager to explain the genesis of European nation states, Weber’s model is a poor fit for the history and experience of American statehood. What might explain the marked failure of the United States government to monopolize violence within its territory, and the historical and contemporary prevalence of violence in American civil society?In his dissertation research, Hugh Wood, PhD candidate at Cambridge University seeks to find an answer. Using three case studies of private violence sanctioned by the state, expropriation and murder of indigenous people in the West, corporate policing and labor discipline in the industrial North, and the night riders and lynchings of the Jim Crow South, Wood explores the long history of bloodletting in American civil society. Wood’s project explores an essential element of American history with profound implications for the present.In support of his work, Wood received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
In the 1970s, the National Association of Manufacturers organized a subsidiary, the Council for a Union-Free Environment, to provide member firms and managers with tools to prevent labor organization and union activity in their business operations. The council remained active into the 1990s, when it was dissolved.As part of her dissertation research, Moeko Yamazaki, a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon, dug into the NAM collection and the CUE records in particular. Here research was supported by the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org/hhh.
The history of American electricity is often told through the experiences of engineers and managers, but these were only a handful of the many thousands of workers who built, maintained, and ran electrical utility systems in the Unites States. The linemen, clerks, pipe fitters, marketers, secretaries, and many, many others who do the work to keep the power on have little space in the literature. In fact, we have collectively learned not to see these workers and the work that they do even when they are right in front of our eyes. That’s where the research of energy historian Trish Kahle enters the picture. Dr. Kahle, former NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellow and current assistant professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University – Qatar, researches the social relations that develop within and around energy systems. Her current project examines the development of the American electrical grid through major episodes in its history: early forays into the construction process in the late-nineteenth century; rural electrification and segregation; deindustrialization and civil rights agitation. In support of her work, Kahle received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Americans love coffee, but the coffee in American cups has changed a lot over the years. Three waves of coffee consumer culture washed over the twentieth-century United States: the mass commodity wave, the differentiation wave, and the aficionado’s wave. With each wave came changes to the way Americas bought, prepared, and consumed coffee. Present throughout the decades, however, has been the Chemex coffeemaker designed in the 1930s by chemist and industrial designer Peter Schlumbohm.Uncovering the story of the Chemex coffeemaker is Clark Barwick, cultural historian and teaching professor of business communication at Indiana University. Using the Schlumbohm collection of scrapbooks and papers held in the Hagley Library, Barwick discovered how a desire for a cleaner cup of coffee, and a knack for marketing and promotion, led Schlumbohm to create and share the Chemex with the world. More than eighty years later, the device is still a beloved standard piece of equipment among coffee lovers everywhere.In support of his work, Barwick received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews University of Pennsylvania historian Brent Cebul about his new book Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century. In the interview Cebul explains his book’s core notions of “supply-side liberalism” and “business producerism” to explain how local elites, often quite conservative, made peace with and actually administered liberal New Deal programs including public works, urban redevelopment, and housing. Ranging between a close look at small town Georgia and urban Cleveland, Cebul explains how the New Deal built on older liberal traditions of using state resources to boost capitalist enterprises that needed capital resources in order to grow. In doing so, in essence binding national visions of progress to the local interests of regional business elites, liberals often entrenched the very inequalities of power and opportunity they imagined their programs solving. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.
The early history of satellite broadcast has a Gemini aspect: twin origins in the research and development laboratories of major American corporations, and in the homes and workshops of legions of grassroots tinkerers across North and South America, notably in the Caribbean. These two streams crossed in the 1980s. Companies like RCA tried to build the infrastructure and market for satellite television but failed to find cost-effective designs for consumer satellite dishes. Meanwhile grassroots innovators and activists found ways to mass-produce inexpensive satellite dishes but were blocked from accessing the corporate broadcast signal. “Pirated” satellite television was born.Fabian Prieto-Nañez, assistant professor of Science, Technology, & Society at Virginia Tech University, uncovers this history in his latest research. Using the RCA collection held in the Hagley Library and pairing its “institutional voice” with the voices of small-time innovators he has discovered in the Caribbean, Prieto-Nañez argues that the modern market for satellite television rests upon the twin foundations of corporate investment and individual creativity. This network of social and technical actors combined over time to produce a new market. In support of his work Prieto-Nanez received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Kevin Righter’s book, Philadelphia's Pencoyd Iron Works: Forging Along the Schuylkill River began as a family history project. Righter’s great grandfather, Walter Righter worked at Pencoyd from 1885 through 1933, retiring as superintendent of motive power. When Righter began research for this project, he realized that little had been written on Pencoyd Iron Works, which operated in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia for nearly a century, so he sought to fill that gap. This interview covers that family history and interweaves it with the history of steelmaking in the United States, from Pencoyd’s opening in 1852, through coming under control of US Steel to its closure following the end of WWII. Pencoyd’s steel was most famously used in the construction of bridges and the first elevated railways in the United States, but many architects in the late nineteenth century incorporated Pencoyd steel into their structures, including Philadlephia’s Frank Furness. Many bridges and structures containing Pencoyd manufactured steel still exist around the world today in places as far apart as Japan, Sudan, Mexico, Taiwan, Kenya, and throughout the United States. Kevin Righter works in planetary sciences in Houston, Texas. He has a lifelong interest in genealogy and Philadelphia’s industrial history. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org
Would branded goods, by any other name, not smell as sweet? Branding is one means by which businesses try to communicate with consumers, cultivate trust, and capture market share. The practice has a long history in America and was central to the attempts of producers to differentiate their products, consumers to navigate the uncertainties of the marketplace, and forgers to cash in on the value of a brand name.In a pair of book projects, Dr. Jennifer Black, associate professor of history at Misericordia University, investigates the cultivation of market-trust via branding, and the subsequent attempts by fakers to pass off their goods as the genuine article. Branding Trust: Advertising & Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals the process by which innovations in marketing techniques created the modern American brand landscape. In her new project, Consuming Deception, Black looks at the flip side of the coin, where fakes and forgeries attempt to make a living off the value of the value of established brands. Black examined numerous Hagley Library collections to tell her story.Find Black's new book here: https://www.pennpress.org/9781512825008/branding-trust/In support of her work, Dr. Black received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Baseball fans often tout the “timeless” quality of the sport; and the air in baseball stadiums can be thick with tradition. However, the business of baseball, its labor and management practices, and its marketing and revenue systems have been a work-in-progress from the first. Sports historian Evan Brown, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, is uncovering the inside baseball story of the mid-twentieth century in North America, when players moved across borders and between leagues, and management was seeking new ways to exert control over their franchises and employees. The changes in baseball reflected concurrent changes in American society: the relocation of population away from the Northeast toward the West and Sunbelt; the move by stadiums and teams out of downtown cores to suburban industrial parks; the skyrocketing importance of broadcast media to culture and the economy. Brown accessed the archive of Philadelphia Phillies materials held in the Hagley Library to uncover his story.In support of his research, Brown received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The DuPont Company had a presence in China beginning in the 1920s. With a business selling imported dyestuffs, the company operated out of Shanghai until the Japanese takeover of the country. Following the Second World War, the company resumed operations, continuing even while the fighting continued during the Chinese Civil War. With the 1949 ascent of the Chinese Communist Party, what would DuPont and other American businesses do with their Chinese operations?Historian Juanjuan Peng, associate professor at Georgia Southern University, used the DuPont Company archive at the Hagley Museum & Library to find out. To her surprise, American businessmen, including those employed by DuPont, were willing collaborators in with the new communist regime, which they hoped would invest heavily in industry. The Chinese entry in to the Korean War, however, and the American sanctions it elicited, forced them to recant and abandon their operations in China. Dr. Peng received support from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
What is the New Deal? During the election of 1932, Americans did not know what it was, but they knew that they wanted whatever it was. Dr. James Kimble’s research is on the history of this term from the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt first spoke it in the summer of 1932 to when he took office in March of 1933. Throughout the campaign season, FDR never defined what the “New Deal” meant and let the voters decide what it meant for themselves. One of the main ways he accomplished this was by reaching out to the electorate through the still new technology of radio, where he proved to be an effective communicator. At the same time, Chairman of the DNC, John J. Raskob and prior supporter of Democratic candidate for the presidency Alfred Smith, became a critic of FDR and the New Deal. Kimble’s research traces the origins of the term New Deal and Raskob’s evolving criticism of it and FDR. Dr. Kimble is a Professor of Communication and Arts at Seton Hall University and is a historian of domestic propaganda with an interest in FDR’s presidency. While at Hagley he used the Ernest Dichter who collected listenership data for FDR’s radio addresses and John J. Raskob papers for his evolving views on FDR and the Democratic party. His forthcoming book on this project will be published in 2025 or 2026.Dr. Kimble received support from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
New York City played a starring role in the story of American broadcast media, perhaps especially when it came to television. The city was both a major market for television, a proving ground for television techniques and technologies, and an on-screen character in televised news and entertainment. The very physicality of the city, with its canyon-like streets and towering steel and concrete edifices, played a material role in the development and popularization of American television.Historian and media scholar Richard Popp, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, is working on a book project exploring the close inter-relationship between New York City and broadcast media, with a focus on television and its associated industries and politics. Using numerous Hagley collections, including the RCA archive, the David Sarnoff papers, and the Margolies collection of travel ephemera, Dr. Popp uncovers a fascinating story of first adopters, regulators, and a society grappling with new, potent technologies. In support of his work, Popp received aid from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.
Artists bring a unique perspective to historical archives. Like any other researchers, they read and examine documents and collections to learn about their subject. Where their methods diverge is to use archival sources to shape the form and meaning of art created in two and three dimensions. The experiences of past people, accessed through the documents they left behind, can breathe life into the materials worked by an artist’s hands.Visual artist Emily Baker, assistant professor of sculpture at Georgia State University, specializes in metalworking. When she encountered the repeated claim that nylon is stronger than steel, she wanted to learn more about the material, its production, and its meaning. Conducting research in the DuPont Company archives held in the Hagley Library, Baker gathered a treasure trove of context information and specific examples of nylon being linked to consumer psychology. Most notable in this connection was the frequent reference made in the archive to sex and gender roles and boundaries and their relevance to nylon.In support of her work, Baker received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The American tobacco oligopoly of five firms loomed large in the mid-twentieth century thanks to the addictive qualities of their products and the massive investment they made in broadcast marketing communications, influencing the media experience of millions of Americans and the wider landscape of American media for generations. Media historian Peter Kovacs is conducting research on the influence of American tobacco firms on broadcast media, and argues that the tobacco company sponsorship of broadcast programs on radio and television profoundly shaped the form and content of both individual programs and the broadcast media industry at large. Using Hagley’s unrivalled collection of marketing and advertising archives, including the papers of ad agency giant BBD&O, Kovacs assembles a story of corporate competition over the airwaves from the first tobacco -sponsored radio program in 1924 to the banning of broadcast tobacco advertising in 1971.Dr. Kovacs received support for his research from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit hagley.org.
In this episode of Hagley History Hangout Roger Horowitz sits down with Alex Taylor to discuss his new book, Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Image in the 1960s, the first dedicated history of corporate patronage in post-war art. Taylor’s book considers how a wide range of artists were deeply immersed in the marketing strategies of big business during the 1960s and explored with multinational corporations new ways to use art for commercial gain. From Andy Warhol’s work for packaged goods manufacturers to Richard Serra’s involvement with the steel industry, Taylor demonstrates how major artists of the period provided brands with “forms of persuasion” that bolstered corporate power, prestige, and profit. Drawing on extensive original research conducted in artist, gallery, and corporate archives, Taylor recovers a flourishing field of promotional initiatives that saw artists, advertising creatives, and executives working around the same tables. Alex J. Taylor is associate professor of art and visual culture at the University of Pittsburgh. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, join us online at hagley.org.
What archive could possibly give you a total view of American business practice in the twentieth century? What industry touched and participated in nearly every other industry? What firm yields insight into a cavalcade of firms in one fell swoop? The answer to all of these questions is the BBD&O advertising agency archive held in the Hagley Museum & Library. Cynthia Meyers, professor emerita of Communication, Art, & Media at College of Mount Saint Vincent, has dedicated her career to uncovering the incredible stories of American advertising on twentieth-century airwaves. Her work highlights the significance of the BBD&O advertising firm and its archive to our understanding of business, culture, and technology as they evolved over the twentieth century. Whether your research interest lies in firms such as GM, GE, DuPont, Lever Bros, Proctor & Gamble; or in the details of radio and television production; or in the social dynamics of race and gender; or in a multitude of other directions, the advertising agency and market research collections held in the Hagley Library hold unique promise as a rich resource.For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
Cognitive changes occur across the human lifespan, with consequences for economic conditions. How people have understood these changes, and managed their interaction with life and work has changed over time. As industrialization sped up work, and enhanced the wealth of society, social scientists and business leaders struggled to better understand the aging process, and to address its implications in the workplace.In his dissertation project, James Leach, PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, uncovers the status of old age and retirement in the American corporate workplace between 1945 and 1986. During these decades, as more Americans considered pensions, social security, and freedom from poverty in old age to be theirs by right of membership in a rich, industrial, modern nation, corporations found ways to turn retirement to their own pecuniary advantage.In support of his work, Leach received an exploratory grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
How does a movement unite the disparate interests of producer and consumers? By directing their shared ire against a powerful middleman. That is how opponents of the Standard Oil monopoly on kerosene refining and distribution joined forces to take on the corporate giant.In his dissertation project, Minseok Jang, PhD candidate at the University of Albany, explores the materiality of kerosene and its impacts on people at every link in the commodity chain; from oil fields through refineries and pipelines to the homes and businesses of end-users. Jang argues that the unique qualities contemporaries perceived in kerosene created both opportunities and risks. When Standard Oil attempted to monopolize the opportunities while externalizing the risks, the firm goaded an array of people into united anti-monopolist action.In support of his work, Jang received an exploratory grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Joe Plasky talks about his efforts interviewing as many people as he can who worked for DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department between 1950 and 2000. Joe Plasky is a retired engineer from DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department and he has been collecting oral histories from former DuPont Textile Fibers employees for well over a decade. Every year, sometimes multiple times per year, Mr. Plasky deposits a batch of these oral histories with Hagley. Currently, the collection has approximately 260 interviews and counting. In this interview, Plasky talks about what inspired him to undertake a project of this size and how he feels the development of different kinds of polyesters, including Dacron and other fibers used for their elasticity in shapewear is an under-researched topic. He also shares some of the most interesting stories he’s heard while working on this project and shares what he hopes future researchers will be able to learn by utilizing these interviews. The entirety of the Oral Hstory Interviews with Former Employees of DuPont Company's Textile Fibers Department collection is available here: https://digital.hagley.org/textile_fibers_interviewsFor more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
Even the most favored workers of the New Deal order, white male heads of households with unionized industrial jobs, faced economic uncertainty in the form of irregularity of work and earnings. These workers and their families made ends meet with a variety of “casual” work arrangements; seasonal labor, barter, family interdependence, etc. Much of the rest of the American labor force in the post-World War Two period was entirely dependent upon the casual labor sector for their livelihoods. In her dissertation project, Maia Silber, PhD candidate in history at Princeton University, uncovers the experience of causal workers and their families in the 1940s and ‘50s United States. Drawing upon the varied archives of social workers, industrial firms, business organizations, and the labor-related institutions that emerged from the New Deal, Silber uncovers a social history of causal labor during the height of postwar American prosperity, when even relatively privileged workers had to improvise in order to survive. To support her work, Silber received research grants from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on funding opportunities and research, visit us online at hagley.org.
In this edition of Hagley History Hangout, Hannah Farber discusses her new prize-winning book, Underwriters of the United States, with Roger Horowitz. Her book traces how American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the formation of the United States. During American Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation’s institutional fabric. Farber’s book received the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history in 2023. Hannah Farber is assistant professor of history at Columbia University.For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the history of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
The distinctive landscape of south Florida has its roots in the attempt by mid-twentieth century developers to transform the “last frontier” in American into piles of cash. Where they succeeded there now reigns an over-developed suburban landscape of leisure dominated by residential spaces and amenities like golf courses and parks. The decades-long process has had profound consequences for the environment of Florida as well as the culture and politics of the United States at-large.Revealing this story through her research is Anna Andrzejewski, professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, whose latest book project steps from the typical Florida style suburban home, through the planned development, regional complexes, and national impacts to show how the south Florida landscape developed and why it has had such an outsized role in contemporary American history.In support of her work, Dr. Andrzejewski received the NEH-Hagley Fellowship. For more information on funding opportunities from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.
This special edition of the Hagley History Hangout features Dr. Margaret Mulrooney presenting her work on the DuPont Irish and celebrating the 20th Anniversary re-release of her book at an Author Talk event hosted by the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. Twenty years ago, Margaret Mulrooney’s history of the community of Irish immigrant workers at the du Pont powder yards, Black Powder, White Lace, was published to wide acclaim. Now, as much of the materials Mulrooney used in her research are now electronically available to the public, and as debates about immigration continue to rage, a new edition of the book is being published to remind readers of the rich materials available on the du Pont workers, and of Mulrooney’s powerful conclusions about immigrant communities in America. Explosives work was dangerous, but the du Ponts provided a host of benefits to their workers. As a result, the Irish remained loyal to their employers, convinced by their everyday experiences that their interests and the du Ponts’ were one and the same. Employing a wide array of sources, Mulrooney turns away from the worksite and toward the domestic sphere, revealing that powder mill families asserted their distinctive ethno-religious heritage at the same time as they embraced what U.S. capitalism had to offer.Margaret Mulrooney is a Professor of History at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She is the author of Deep Current: Race, Place and Memory in Wilmington, NC (2018) and the editor of Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 1845-1851 (2003).For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library join us online at hagley.org.
Young urban professional (yuppies for short) emerged as an archetype close to the heart of transformations taking place in American society during the 1970s and 1980s. These highly-educated individuals were products and architects of a new American economy geared toward financial services and willing cannibalize much of the rest of the economy for short-term profit. While elite universities had once turned out managers for manufacturing firms in midsize cities, by the 1980s their graduates were flocking into banking in major urban centers such as Chicago where the term yuppy originated, but most markedly New York. In his book project, Dr. Dylan Gottlieb, assistant professor at Bentley University and former NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellow, uncovers a social history of financialization through the lens of yuppies, their economic position, and their cultural proclivities. Among the markers of yuppiedom were an obsession with fitness, an interest in fine dining, and a drive to command cultural symbols as means of establishing their right to sit atop of an unequal and ultimately unjust hierarchy. Using a variety of source material, including marketing studies housed in the Hagley Library collections, Gottlieb tells a compelling story of social aspiration and dislocating change. In support of his work, Gottlieb received the 2021-2022 NEH-Hagley Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business, Culture, & Society from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.
Yugoslavian planners considered themselves to be architects of a third way “between the blocs,” aligned neither with the capitalist West nor the Communist East, but rather masters of their own socio-economic destiny. This ramified in the economy and on the streets of Yugoslav cities in the form of supermarkets and their larger kin department stores.Ivana Zimbrek, PhD candidate in history at Central European University, investigates the history of Yugoslav department stores as the product of professional imagination in a markedly international context. While the department store as a retail technology had its origins in the explicitly capitalist United States, Yugoislav planners admired its efficiency and “cultural level,” and believed that they could turn it toward state-socialist purposes. As a result, indigenized department stores populated the new neighborhoods of growing capital cities, and later gained a place in the historic centers of smaller towns throughout Yugoslavia. Zimbrek studied a diverse archive of retail and department store materials housed in the Hagley Library collections to better understand American precedents and to compare and contrast them with the Yugoslav experience.In support of her work Zimbrek received a research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, please visit us online at hagley.org.
Since World War II the old industrial cities of the northeast and Midwest USA have repeatedly sought to end periods of decline by seeking to renew their downtowns. Convention centers, sports stadiums, hospitals, and tourist-oriented investment have all been deployed in an effort to restore a tax base and reinvigorate urban areas. Just as repeatedly the efforts have failed to bring benefits to the residents of these cities, especially African Americans.Mark Rose, Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University, talks with Roger Horowitz about these dynamics, drawing on his recent book A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945 co-authored Roger Biles. Their book chronicles efforts to reinvigorate the downtowns of major American cities in order to reverse the process of urban decline focusing on St. Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. As city officials and business elites determined to reorganize their downtowns, deeply racialized politics sacrificed neighborhoods and the livelihoods of those pushed out. Yet, as Professor Rose explains, often than not costly efforts to bring about the hoped-for improvements failed to revitalize those cities, or even their downtowns. It is a telling story, one with relevance for those living and working in Northern Delaware. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us at hagley.org
Hilton Hotels started in Texas and swelled into a globe-straddling hospitality behemoth. Along the way company founder Conrad Hilton kept ideas about affordable luxury at the center of his business model. Among the affordable luxuries on offer in Hilton Hotels was an “eclectic modernist” design sensibility that placed the American consumer at the apex of a global cultural hierarchy. In her book project, Megan Elias, associate professor and director of the Gastronomy program at Boston University, traces a design history of Hilton Hotels. To uncover this story, Elias conducted research in multiple Hagley Library collections, such as the William Pahlmann Associates papers, and the Ernst Dichter papers. Among her key findings are how design decisions bore upon the business of hospitality at every turn. From architecture to furniture, food, and art, every aspect of the experience of a Hilton Hotel was crafted to appeal to consumer desires. Whereas hospitality had traditionally been an ersatz affair with uncomfortable boarding houses and public accommodations that compared unfavorably with the comforts of home. In the twentieth century, Hilton and competitor firms, transformed hospitality into an industry for the mass consumption of luxury, and made hotels better than homes. To support her research Dr. Elias received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.
America at the dawn of the twentieth century ran on anthracite coal. Burning the hard, lustrous fossil fuel heated millions of homes and powered locomotives, steamships, foundries, and factories. Nearly all of this coal came out of the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, mined by an army of workers who labored in the most dangerous industry in American for the lowest wages in the country. At about $1/day, anthracite coal miners in 1900 earned the same wage as ad their forebears eighty years previously. Hardship led some miners to organize for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union, but divisions along ethnic and class lines among miners limited their effectiveness. That is, until 1902.As shown in the research of Daniel Correia, professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, the alignment of the interests of the Eastern European immigrant mine “laborers” with those of the native and systemically favored mine “contractors” under the umbrella of the UMWA in 1902 created a uniquely advantageous moment for the labor organizers, and a uniquely perilous moment for the mine operators. The effects of this moment were long lasting. In its contours can be seen the early formation of patterns of labor relations, industrial organization, and policing prevalent today. In support of his work, Professor Correia received funding from the Center for the History of Business Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts join us online at hagley.org.
Railroads unite. Across time and space the railroad has tied together diverse peoples and places with literal and figurative bonds. An outstanding example of this historical process is the transfer and elaboration of a railroad technocracy from origins in the United States to efflorescence in the People’s Republic of China. In his dissertation project, Benjamin Kletzer, PhD candidate in modern Chinese history at the University of California at San Diego, explores the post-WWII history of the China national railway, its embrace of technocratic management, it relationship to the Chinese Communist Party, and its technical and organizational roots in the Pennsylvania Railroad. Using Hagley Library collections, Kletzer traces the story of a cohort of Chinese engineers who studied in the United States, funded in part by the U.S. military, and transferred their newly acquired expertise to the developing railway system in China. This cohort had a unique historical opportunity to shape Chinese railways due to the destruction of rails, rolling stock, and other railroad infrastructure during recurrent periods of instability: WWII, civil war, Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Over generations, the Chinese railway technocracy has gained momentum, and lead the development of heavy industrial capacity in the country. Today, the Chinese are world leaders in railroad technology and construction, and no longer need to borrow from international peers. This twenty-first century success builds upon deeper twentieth-century foundations.In support of his research, Kletzer received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit hagley.org.
Sometimes, oral history makes up for a shortfall in the archival record, or adds depth and greater context to existing archival records. RCA had many short-lived projects in the 1960s and 1970s which aren’t as well documented as some of their other developments. Kevin Bunch is a writer and communications specialist for the International Joint Commission and an independent researcher of video game history, centered his research at Hagley on RCA in the 1970s. In 1977 RCA released their own home video game console, the RCA Studio II. The device, which played games in black and white, had five built-in games and 11 cartridges released over the course of its short life- it was discontinued in 1978. Bunch interviewed several members of the Studio II development team, as well as developers who worked on RCAs other endeavors including some 1960s arcade machines, and a short-lived virtual reality project in the 1990s. Bunch’s interviews included one with Joyce Weisbecker, an independent game developer and the daughter of Joseph Weisbecker who developed the 1802 chip which powered the Studio II console. Bunch is currently working on a book about the history of RCA and videogames and the interviews he conducted for this project will become a part of Hagley’s digital archives on publication. In support of his research Bunch received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library.
Historians of technology once famously asked, “does technology drive history?” Their answer was, “it depends.” The phenomena of history do not float atop of the changes within material practices and technology, but neither do they stand apart from them; the two are intimately entwined in the contingent, intermittent unfolding of history. The challenge for the historian is to open the black box of technology, and to make its social setting and connection explicit to allow for a better understanding of its role in continuity and change over time. Alexander Liebman, geographer and PhD candidate at Rutgers University, asks how this complicated set of interrelated factors have ramified upon the ground in agricultural spaces as twentieth-century engineers, planners, and others applied the technologies of computation and automation to farming. Among the major figures in this story was Arthur Hall, an engineer at Bell Laboratories and innovator in computerized agriculture. His patented 1970s-era “autofarm” aimed to save the small family farm by promoting the farmer from laborer to manager, and equipping him or her with a system of computerized, automated tools to grow, harvest, and process crops from a central indoor terminal. While Hall’s particular system did not change the world of agriculture, his ideas were part of a wider turn toward computer technologies as a solution to problems in American farming. In that regard, the “autofarm” is still with us, and is a touchstone in the history that has led to self-driving tractors and drone fleets of twenty-first-century American farms. In support of his research Liebman received funding form the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit us online at hagley.org.
Long before automobiles roll off the assembly line, their many components are manufactured by a sprawling constellation of smaller businesses that supply the makers of finished automobiles. This automobile supply chain began in the 1920s within the Detroit metropolitan area, and by the 1960s had swollen to embrace an area roughly 600 miles in radius with its core remaining in southeast Michigan. The story of how the automobile supply chain developed during the first half of the twentieth century, and why it took the specific spatial and economic form that it did, are the subjects of a dissertation project by Kevin Moskowitz, PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington.To uncover his story, Moskowitz dug into the archives of the American Iron & Steel Institute and the National Bronze & Aluminum Company at the Hagley Library. The latter firm supplied cast cylinder heads and other engine components to Detroit automakers from its location in Cleveland. The company boomed when orders were large, but struggled during the automotive industry’s periodic downturns. While WWII gave the firm a boost, rampant racism, white supremacy, and nativism lead to attacks against the company, its integrated workforce, and its German-American management. The ups and downs of this firm, while unusually well-documented, offer insight into the wider world of the twentieth-century automobile supply chain.In support of his work Kevin Moskowitz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit hagley.org.
Scholars have written histories of public relations. Scholars have written histories of labor. Scholars had yet to bring the two histories into conversation with one another, that is until Patricia Curtin, professor at the University of Oregon, started her latest book project. Dr. Curtin’s research illustrates the many connections between public relations and American labor in the early twentieth century.Whereas capital had its public relations gurus, such as Ivy Lee, so too did the labor movement, with Mother Jones and the IWW leading the way. The struggle for control over firms, economic resources, and business management pivoted, at least in part, on public opinion. Neither capital nor labor could afford to lose the opportunity to cultivate public support, and both sides went at it with gusto. Over the long term, capital had the upper hand. But successful and popular unionization efforts in the twenty-first century, such as that organized by Starbucks workers, may indicate a turning tide in the story.In support of her work, professor Curtin received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit us online at hagley.org.
DuPont was in the fashion business. The industrial giant cultivated markets for its novel synthetic textiles, such as Rayon, by interfacing with the wider world of fashion. This process brought one Alexis Ureyvitch Sommaripa, later known as “The Mad Russian,” to prominence. This elegant, cultured man was born in the Russian Empire in Odessa, Ukraine, fled the revolution as a teenager, and migrated to the United States with the goal to become “a rich American.” From there, his path led him through Harvard, Alabama, Lowell, Buffalo, to New York City. Along the way, he shaped the ways in which DuPont did business, and how American women preferred to dress.Professor Regina Blaszczyk, business historian at the University of Leeds, tells the story of Sommaripa as part of her book project, The Synthetics Revolution. Sommaripa developed statistical methods to describe the textile and fashion markets, used this information to influence production techniques, and eventually headed the DuPont Fabric Development Service. The FDS was a corporate organ designed to triangulate between DuPont, textile makers, and American consumers. During the 1930s, its influence and its significance of synthetic materials to the fashion industry grew, until by 1940 the “average American woman” wanted not silk, but a Rayon dress. In support of her research, professor Blaszczyk received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. For more Hagley History Hangouts and for more information on the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.
Corporate futurists made a living with their imaginations. These professional prognosticators spent their time looking at the world around them, observing its apparent changes and trends, and reporting to business and political leaders proscribed methods for interpreting and preparing for the future. Dr. Gavin Benke, senior lecturer at Boston University, dug into multiple Hagley Library collections, including those of the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and Conference Board, to explore the careers and influence of twentieth-century corporate futurists. Beginning in the 1960s, corporate futurists extrapolated from social trends to predict a future business environment where people would demand a higher level of service from corporations, and turn to corporations for leadership, structure, and meaning in the post-national world economy then developing. Whereas during the 1970s this vision found eager listeners in major American corporations, trade associations, and perhaps especially among politicians, its practical impacts were limited. By the 1980s, what influence corporate futurists possessed had ebbed away following the triumphant union of neoliberal economic and neoconservative politics, which they had markedly failed to predict. Nevertheless, the corporate futurists provide a unique window into the historically situated worlds of business and planning. In support of his work Dr. Benke received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.
The Empire of Bethlehem Steel stretched from a small eastern-Pennsylvania city across the United States and down to Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil. It encompassed dozens of plants, concerns, and subsidiary firms, and touched the lives of millions of people across multiple continents. During a century (1880s-1980s) of involvement in Latin America, Bethlehem Steel Company imported cheap materials (iron, manganese) while exporting technical, corporate, and social practices developed in the United States.
Telling this story is Dr. Cory Fischer Hoffman, visiting assistant professor at Lafayette College, whose research into the Bethlehem Steel Company uncovers the global connections that underpinned company success over the twentieth century. Company interests in the mineral economy of Latin America persisted from wholly-owned iron mines in Cuba Chile, through their loss during the period of “resource nationalism” in the region, to minority-stake ownership of manganese mines in Mexico and Brazil. Using the Bethlehem Steel collections held by the Hagley Library, Fischer Hoffman reveals that the company as a chief architect and major beneficiary of globalization.
For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, join us online at hagley.org.
From humble beginnings wholesaling at a small tobacconist-hairdresser shop in 1915, the London Rubber Company rapidly became the UK's biggest postwar producer and exporter of disposable rubber condoms. A first-mover and innovator, the company's continuous product development and strong brands (including Durex) allowed it to dominate supply to the retail trade and family planning clinics, leading it to intercede in the burgeoning women's market.
When oral contraceptives came along, however, the company was caught in a bind between defending condoms against the pill and claiming a segment of the new birth control market for itself. In this first major study on the company, Jessica Borge shows how, despite the "unmentionable" status of condoms that inhibited advertising in the early twentieth century, aggressive business practices were successfully deployed to protect the monopoly and squash competition. Through close, evidence-based examination of LRC's first fifty years, encompassing its most challenging decades, the 1950s and 1960s, as well as an overview of later years including the AIDS crisis, Borge argues that the story of the modern disposable condom in Britain is really the story of the London Rubber Company, the circumstances that befell it, the struggles that beset it, the causes that opposed it, and the opportunities it created for itself.
LRC's historic intervention in and contribution to female contraceptive practices sits uneasily with existing narratives centered on women's control of reproduction, but the time has come, Borge argues, for the condom to find its way back to the center of these debates. Protective Practices thereby re-examines a key transitional moment in social and cultural history through the lens of this unusual case study.
Dr. Jessica Borge is a research associate , at Archives and Research Collections, King's College, London and a researcher in the private sector.
During the 1920s, major American corporations established in-house labor unions to address worker agitation. Labor historian Alex John Fleet, PhD candidate at Wayne State University, explores the phenomenon in his dissertation research. Seeking to uncover how company unions intersected with changing labor-management relations, and broader changes in the workplace social environment, Fleet explored the archives of several large firms of the era, notably Goodyear rubber held in Ohio, and Bethlehem Steel held at the Hagley Library. Both companies established in-house labor unions, and organized means for worker representatives to air and possibly seek redress of grievances.
Company unions were not all made the same. Goodyear based its “industrial assembly” on the United States Congress, and endowed it with the capacity to discuss wages and other matters critical to worker satisfaction. Nevertheless, assembly representatives received additional pay from the company, locking them into a conflict of interests between representing labor and representing management. Bethlehem Steel’s company union was more limited, acting as a space for the discussion of a limited range of matters absent enforcement mechanism. While some of these company unions allowed workers to bargain for better wages and conditions, they all allowed employers to stave off organizing attempts by independent labor unions. The era of company unions ended with 1930s New Deal-era reforms, although some company unions lived on under the guise of independent entities.
In support of his research, Alex Fleet received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit hagley.org.
Which is better for business, keeping workers happy, or keeping workers in line? The movement for corporate social responsibility (CSR) argued that management and workers shared a partnership that could multiply productivity and profits if properly nurtured. While labor unrest had roiled the business world for a generation, many leading American firms reacted by maintaining paramilitary private police forces. Not only was this expensive, but it was also ineffective and often counterproductive to managerial goals. During the early twentieth century a new set of ideas about how to manage workers for company benefit emerged with an opposite set of techniques.
Dr. Jeffrey Muldoon examines this turn toward CSR, or “welfare capitalism,” as enacted by the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company firm, among the leading lights of the movement in the United States. By diving especially into the John J. Raskob papers, Muldoon uncovered the many social and financial methods deployed by DuPont management to create a more satisfied, stable, and productive workforce. These included social events and organizations, a company baseball team, financial aid for housing and medical emergencies, and workplace safety activities. These practices benefitted the workers, who were encouraged to identify with the company, and the company bottom line where increased productivity translated to higher profits.
In support of his research, Dr. Muldoon received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on grant and fellowship opportunities, visit hagley.org.
In "A Medicated Empire," Dr. Timothy Yang, associate professor at the University of Georgia, explores the history of Japan's pharmaceutical industry in the early twentieth century through a close account of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, one of East Asia's most influential drug companies from the late 1910s through the early 1950s. Focusing on Hoshi's connections to Japan's emerging nation-state and empire, and on the ways in which it embraced an ideology of modern medicine as a humanitarian endeavor for greater social good, Yang shows how the industry promoted a hygienic, middle-class culture that was part of Japan's national development and imperial expansion.
Yang makes clear that the company's fortunes had less to do with scientific breakthroughs and medical innovations than with Japan's web of social, political, and economic relations. He lays bare Hoshi's business strategies and its connections with politicians and bureaucrats, and he describes how public health authorities dismissed many of its products as placebos at best and poisons at worst. Hoshi, like other pharmaceutical companies of the time, depended on resources and markets opened up, often violently, through colonization. Combining global histories of business, medicine, and imperialism, A Medicated Empire shows how the development of the pharmaceutical industry simultaneously supported and subverted regimes of public health at home and abroad (from the publisher, Cornell University Press).
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at hagley.org.
What happens to jobs when technology changes? How do new technologies change the ways people experience and think about work? Economic historian Ben Schneider, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Work Research Institute at Oslo Metropolitan University, explores these questions and more in his research on technology and work. Taking textile manufacturing and transportation as his case studies, Dr. Schneider developed a novel matrix for analyzing changes in work over time as measured not only quantitatively by wages and hours, but also qualitatively by security, satisfaction, safety, and similar social metrics. This framework allows him to recover and analyze changes in work regimes brought about or otherwise influenced by changes in technology.
Dr. Schneider used multiple Hagley Library collections to uncover his story, including materials from our world-class archive of United States railroad companies, like the Pennsylvania Rail Road, the Reading Rail Road, and others. Reading this archive through his framework, Schneider show how the adoption of macro-technologies, like the railroad itself, and micro-technologies, like steel rails within the railroad, ramified through the work lives of millions of people. To conduct this research, Schneider received support from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, join us online at hagley.org.
Hudson Maxim wanted his lake, and he didn’t mind twisting some arms to get it. The early-twentieth-century investor in Lake Hopatcong property wished to make it a destination for well-heeled travelers and pleasure seekers. Making his plans difficult were a cadre of challenges from intransigent executives, to the Morris Canal, to the hydrography of the lake itself.
Environmental scholar Peter Astras, PhD candidate at St. Johns University, tells the tale of Lake Hopatcong as an object of desire, development, and indeterminate outcomes. Astras came to the Hagley Library to explore the Hudson Maxim papers, a collection that ranges across the wide array of the man’s business and personal interests. Through careful reading of the archive, he was able to piece together a story that situates the lake in broader context of economic and environmental change.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us on line at www.hagley.org.
What did the Cold War sound like? How did political ideologies shape the differing experiences of musicians and consumers in the capitalist versus the communist world? Did the Iron Curtain muffle the raucous sounds of western popular music? Or were consumers in communist countries able to access capitalist pop? All these questions and more find answers in the work of cultural historian, and 2022 Hagley-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Sven Kube.
Blending archival research with oral history and personal experiences, Kube uncovers the fascinating story of a worldwide youth culture of popular music bisected by the geopolitical divisions of the Cold War period. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the grassroots innovation taking place in western popular music could not be replicated in the centrally-planned economies of the east. Nevertheless, eastern consumers, especially in the German Democratic Republic, got their hands (and ears) on novel music and sonic forms emanating from the west. Kube traces these connection through the mechanisms of technology transfer, cultural transmission, and economic policy.
In support of his scholarship, Sven Kube received the Hagley-NEH postdoctoral fellowship from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit hagley.org.
The tallest building of its day opened as the Great Depression really began to squeeze the American economy. Was the Empire State Building a gigantic folly perpetrated by men with sky-scraping egos? Folks in the 1930s thought so, calling the monument the “Empty State Building,” because so little of its space had been rented. Yet, when viewed from the vantage of the twenty-first century through the lens of archival documents, the Empire State Building resolves into an economically and culturally successful investment made by people with enormous fortunes motivated both by egotism and broad vision.
Economist Jason Barr, professor at Rutgers University - Newark, dug into the records of John J. Raskob and Pierre Samuel du Pont records held by the Hagley Library to uncover an insider’s story of the Empire State Building. Conceived by Raskob, and backed by du Pont, the project launched in 1929, weeks before the stock market crash, and opened for business in 1931, after a record-setting rapid construction. While the building did sit mostly empty until the 1940s, it nevertheless generated a return, especially through charging admission to the observation deck. This invitation for the public to experience the building characterized the Empire State Building legacy, which has grown to influence city builders the word over.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
How many species had a hand in making that glass of beer? From the perspective of environmental history, human artefacts like beer result from more-than-human collaboration across time. Barley plants, hop vines, single-cell organisms, and a multiplicity of humans work together to bring beer into existence, and react to changes in the meteorological and economic climates. Taking these interactions seriously allows us to better understand the history of American brewing, and its implications for the future of business in an era of climate change.
Environmental historian Cody Patton, PhD candidate at Ohio State University, is uncovering this history in his dissertation project. Using multiple Hagley Library collections, including our unrivaled collection of trade journals and an oral history of craft brewing, Patton traces the many connections between environmental and economic factors in American history, as mediated by the brewing and consumption of beer. Scientific knowledge, industrial practice, professionalization, standardization, and cultural evolution entangled with and informed the story of American beer from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
Concentrated market power and the weakened sway of corporate stakeholders over management have emerged as leading concerns of American political economy. In his book, Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Power, Profits, and Productivity in Modern America, Samuel Milner provides a historical context for contemporary efforts to resolve these anxieties by examining the contest to control the distribution of corporate income during the mid‑twentieth century. During this “Golden Age of American Capitalism,” apprehension about the debilitating consequences of industrial concentration fueled efforts to ensure that management would share the fruits of progress with workers, consumers, and society as a whole. Focusing on wage and price determination in steel, automobiles, and electrical equipment, Milner reveals how the management of concentrated industries understood its ability to distribute income to its stakeholders as well as why economists, courts, and public policymakers struggled to curtail the exercise of that market power at its source.
Samuel Milner earned his Ph.D. in American economic history from Yale University and currently is enrolled in the University of Chicago law school. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.
Tax the Rich: Teachers’ Fight to Fund Public Schools with Kelly Goodman
Education is among the largest public expenditures in the United States. How is school funding determined, and by whom? Between 1930 and 1980, teachers organized with allies to create new streams of funding to support public education, while their opponents counter-organized to reduce the ability of state governments to collect taxes and fund public services. By the end of the era, anti-tax interests have gained the ascendant, divided the pro-tax coalition, and put teachers on their back heel.
Kelly Goodman, adjunct professor at West Chester University, uncovers this tale as it unfolded in California and Michigan with innovative archival research and original analysis. Using the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce collections held at the Hagley Library, Dr. Goodman did real detective work to piece together the reaction against progressive taxation organized by business interests. The pro-business, anti-tax community organized systems to develop and promote model legislation, which enabled it to assume leadership over public policy decisions.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
Silence speaks volumes. Especially silences in historical memory, which reflect the values of a society as it chooses what and whom to remember. The du Pont family’s arrival in the United States is a well-worn tale of visionary men; what about the women of the family, their lives, perspectives, and contributions? The low profile of du Pont women in historical memory compared to that of their male counterparts reflects not a lack of sources or evidence (there is plenty of both), but a choice by researchers, writers, and historians to emphasize certain aspects of the story, and to forget other parts deemed less significant.
Kelsey McNiff, associate professor of English at Endicott College, addresses this discrepancy in her original research on the lives of du Pont family women. Supported by an exploratory grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, Dr. McNiff dug into the rich collections of du Pont family archives held by the Hagley Library. These sources added a wealth of evidence to flesh out the lives of the du Pont women, which in turn allows professor McNiff to enrich our understanding of society in eighteenth-century France.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, join us online at www.hagley.org.
Imagine an office without walls or hierarchies, a space that allows for the free and open exchange of ideas and a way to work… better. How would one implement this? More importantly, what happens when design ideals collide with workplace reality? Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler’s new book, Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office answers these questions. Kauffman-Buhler traces the evolution of the brightly colored officescapes of the 1960s and 1970s to the cubicles of the 1980s and 1990s and analyzes these changing office spaces as design concepts promoted by architects, designers, and furniture makers, and as work space used by organizations and their employees.
Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler is an Assistant Professor at the Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her research focuses on the interactions and intersections of people, space, and things in everyday life. To support her work, Dr. Kaufmann-Buhler received research funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more, visit hagley.org.
Twenty-first-century Americans are saturated with visual imagery and punchy messages authored by large organizations. This was not always so. Techniques for standardized mass communication developed in the late nineteenth century, such as photography, inexpensive printing, “magic lanterns,” and motion pictures, offered organization leaders unprecedented means to create shared understandings of facts and symbols across large groups of people. The study of the process by which symbolic meanings are promulgated through social groups is called semiotics, and the period between the 1880s and the 1950s offers the semiotician a rich study of dramatic change.
Derek Vouri-Richard, a PhD candidate in American Studies at the College of William & Mary, came to the Hagley Library to research the semiotics of corporate communications. He dug into multiple collections and discovered the development of a distinctive vocabulary of visual images paired with clear and concise text that characterized the corporate semiotics of the period. Companies such as National Cash Register, E.I. du Pont, and General Motors took part in this movement, and in so doing reshaped the landscape of American communications and symbolic understanding.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
How many fish can people catch before we exhaust the supply? Fisheries managers have deployed the language and techniques of science since the mid-nineteenth century in an intergenerational attempt to find out. Their efforts were part of a longer debate over whether the seas are an inexhaustible resource for human exploitation, or whether there are practical limits to the sustainability of marine resource extraction. Scientists developed models of fish reproduction, and theories of ecological stability, that inform the approach taken by regulators toward fishery management. Yet, as scientific understanding has evolved over two centuries, public regulation and popular understanding of fishing industries has lagged behind.
Historian of science Aaron Van Neste suggests that the application of scientific understandings to fisheries management has had unintended consequences for marine ecology, and for the economic sustainability of the industry. The scientific perspective on fisheries has changed from a beginning in the 1860s with a scientific report that claimed to demonstrate the inexhaustibility of the sea, to early twentieth-century theories of stable state ecology, and into the twenty-first century with holistic theories of ecological change. These ideas have filtered into policy debates and shaped the composition of both marine ecosystems and of the industries reliant upon them. Climate change, the ultimate demonstration that the environment is subject to major changes, poses a challenge to systems of fishery management based upon outdated science.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
Oil palms are ubiquitous - grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in scores of packaged products, from lipstick and soap to margarine and cookies. And as Jonathan E. Robins shows, sweeping social transformations carried the plant around the planet. First brought to the global stage in the holds of slave ships, palm oil became a quintessential commodity in the Industrial Revolution. Imperialists hungry for cheap fat subjugated Africa’s oil palm landscapes and the people who worked them. In the twentieth century, the World Bank promulgated oil palm agriculture as a panacea to rural development in Southeast Asia and across the tropics. As plantation companies tore into rainforests, evicting farmers in the name of progress, the oil palm continued its rise to dominance, sparking new controversies over trade, land and labor rights, human health, and the environment.
By telling the story of the oil palm across multiple centuries and continents, Robins demonstrates how the fruits of an African palm tree became a key commodity in the story of global capitalism, beginning in the eras of slavery and imperialism, persisting through decolonization, and stretching to the present day.
Jonathan Robins is assistant professor of history at Michigan Technological University. In support of his research, Dr. Robins received support from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, visit hagley.org.
Millions of black Americans left the Deep South fleeing violence and seeking opportunity during the Great Migration, one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in twentieth-century American history. Some communities welcomed these newcomers with open arms, going so far as to actively recruit them as industrial labor, while others attempted to shut their doors, to maintain their homogeneity through the threat of violence against black people. These different reactions could take place in towns adjacent to one another, with locally-specific causes shaping the divergence.
Social historian Matthew O’Neal, PhD candidate at the University of Georgia, uncovers the story of two eastern-Kentucky towns that reacted differently to the Great Migration: Lynch, a U.S. Steel company town which became a relatively diverse, welcoming community, and Corbin, a railroad hub that became an infamous “sundown town,” or place unsafe for black people to live in or visit. The economic base of wither town, and the resulting social organizations within them, shaped the divergence. O’Neal notes the policies of racial inclusion or exclusion that characterized the unions attached to the steel versus the railroad industry as one source. Rising from parochial concerns, and local bigotry, a system of shadow segregation grew outside of the Deep South, and continues to shape American society in the twenty-first century.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández’s book Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940 explores how the gender-specific cultures of sewing and embroidery shaped the US Singer Sewing Machine Company’s operations. Using the cases of Spain and Mexico, Fernandez details how the cultural, everyday realm of female use of sewing machines for family or business purposes influenced corporate organization and marketing strategy. In those places local agents, both men and women, developed and expanded Singer’s selling system such that this American-based multinational company assumed a domestic guise because of its focus on the private sphere of the home. In this way Fernandez genders the corporation, especially the intersection between feminine domesticity, commerce, and corporate strategy.
Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández is the Digital Editor of the Business History Conference and Digital Heritage Manager at the University of Florida. She received her Ph D in history from Florida International University in 2013.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
What is the purpose of an American corporation? Is it to serve as an integral organ of society, generating plural benefits for owners, workers, communities, and the general public alike? Or is it strictly to generate monetary benefit for its owners? During the twentieth century, the dominant model of the American corporation shifted from the former to the latter. This so-called shareholder value revolution had profound consequences for American political economy and society.
Historian Sean Delehanty, PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University, uncovers the multiple dimensions of this story as it unfolded between the 1960s and 1990s. Using the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers collections, Delehanty traces how abstract theories created by academic economists connected with the predations of corporate raiders and the self-interested activism of portfolio managers to yield stunning changes to the American corporate landscape. This “revolution” has had profound consequences for twenty-first century America, notably on our surging inequality.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
Americans love cows. The United States possesses an entire economic sector geared for rearing, feeding, slaughtering, shipping, and eating the big-eyed ruminants. So all-encompassing is the American cattle-industrial complex that it helps determine what crops are grown on what land, what is done with the waste materials from chemical and food processing, the composition of soils, the purity of air and water, and the health effects of eating your dinner. How has the American love of cows come to shape our world so profoundly?
Historian and anthropologist Nicole Welk-Joerger seeks answers in her research on cattle and sustainability in the United States. Taking a dual approach that involves ethnographic fieldwork and historical research in the archive, Dr. Welk-Joerger traces the growth of the livestock feed industry from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, to its dominance of the economic scene in the early twenty-first century. Key to this history is the changing ideas Americans had about their cattle, from hooved factories to sacred objects, which demonstrates how we became a ruman nation.
In support of her research, Dr. Welk-Joerger received the NEH-Hagley post-doctoral fellowship. For more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society and the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.
Did the American independent inventor ever go extinct? In his new book, American Independent Inventors In An Era of Corporate R&D, Eric S. Hintz argues that they persisted despite the development of corporate R&D during the twentieth century.
In his new book Hintz explores the relationship between independent inventors and corporate R&D departments. While corporate R&D departments did eventually supplant independent inventors in terms of annual patents per year, independent inventors never faded away. Corporate R&D labs often benefited from larger budgets, and stronger political connections than independent inventors. Still, this relationship wasn’t strictly adversarial, often times corporate labs found themselves working with independent inventors, whether by licensing their patents or bringing them on as temporary consultants.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit www.hagley.org.
How did citrus fruit come to carry its particular meaning in American consumer culture? Visual artist Suzy Kopf, instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, visited the Hagley Library to research citrus companies’ efforts to sell their products to Americans. What she found was a much deeper story of how changing technologies, markets, and popular culture made citrus, and its semitropical cousin avocado, into a beacon of sunshine, fun, and desirability.
Supported by an exploratory grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, Kopf dug into a variety of collections to uncover the untold stories of American citrus in the twentieth century. From produce marketing photographs, to real estate and vacation pamphlets, to instructional booklets for citrus growers and grocery store operators, Kopf found a wealth of materials in the Hagley archives to inform and inspire her artwork in multiple media.
Images referred to in this interview can be found at www.hagley.org/research/history-hangout-suzy-kopf.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and for more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, join us online at www.hagley.org.
Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Rebecca Altman about her research into the intimate history of synthetic materials, industrial chemistry, & the human body. Altman, an environmental sociologist, has made extensive use of the Hagley Library’s vast collection of digitized materials available worldwide at digital.hagley.org.
Cattle drinking from a creek near the Ohio River ingest PFAS and become unwitting agents for the circulation of synthetic materials through the natural world. The legacies of industrial chemistry lace together society and the environment, making synthetic materials such as plastic an ideal location to study the historical relationship that exists between social and natural forces. Altman combines research from across archives to piece together a story of chemical legacies within and all around us.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
The Avon lady going door to door is a part of the popular American memory. From its founding in the nineteenth century Avon recruited women to make up its direct sales force, and later its emerging middle management class, encouraging them to take ownership of their own small business and to earn an income on their own. Many women were enthusiastic to heed this call and sell beauty and household products to their friends and neighbors. In her recently published book, Ding Dong! Avon Calling! The Women and Men of Avon Products Incorporated, Katina Manko traces the origins and growth of Avon from its founding as the California Perfume Company to the restructuring of the 2010s. Using company records and the personal correspondence of sales representatives, Manko writes a history of the company’s growth from a small seller of perfumes in the United States to an international beauty behemoth. She also explores the reasons behind how, in spite of Avon's emphasis on hiring women and allowing them to run their own business, women did not join the highest levels of Avon’s management until the latter part of the 1990s
Dr. Katina Manko is an independent historian and a graduate of the University of Delaware’s Hagley program. She currently teaches history for the Yeshiva University High School for girls. She previously taught at Bard College, Ramapo College, and Merrimack College More information on her book can be found here.
Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Li Cornfeld about her research into the history of theatrical live performance as a means of unveiling and promoting novel technologies. In support of her project, Cornfeld, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute, received a NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellowship from Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
A man in a black turtleneck stands upon a spot-lit stage and holds aloft a small rectangular object to the audible adulation of crowded onlookers. The showman’s spectacle of technology demos may be a familiar one, but its many variations, entanglement with society, and surprisingly deep history make it a rich site for inquiry. Li Cornfeld combines ethnographic field work in technology trade shows with archival research to tell a complex story about how theatrics shapes the meaning ascribed to technologies even before they reach the consumer.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Lara Freidenfelds about her research into the history of marketers’ and advertisers’ intense targeting of pregnant women, and its implications for early pregnancy loss. In support of her project, Freidenfelds, a historian of science, received a research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
Pregnant women today face a barrage of advertising designed to lock-in brand loyalty during an emotionally and culturally sensitive time. The pressure to buy and consume and participate in the market may begin with the first hint of pregnancy. This was not always the case. Dr. Freidenfelds discovered that it took decades of deliberate effort to develop the techniques and infrastructures that pregnant women and new parents face today in American consumer culture. The story of one brand of baby bottle unlocked the fascinating tale.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
In Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain explores how fast food restaurants saturated black neighborhoods and became, as well, a focal point in the development of “black capitalism.” To tell this story, she charts a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who―in the troubled years after King's assassination―believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. Synthesizing years of research, Franchise tells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to wither.
Marcia Chatelain is a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University, and is a leading public voice on the history of race, education, and food culture. The author of South Side Girls, Chatelain lives in Washington, DC. Franchise was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history.
Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Roger Bailey about his research into how naval officers’ regional identities and beliefs about race, slavery, & territorial expansion affected their command decisions. In support of his project, Bailey, a PhD candidate in history at the University of Maryland, received a Henry Belin du Pont dissertation fellowship from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
During the early nineteenth century, naval officers acted as the cutting edge of U.S. foreign policy, and while far from Washington often made decisions impacting geopolitics with only their own values and training to guide them. Whereas the regional and cultural background naval officers brought with them into service profoundly shaped their attitudes and choices, the unity provided by professional service to an ambitious nation state counterbalanced the divisions of sectional identity. At least until the didn’t.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dan Traficonte about his research into federal programs for technology development and their relationship with private industrial interests. In support of his project, Traficonte, a PhD candidate in urban studies & planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received an exploratory research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
During the twentieth century, the United States federal government emerged as a global leader in the research and development of advanced technologies. Should the public retain patent rights to the innovations made with public money? Debate over this question roiled the business and industrial community, as 1930s-era kneejerk antipathy to state involvement gave way to eager cooperation with the state in the postwar period, before lapsing once more into antipathy from the 1980s. Meanwhile, private contractors have made fortunes by assuming proprietorship of technologies developed by NASA, DARPA, and other federal innovation agencies.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
Hagley oral historian Ben Spohn interviews Grace Ong Yan about her recent book, Building Brands: Corporations and Modern Architecture. In her book, Ong Yan explores the development of corporate Modernism through architectural branding. She does this by examining the design and construction of four corporate headquarters: the PSFS Building by George Howe and William Lescaze, the Johnson Wax Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lever House by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the Röhm & Haas Building by Pietro Belluschi. Ong Yan draws on company archives to detail the relationships between company leaders and architects to communicate their company’s identity and messaging to the general public through the medium of architecture.
Grace Ong Yan, Ph.D. is an author, architectural historian, educator, and designer. She is currently Assistant Professor in Interior Design & Interior Architecture at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Ong Yan Co-edited Architect: In the Words of the Pritzker Prize Laureates. She is also an architect and interior designer as Ong Yan Studios.
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Gregory Hargreaves interviews Kevin Bunch about his research into the early history of video games, and his innovative use of Hagley materials to recreate forgotten games. In support of his project, Bunch, a writer & communications specialist at the International Joint Commission, received support from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
What makes a video game system commercially successful, and is it possible to resurrect failed and forgotten video games? The RCA collections at the Hagley Library hold the answer to these questions and many more, and the work of Kevin Bunch bring them to light. Combining archival research, oral history, data retrieval, and game emulation, Bunch brings forgotten aspects of twentieth-century computer and video game history to life for a new generation.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Deirdre Evans-Pritchard about her media literacy project “Screentime: An Interactive Exhibition.” In support of her project, Evans-Pritchard, an art historian & film studies scholar at the University of Maryland, Global and Executive Director of the DC Independent Film Festival, received a Henry Belin du Pont Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
Are screens neutral carriers of information, or do they reshape messages and reshape society, too? In “Screentime,” Evans-Pritchard considers the contrasting values assigned to television by businessman David Sarnoff, famous for running RCA & NBC, and for evangelizing television, and media critic Marshall McLuhan, who insisted that the medium was the message. This twentieth-century debate rings ominously in the ears of early-twenty first-century Americans embroiled in their own controversies over the role media play in ordering, and disordering, society. Research in the Hagley collections sheds light on this past moment with striking significance to the present.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
In the course of the twentieth century, Italy succeeded in establishing itself as one of the world's preeminent fashion capitals, despite the centuries-old predominance of Paris and London. This book traces the story of how this came to be, guiding readers through the major cultural and economic revolutions of twentieth-century Italy and how they shaped the consumption practices and material lives of everyday Italians. In the interview, Emanuela Scarpellini explores the economic and cultural changes that made it possible for Italian fashion to rise to world prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. She also uncovers the important role played by the DuPont Company in this process, using documents from the Hagley archives to show the company encouraged and promoted the use of synthetic fibers in clothes created by Italian designers.
Emanuela Scarpellini is Professor of Modern History at the University of Milan, Italy. She is the author of several books, including Material Nation: A Consumer's History of Modern Italy (2011) and Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present (Palgrave, 2016).
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Program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Karen Mahar about her book project “Corner Office: Masculinity & the American Business Executive.” In support of her project, Mahan, an assistant professor, and co-director of American Studies at Siena College, received an NEH-Hagley fellowship from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Corner Office,” Mahan considers the many ways ideas of masculinity have shaped and been shaped by the development of American business practices. Among the most fascinating documents discovered by Dr. Mahar in the Hagley collections was a manual for identifying executive potential in employees, complete with physical characteristics more reminiscent of a livestock catalog than a human resources document. Dr. Mahar speculates that century-old notions that associate masculinity with executive ability continue to shape our workforce and our wider world.
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Program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews James McElroy about his dissertation project “Racial Segmentation & Market Segregation: The Late-Twentieth-Century History of the American City Supermarket, 1960-1990.” In support of his research, McElroy, PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota, received an exploratory research grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Racial Segmentation & Market Segregation,” McElroy offers a social and busines history of supermarkets that links the production and distribution of marketing knowledge with the shaping of urban spaces and communities in the latter half of the twentieth century. The process revealed is one in which market segmentation based upon racialized stereotypes informed the segregation of American cities we live with today.
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Hagley oral historian Ben Spohn interviews Ben Schwantes on his recent book, The Train and the Telegraph: A Revisionist History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). In the book, Schwantes argues that the relationship between the telegraph industry and the railroad industry is much more complicated than previously recognized. While the infrastructure for these two industries often accompanied each other, their business interests and goals did not. As Schwantes points out, Samuel Morse envisioned the telegraph’s primary customer as the postal service, that new railroads and telegraph lines went up together was a marriage of a business dealing rather than mutually held goals from the start.
Telegraph lines operated alongside railroads from the 1840s, but railroads themselves didn’t fully adopt telegraph communication for their operations until after the Civil War, in the 1880s and 1890s. As railroads grew and lines became longer and more heavily traveled, more railroads adopted the telegraph as traditional methods of rule and time based operations broke down. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the industries were fully intertwined-- railroads finally used telegraphs en masse to coordinate their operations and communications. This lasted until 1907 when Congress passed The Hours of Service Act, which capped the hours railroad employees could work in a day. With the passage of this act telephones began to supplant the labor intensive telegrapher’s role in the railroad industry.
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The Shareholder Movement: Shareholder Activism & Activists in the Twentieth Century with Brian Sarginger
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Brian Sarginger about his dissertation project “The Shareholder Movement: Shareholder Activism & Activists in the Twentieth Century.” In support of his work, Sarginger, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, received exploratory and Henry Belin du Pont research grants from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “The Shareholder Movement,” Sarginger traces the rise of shareholder activism as a factor in the structure of American corporate power, shifting control of firms away from management and toward a growing body of public investors. Shareholder activists organized around institutional investors with disproportionate influence, and leveraged advantages of scale to pursue their interests. Sarginger suggests that twentieth-century shareholder activism reveals a set of values wider than simple return maximization, including multiple social issues from employment to the environment.
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society visit us online at hagley.org.
Gastronomic Alchemy: How Black Philadelphia Caterers Transformed Taste into Capital, 1790-1925
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Danya Pilgrim about her book project “Gastronomic Alchemy: How Black Philadelphia Caterers Transformed Taste into Capital, 1790-1925.” In support of her research, Pilgrim, assistant professor at Temple University, received exploratory and Henry Belin du Pont research grants from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Gastronomic Alchemy,” Pilgrim reveals the development and efflorescence of a Philadelphia catering industry owned and operated by African American waiters, brokers, cooks, & others. Through their work, black caterers earned economic success and cultural influence in Philadelphia that combined to form meaningful capital, which helped to create and support a vibrant black community. By uncovering this process of capital formation, Dr. Pilgrim “illuminates how one group of African Americans fought for self-determination in every aspect of their lives.”
For more Hagley History Hangouts, and information about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.
In her book, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism, Jennifer A. Delton traces the history of the National Association of Manufacturers—NAM—from its origins in 1895 to today. She argues that NAM—an organization best known for fighting unions, promoting “free enterprise,” and defending corporate interests—was also surprisingly progressive. Delton shows how it encouraged companies to adopt innovations such as safety standards, workers’ comp, and affirmative action, and worked with the US government and international organizations to promote the free exchange of goods and services across national borders. While NAM’s modernizing and globalizing activities helped to make American industry the most profitable and productive in the world by midcentury, they also eventually led to deindustrialization, plant closings, and the decline of manufacturing jobs. The Industrialists is the story of a powerful organization that fought US manufacturing’s political battles, created its economic infrastructure, and expanded its global markets—only to contribute to the widespread collapse of US manufacturing by the close of the twentieth century.
In the interview, Delton traces the long history of NAM’s concern with globalization, as it sought to influence government policy and to assist manufacturing companies’ efforts to sell products to other nations. While careful to avoid taking formal positions on tariff’s, NAM nonetheless found itself more in line with Democratic administrations than Republican on trade issues, even as most of its members were Republican. She also emphasizes NAM’s enduring concern to limit unions, a commitment that varied in its policy implications but nonetheless was important to its its members throughout NAM’s existence. Delton closes by exploring NAM’s complex attitude towards the Donald Trump presidency, including its criticism of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection against the US Capital in Washington, DC.
Jennifer A. Delton is professor of history at Skidmore College. Her previous books include Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal; Racial Integration in Corporate America, 1940–1990; and Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party.
The Punch Card Imagination: Authorship & Early Computing History
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Zachary Mann about his dissertation project “The Punch Card Imagination: Authorship & Early Computing History.” In support of his project, Mann, a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Southern California, received an exploratory grant the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “The Punch Card Imagination,” Mann reconsiders the development of punch card computing technology through the lens of contemporary literature. From parallels between the Jacquard loom and Romanticism, to the uses of punch-card computing by artists & authors in the mid-twentieth century, this interdisciplinary history suggests new approaches to the production of knowledge & culture aided by computers today.
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Bin, Bag, Box: The Architecture of Convenience
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Louisa Iarocci about her research project “Bin, Bag, Box: The Architecture of Convenience,” in support of which, Iarocci, an associate professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, received an exploratory grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Bin, Bag, Box,” Iarocci discusses her research into the design history of convenience stores, those ubiquitous retail locations meant to serve the “top-up” style of shopping, where customers buy little but often. Louisa suggests that the design of convenience store buildings is intimately tied to the packages and products contained therein, with factors of speed, visibility, & instant gratification combining to shape the spaces and shopper’s experience of the store.
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Image: https://digital.hagley.org/92214_227
CRAP: A History of Cheap Stuff in America
Wendy A. Woloson is associate professor of history at Rutgers University – Camden. With a career as a museum curator, artist, and scholar of 19th century history, her new book is called Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America. In this book Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we—as individuals and as a culture—possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them?
Her story starts in the late eighteenth century and extends through today, exploring the many categories of crap: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset. By studying crap rather than finely made material objects, Woloson shows us a new way to truly understand ourselves, our national character, and our collective psyche.
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INTRODUCTION OF THE ROLLED I-BEAM IN THE U.S.A. IN THE 1850S, REVISITED
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Sara Wermiel about her research project “Introduction of the Rolled I-Beam in the U.S.A. in the 1850s, Revisited.” In support of her research, Wermiel, an independent scholar & historic preservation consultant, received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Introduction of the Rolled I-Beam,” Wermiel explores the development and adoption of the building section known as the “rolled I-beam,” a structural beam that in cross-section appears like a capital letter ‘I,’ and which is manufactured by a rolling process. Embraced as a replacement for wooden beams, iron (and later steel) I-beams played a central role in the advent of “fireproof” building construction, favored by institutional buildings such as banks and government offices. The focus of Dr. Wermiel’s project is the competition between early rolled I-beam makers, the Trenton & Phoenix iron firms, for market position and technical superiority.
Dr. Wermiel used Hagley's collections on the Phoenix Steel Corporation for a paper on the history of the I-beam presented at the Construction History Society of the U.K.'s meeting in April 2020. The paper is available, digitally and in print.
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THE TRANSPACIFIC MIDDLE
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Sunny Xiang about her book project “The Transpacific Middle,” in support of which, Xiang, an assistant professor at Yale University, received an exploratory grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “The Transpacific Middle,” Xiang discusses her research on the culture of the American Cold War in Asia through the lens of ephemeral literature, including fashion magazines, pulp fiction, & advertisements. In so doing, Professor Xiang raises methodological questions about the nature of evidence, investigation, and the archive itself.
SORTING OUT THE MIXED ECONOMY: THE RISE AND FALL OF WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENTAL STATES IN THE AMERICAS
In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews Amy C. Offner, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, about her new book. Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton University Press, 2019). Among other honors, the book won the First Monograph Prize from the Economic History Society and the Michael H. Hunt Prize for International History from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
In this book Amy Offner brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury state building. She follows the flood of U.S. advisors who swept into Latin America after World War II intent on lifting the region out of poverty. In Colombia, these “experts” sought to encourage economic growth by decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. In so doing, they generated approaches later adopted by the United States welfare state, especially when the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty and turned to private firms to administer job training and educational programs. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to shrink the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. Offner reveals that practices regarded today as hallmarks of neoliberalism -- including an austere social welfare system and reliance on for-profit operation of social programs – had their roots in the New Deal, and the policies promoted in Colombia and the Third World.
Arms of the State: A History of the Industrial Robot in Postwar America
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Salem Elzway about his dissertation project “Arms of the State: A History of the Industrial Robot in Postwar America.” In support of his research, Elzway, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, received an exploratory grant and a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.
In “Arms of the State,” Elzway discusses his research on the political economy of industrial robots from 1940 to 1980, seeking out the ways social forces shaped the developing technology, and how the novel technology shaped society in-turn. State policies concerned with military power and economic productivity intersected with the work of an array of public & private actors to develop and deploy industrial robotics.
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AMERICAN FAIR TRADE: PROPRIETARY CAPITALISM, CORPORATISM, AND THE 'NEW COMPETITION,' 1890–1940
Roger Horowitz interviews Laura Phillips Sawyer about her recent book, American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the 'New Competition,' 1890–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Phillips Sawyer, an associate professor at University of Georgia Law School, used the Chamber of Commerce of the United States collection at Hagley in her research.
In American Fair Trade, Laura Phillips Sawyer argues that American small businesses created an influential fair trade movement in the early twentieth century. These firms formed trade associations to lobby and litigate to reshape competition policy to their benefit. Fair trade arguments borrowed from progressive law and economics, demonstrating a persistent concern with market fairness - not only fair prices for consumers but also fair competition among businesses. Proponents of fair trade collaborated with regulators to create codes of fair competition and influenced the administrative state's public-private approach to market regulation. Early New Deal partnerships in planning borrowed from those efforts to manage competitive markets, yet ultimately discredited the fair trade model by mandating economy-wide trade rules that sharply reduced competition. These efforts to reconcile the American tradition of a well-regulated society with the legacy of Gilded Age of laissez-faire capitalism produced the modern American regulatory state.
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THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT: COAL & CITIZENSHIP IN THE AGE OF ENERGY CRISIS
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Trish Kahle about her book project “The Graveyard Shift: Coal & Citizenship in the Age of Energy Crisis.” Kahle, assistant professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University Qatar, received support for her research from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, including an exploratory grant and a Henry Belin du Pont research grant.
In “The Graveyard Shift,” Kahle discusses her research on the post-WWII political economy of coal, and its role in struggles over the civic rights & responsibilities entailed in high production & consumption of energy, an issue she terms “energy citizenship.” During the energy crises of the1970s, Kahle argues, the problem of energy citizenship took on new urgency, especially in American coalfields, where she identifies the competing rights & obligations that flowed from the linkages of energy producers & consumers, and the efforts of both labor & capital to exploit advantages and avoid liabilities in the political arena.
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LANCE’S QUEST TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF A CIVIL WAR SUBMARINE
In this episode, Ben Spohn interviews Dr. Rachel Lance, an Assistant Consulting Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Duke University School of Medicine on her new book, In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of A Civil War Submarine (Dutton, 2020). Lance is a biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist by training. Before earning her Phd. at Duke University, she worked as an engineer for the United States Navy, building specialized underwater equipment.
In In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine (Dutton, 2020) Lance documents how she developed and tested her own theory on the sinking of the HL Hunley, a Confederate submarine lost after sinking just one Union ship, the U.S.S. Housatonic. Lance’s research at Hagley provided her with background knowledge on the finer points of blackpowder manufacture and explosions. Lance’s historical research and experiments with black powder explosions and her own miniature version of the HL Hunley lend support to her theory: The HL Hunley and her crew were lost due to the explosive shockwave unleashed by the torpedo used to sink the USS Housatonic.
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ENGINEERING RULES: GLOBAL STANDARD SETTING SINCE 1880
Roger Horowitz interviews JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy about their recent book, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).
JoAnne Yates (Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, MIT) and Craig N. Murphy (the Betty Freyhof Johnson '44 Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College) used the Ralph Showers personal papers that are now in Hagley’s collections in their research.
Engineering Rules provides the first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive, if rarely noticed, impact on all of our lives. Yates and Murphy describe the positive ideals that sparked the standardization movement, the ways its leaders tried to realize those ideals, and the challenges the movement faces today.
Their book was a finalist for the Hagley Prize in Business of the Business History Conference. Click here for more information about their book: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/engineering-rules.
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AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY BETWEEN 1913 AND 1935
Program Officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Kevin Tennent about his recent research at the Hagley Museum & Library, funded by a grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. Dr. Tennent, Senior Lecturer at the University of York School of Management, used Hagley materials in his research on American industrial democracy between 1913 and 1935. Dr. Tennent’s research seeks to further our understanding of labor representation within industrial concerns, to determine how democratic institutions functions within American business of the period, and to investigate their relationship with organized labor unions and the relative empowerment of employees.
IN DEBT TO GROWTH: REAL ESTATE & THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUBLIC FINANCE IN NEW YORK CITY, 1880-1943
Daniel Wortel-London is a recent PhD in American History from New York University, with a research focus on political, urban, and fiscal history. Dr. Wortel-London was the 2019-2020 Louis Galambos National Fellow in Business & Politics at the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, and has worked as a public policy researcher for the Global Parliament of Mayors & the Adelphi Institute, an instructor at City College & the Jacob Riis Settlement House, and as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of the City of New York.
Dr. Wortel-London’s dissertation, “In Debt to Growth: Real Estate & the Political Economy of Public Finance in New York City, 1880-1943,” investigates the changing relation of public finance and real estate development in New York City between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Whereas many historians have viewed these topics in isolation, assuming that urban fiscal policy merely reflects broader social and economic forces, his research reveals that decisions over how – and by whom - urban real estate should be taxed or subsidized had independent and powerful effects on the distribution of wealth, power, and social equity within American cities.
Designing the Bombshell: Military-Industrial Materials & the Shaping of Women's Bodies in the United States
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Isabelle Marina Held about her recent research at Hagley, funded by one of our grants. Dr. Held, a recent PhD in the History of Design, used Hagley materials in her research on the “bombshell assembly line,” the adoption of synthetic war-time materials, such as nylon, silicon, & plastic foam, by industries concerned with shaping or reshaping the bodies of American women. While Dr. Held used numerous Hagley collections, a cache of documents relating to “Miss Chemistry,” a DuPont spokesmodel responsible for promoting nylon stockings to visitors to the company’s display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, provided unique research opportunities discussed at length here.
Gregory Hargreaves interviews Bernardo Batiz-Lazo about his book, Cash & Dash: How ATMs & Computers Changed Banking (Oxford, 2018). Batiz-Lazo, professor of FinTech History & Global Trade at Northumbria University, used Hagley collections related to the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society.
In Cash & Dash, Batiz-Lazo discusses his research on the history of financial technology, including the development and adoption of ATMs & computer networks. Financial service firms found numerous reasons to adopt automation, while consumers found as many reasons to question the intrusion of devices between them and “their” bank. The resulting foment yielded Batiz-Lazo with abundant material to explore the intersections of banking with technology & society.
American educators in 1940s classrooms eagerly played corporate propaganda for their students. The source, Dupont’s Cavalcade of America, was a mid-twentieth century radio program designed to promote the values of free enterprise, productivity, & consumerism to the public through the medium of historical drama. Teachers introduced the program to classrooms to supplement lessons in the American past, and its fair historical accuracy made it potentially useful as a teaching tool. However, the program came with a heavy dose of messaging meant to promote a “liberal consensus” of corporate and government unity and competency in the face of social and political challenges.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Taylor Currie, graduate student at Queen’s University, discusses how she approached her project, how she discovered her source base at Hagley, and how she interprets the material to suit her research agenda. Attempting to trace the long history of what she terms the “project of liberal consensus,” Currie identified corporate sponsored radio programming as a key source. As a prime example of the genre, Cavalcade of America became the focus of her research.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Cavalcade of America, Better Living Magazine, & advertising tear sheet collections, Currie discovered the production of Cavalcade of America, and its usefulness as an instrument to promote the liberal consensus. The vision forwarded was one of America as a bastion of liberty and innovation, and of corporate and government leaders as steadfastly guarding its values. The program, sponsored by the DuPont company, consisted of dramatized vignettes of historical events and figures, bookend with advertisements for DuPont products crafted to sound like profiles in science and technology destined to uplift humanity.
To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Currie received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
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Interview and production by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Cavalcade of America advertisement, 1940, AVD_1985259_03_07_01, Cavalcade of America photographs, (Accession 1985.259), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Attitudes toward intoxication can be unstable. The government of Turkey, for example, within a single generation went from producing alcohol and promoting its consumption as civil and modern, to restricting the consumption of alcohol and prohibiting its advertisement, right down to cellphone ringtones that sound like beer bottles opening. A culture once known for its Bektashi Sufis and Janissary soldiers, both famous for enjoying alcohol, now faces increasing pressure to dry out. This remarkable turnaround is indicative of the ways in which societies regulate alcohol by cultural norms and legal statues that are all subject to change.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historical geographer Kyle Evered, associate professor at Michigan State University, discusses the culture and regulation of alcohol in Turkey, from the late Ottoman Empire through the early Republican period and up to the present day. Religion, ethnic & sectarian identity, and political ideals all played a role in shaping attitudes toward alcohol. While the Ottomans tolerated alcohol, the early Turkish republic positively promoted it, while the twenty-first century rise of the AKP (Justice & Development Party) has led to increasing restrictions on alcohol in the name of tradition and public health.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Seagram Collections, Dr. Evered discovered that Turkish alcohol producers, such as the global firm Efes Beverage, face similar pressures as did North American firms during prohibition of alcohol in the United States. Strategies deployed by Seagram in attempting to remain economically viable in the face of prohibition, included retooling and relocation of production facilities, and making concerted efforts to push back against the regulatory regime. By studying the Seagram experience, Dr. Evered gained new perspective with which to compare the regulation of alcohol in Turkey.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Evered received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
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Interview by Michael Forino. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: From the cover of Nation’s Business, August 1921, nationsbiz_081921, Nation’s Business (f HF1.N38), Published Collections Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Leprechauns have hocked Irish goods to American consumers for generations. When one of the wee folk appeared on a bottle of Irish whisky, its familiar associations marked the drink as an authentic product of an antique culture for the American consumer. From the Blarney Stone to the shamrock, symbols laden with Irish associations in the American mind have proved useful marketing tools for businesses that sought to leverage the value of the word “Irish” in the American marketplace.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian of the Irish-American experience Marion Casey, professor at the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, discusses the commercial use of Irish culture to sell goods to American consumers. The Irish people possessed an idea of Ireland and its identity that different from that held in the popular American mind. This forced Irish-American businesses to leverage popular preconceptions of Ireland as quaint, natural, and antique, even as they sought to reorient the Irish economy toward industrial participation in global exchange.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Seagram Collections, and World’s Fair Collections, Dr. Casey discovered that Americans interpreted familiarity as authenticity when evaluating the Irish associations of a product. Use in the marketplace of tropes of Irishness, however far removed from genuine Irish culture, reinforced preexisting stereotypes and misconceptions. The power and pervasiveness of marketing images then crowded out other images and associations with Ireland and its people in the popular imagination. New modes of media transmission have not altered this pattern, but rather enhanced it, transmitting and amplifying old errors.
To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Casey received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Benjamin Spohn. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Composite of two images. “Irish village, Midway, North side Donegal at World’s Columbian Exposition,” 1893, 20090226_025, & “Whisky in bottles and barrels, Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia,” 1876, AVD_2003_255_03_B_16B_01, Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
In the 1950s, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an engineer recently retired from research at RCA, looked at the rising cost of health care and the shortage of medical personnel in America, and decided to do something about it. His solution was to apply computer engineering techniques to the problems of health care and medical diagnosis. To do so, Zworykin established an interdisciplinary research group of engineers, statisticians, and physicians, and tasked them with developing computer programs capable of aiding medical diagnosis.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Andrew Lea, PhD candidate in the history of science and medicine at the University of Oxford, discusses the work of Zworykin and company, tracing the origins of the push for bio-medical computing, its uneven reception in the medical world, and the unfolding legacy the movement has left. The Zworykin project focused on hematology, and worked on diagnostic software to assist the identification of blood diseases. Translating a vast and incomplete body of organic conceptions of disease into objective, numerical, and standardized concepts legible to machines proved to be an almost insuperable challenge. Paper technologies, such as the Cornell Medical Index, that standardized medical data gathering, aided computerization.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Vladimir K. Zworykin papers, and the David Sarnoff Research Center records, Lea discovered that the advent of computer-aided diagnosis elicited mixed reactions from the medical profession. The first demonstration of the technology, which took place in 1957 at the RCA labs in Camden, NJ, sparked decades of debate over the art versus the science of medicine. Does computerization dehumanize health care, or does it rationalize and thereby improve health care? Is there a need for diagnostic programming when the majority of health care involves not diagnosis but ongoing disease management? Is human cognition reducible to computerized functions, or do computers undermine the clinical authority of the physician? Initially debated in the twentieth century, these questions continue to shape the twenty-first-century conversation about health care.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Lea received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: “Two of RCA Victor's famous staff of television research engineers, Dr. V.K. Zworykin (left) and E.W. Engstrom, examine a new piece of equipment at the Camden Laboratories.” Television, 1945-1950, PC20110303_456, Box 46, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs & audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Biusiness photographs (Accession 1993.230.II), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Coming to America to start a new life is filled with challenges, even for the wealthy and well-connected. When the du Pont family crossed the Atlantic, they sought a new beginning in a land of opportunity. Burdened by sibling rivalries and divergent ideas about how best to make their fortune, the family compensated with dedication to one another and a boatload of capital invested by social and economic elites in France. Once landed, the du Ponts set to work figuring out how to remake themselves into Americans, and how to return a profit.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Roma Beaufret, master’s student at L'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, discusses the early history of the du Pont family’s business ventures. With a focus on the relationship between business practice and family intimacy, Beaufret seeks to understand the ways the du Ponts brought new ideals of economic and scientific rationality with them to America, and how they worked together to put them into practice.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Winterthur manuscript collection of du Pont family records, Beaufret discovered that the du Pont family suffered numerous reversals of fortune before stumbling upon a business plan that could turn a profit. Pierre Samuel wanted to acquire land and found a settler colony. The speculation lost a fortune. Victor Marie wanted to serve commercial links between France and North America, but failed to make it work. Finally, Eleuthere Irene applied his scientific education to the problem, and began manufacturing gunpowder in mills on the Brandywine River. When the young company won a contract to sell powder to the U.S. government, thanks in part to friendly relations between the du Ponts and noted Francophile Thomas Jefferson, the family began to enjoy a return on their effort, and to repay their outstanding debts.
To support the use of Hagley Library collections, the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society provides research grants and fellowships. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview and production by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Composite of three du Pont family portraits, Eleuthère Iréné (1969_2_0961), Pierre Samuel (1969_2_1841), & Victor Marie (1969_2_3366), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807
There are many reasons to give to charity: convictions of religious faith, values of service to others, and plain old greed. Charities can serve the public good, but they can also serve personal interests at the same time. In the twentieth century, some affluent Americans turned to philanthropy with mixed motivations. Faith and values mattered to them, but so too did maintaining control over their fortunes, and burnishing their public images. Giving with one hand allowed them to take with the other.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, scholar of religion Andrew Jungclaus, PhD candidate at Columbia University, discusses the development of major secular charities in the twentieth-century United States, and the private motivations that drove their wealthy and powerful founders to build philanthropic institutions. Jungclaus suggests that before the 1930s, American philanthropy had a small-scale, church-based orientation, and that the “secular behemoths” of modern American charity, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, Eli Lilly Endowment, and Henry Luce Foundation, grew in part out of a reaction against the increasing involvement of the state in wealth redistribution and the provision of social services.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Pew family records, Jungclaus discovered that early life experiences exerted powerful influence over the ways philanthropists understood the purpose and meaning of charitable giving. J. Howard Pew was raised a Presbyterian, and personally oversaw the support of denominational organs, including magazines. Henry Luce was raised the son of missionaries to China, and dedicated part of his philanthropic activity to Chinese issues. Establishing charities allowed oil, publishing, and pharmaceuticals magnates to protect part of their fortunes from taxation, and direct its expenditure toward favored projects.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Jungclaus received a Henry Belin du Pont Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Ben Spohn. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: William G. McGowan giving two thumbs up at Excellence in Service meeting, 1986, 2000239_00046, Group A, Box 1, MCI Communications Corporation photographs & audiovisual materials (Accession 2000.239), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807
How much is a dollar worth? It depends who you ask, when, and where. Economic psychologists have a concept called ‘money illusion,’ which suggests that people are not actually very good at judging the value of money in the context of changing monetary conditions. Distinguishing between the perceived value of money and its “objective” market value introduces a new variable to analyses of debates over prices, wages, and social relations.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, economic historian Sebastian Teupe, junior professor at the University of Bayreuth, discusses the role of money illusion in wage arbitration in Germany, Britain, and the United States from the 1870s to the 1920s. The time range embraces a long deflationary period followed by an inflationary period of equal duration. According to classical economics, wages should have fallen in the first period and risen in the second. Outcomes in the labor market, however, proved to be more complicated, due to factors including money illusion and the ‘stickiness’ of wage prices.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Reading Company, and Pennsylvania Railroad records, Dr. Teupe discovered that wage stability was not an objective of wage negotiations in the United States, and that neither capital nor labor regularly referred to the cost of living as a reason to adjust wages until the second decade of the twentieth century. This suggests that money illusion was a factor in wage negotiations. It also highlights dissimilarities in how national economies navigate the ups and downs of a shared international monetary system.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Teupe received a Henry Belin du Pont Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Ben Spohn. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: From ‘Union Power & the Public Interest’ slideshow, 1963(?), 1973418_078_11_001, National Association of Manufacturers photographs & audiovisual materials (Accession 1973.418), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Americans value equality, but have competing visions of what it should look like. The twentieth-century women’s movement was riven by class divisions. Elite women within the movement favored the uncompromising Equal Rights Amendment; while working women feared that it would undermine gains they had made in gendered workplace protections, and so favored the Women’s Status Bill, which would preserve regulation against exploitation of women workers. This division opened the possibility of business interests appealing to and splitting off a segment of organized American women.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, labor historian Emily Twarog, associate professor in the School of Labor & Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses how business interests appealed to the women’s movement with explicit validation of women’s socio-economic importance, and calls to rally women to the cause of free enterprise and the defense of the American way of life.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the National Association of Manufacturers collection, Twarog discovered that business interests organized systematic efforts to cultivate a pro-business, politically conscious and activated segment of women to deploy as a force for conservatism. At a time of record-high unionization, labor organizations made limited efforts to organize and empower women’s groups. Meanwhile, business interests successfully coopted the momentum of women’s organizations, and turned it to their own purposes.
To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Twarog received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: NAM staff, 1969, 1973418_079_20_004, National Association of Manufacturers photographs & audiovisual materials (Accesion 1973.418), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
The Athabasca country of Alberta once boasted the world’s premier fur hunting grounds. When the energy crises of the late twentieth century put a premium on the region’s tar sand deposits, rich in hydrocarbons useful for synthesizing oil, corporations built an industrial landscape of extraction and processing infrastructure that displaced former occupation and use of the land. The local environment, and the world economy would never be the same.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, environmental historian Hereward Longley, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, discusses the process by which people transformed the environment of northeast Alberta into one of energy resource extraction, and the impact this has had on indigenous communities, Canadian workers, and international energy markets.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the J. Howard Pew papers, Sun Oil Company records, and more, Longley discovered that the motivations for building the Canadian tar sands industry varied over time. Mid-century desires to establish North American energy security gave way to opportunistic profit seeking during the periods of high oil prices during the 1970s and 2000s. At every stage, the tar sands industry encountered obstacles, including muskeg and enormous expense that challenged its viability. In the face of such difficulties, public investment proved pivotal.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Longley received a Henry Belin du Pont Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Sun Oil Company refinery at Marcus Hook, PA, July 14, 1939, 70_200_11750, J. Victor Dallin Aerial Survey collection (Accession 1970.200), Audiovisual Collections & digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Forget Hollywood superstars. In the 1960s, women around the world wanted a sense of normality when they consumed cosmetics. As the Avon company attempted to win consumers for its mass-produced goods in Latin America and Europe, it adapted its marketing materials to reflect the segmentation of local and changing global ideals of beauty.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian Emanuela Scarpellini, professor at the University of Milan, discusses how Avon planned its expansion overseas from the United States, and adapted to the context of a global marketplace. Monochromatic American ideals of beauty did not necessarily match those of other cultures, yet American goods enjoyed global cachet that added to their perceived value. Easing the tension between these push and pull factors were the Avon ladies, the sales agents that the company relied upon to retail its products, and to communicate with and cultivate consumers.
Using Hagley Library collections, including Avon Products, Inc., and the Ernest Dichter papers, Scarpellini discovered that Avon sales agents and their customers exerted influence over the direction of company promotion and self-image. Avon operations in Europe centered on Italy, where cultural stigma initially prevented women from readily consuming cosmetics. Avon ladies encouraged women to consider consumption of mass-produced cosmetics as an extension of their traditional roles. The company picked up on the message, and extended it to the entire family: men, women, and children.
To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Scarpellini received research grants from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at, www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Colorario Avon, 1966, AvonItalyColor_1966, Record group I, Series 11 D, Box 91, ‘Campaign Mailings, 1966,’ Avon Products, Inc. records (Accession 2155), Manuscripts & Archives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
In the wide-open American economy, some people fake it ‘til they make it. Historically, American impostors realized the promise of social mobility. Identifying freely with different ethnic, racial, class, gender, or professional groups allowed some Americans to challenge social norms, and to reinvent themselves in an environment of rapid and disorienting change.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian Clifton Hood, professor at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, discusses the macro-history of the American impostor as a social phenomenon. Hood situates his project in the context of his life’s work, suggesting that it may be a way of accessing subaltern perspectives on social hierarchies by locating and interrogating their attempted transgressions of its strictures.
Using Hagley Library collections, including Empire Steel & Iron, Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Virginia Corporation, and Brandywine Oral Histories, Hood discovered that business and government elites tried a variety of methods to identify and eliminate impostors. These methods included systematic surveillance and documentation of subject groups. Hood highlights identification papers and reports from industrial spies as particularly fascinating documents.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Hood received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Mr. Clash wearing a mask at Bushkill, 1915-1925, 2017239_07_228, Series V., ‘Personal and biographical,’ Box 7, Folder 228, Frank E. Schoonover negatives (Accession 2017.239), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Trade wars are nothing new, and the weapons used to fight them sometimes backfire. During the Cold War, the United States took a carrot-and-stick approach to managing foreign relations through trade. The results were decidedly mixed.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Ryan Haddad, PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, discusses the use of trade controls by the United States government to pursue foreign policy goals during the Cold War.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the records of the National Foreign Trade Council and the National Association of Manufacturers, Haddad discovered how Cold War policies designed to promote free trade in the West, and to isolate the Communist bloc, forced American firms to navigate uncertain diplomatic conditions while trying to maintain market share and profitability.
Haddad received an Exploratory Grant from the library’s Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society to support his use of Hagley Library collections. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Nation's Business cover, January 1962, Nationbiz_196201, Nation's Business (f HF1 .N38), Published Collections Department, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Is it okay to have fun with computers? Joseph Weisbecker, an electrical engineer from the twentieth century, gives an unequivocal yes! During his long career, Weisbecker made it his mission to promote the use of computers for human purposes beyond business and military applications. For him, there was no shame in video games, and he wanted the world to agree.
On this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Elizabeth Badger, PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, discusses the early history of video game culture, focusing on the effects of the commodification of games. Badger suggests that gaming culture initially focused on collective effort and community ethos, and that a turning point in the 1980s lead to the re-conception of video games as consumer commodities controlled by corporate interests. Badger situates her project in the context of her own experience with gaming and video game culture, noting the widespread prejudice against video games, and the sexism within gaming culture.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the David Sarnoff Research Center records and related materials from the RCA collection, Badger discovered the lengths to which corporations went to turn video games into profitable commodities. Records of suits filed by Atari against rival video game makers provided the smoking gun. The maker of Pong™ patented a basic piece of programming that opened virtually all subsequent video game makers to potential liability.
To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Badger received research grants from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interviews by Benjamin Spohn & Nicole Mahoney. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves. The episode draws on two interviews conducted on separate dates, which have been combined and edited for length and clarity.
Image: RCA COSMAC VIP Game Manual, LMSS_246409_873_12, Series B. (Publications, 1955-1981), Subseries B. (Publications includes books, serial periodicals, newsletters, & RCA manuals), Box 873, Folder 12, David Sarnoff Research Center records (Acc. 2464.09), Manuscripts 7 Archives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
In 1968, the New York Stock Exchange drowned in a sea of paperwork, which forced it to close to trading for one day every week. Something had to be done to allow the finite space of the trading floor to serve the potentially infinite growth in trade volume. The automation of securities trading, the replacement of open outcry pits and paperwork with electronic infrastructure, gained momentum as exchanges competed to be bigger, faster, and more secure than rivals.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, urban historian Aaron Shkuda, project manager of the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, & the Humanities, discusses his research into the ways securities exchanges in New York and Chicago met the spatial challenges of their mid-twentieth century growth. Shkuda focuses on the relationship between exchange, back office functions, and the urban fabric in which they are embedded, which drew numerous stakeholders into the discussion of market expansion and automation.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the MCI Communications and Sperry Rand Corporation, Univac Division records, Shkuda discovered how automation allowed exchanges to maintain their symbolic headquarters in central city locations while relocating clerical functions to less-expensive suburbs and computer servers. The NASDAQ exchange lead the move toward automation, and others like the NYSE and CBOT followed suit more or less reluctantly.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Shkuda received an Exploratory research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview and production by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: The floor of the New York Stock Exchange, PC20100728_206, Series II, Subseries RRR, Box 37, Folder 7, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs & audiovisual materials (Accession 1993.230), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Print and sell posters with the Coke-a-Cola logo on them and prepare to get sued. For corporations today, brands are valued property to be aggressively defended from unauthorized use. This was not always the case. The proprietary attitude taken by companies toward their brands developed in the context of a growing consumer economy, and under the tutelage of lawyers.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, legal scholar Oren Bracha, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses his research into the legal history of branding and trademarks. Bracha observes that the function of brands in influencing consumer behavior had been recognized by marketers by the turn of the twentieth century, and that the function of brands as corporate property developed subsequently as a result of the intersection of business practice with the legal profession.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the Seagram and DuPont company records, Bracha discovered how the proprietary attitude toward brands translated into actual legal practice. Corporations police the public meaning of their brands, with lawyers daily directing media outlets and other corporations on the permissible use of trademarked and brand-associated content. Bracha highlights the case of the DuPont product Cellophane™, which the company sought to protect against rival products marketed using the same name.
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Bracha received an Exploratory research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: Cellophane Hands Off: See What You Buy, 1933, dpads_1803_00222, Series I, Box 43, Folder 12, ‘Advertising tearsheets – 1933,’ E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company Advertising Department records (Accesion 1803), Manuscripts & Archives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.
Everybody knows Henry Ford, then there’s the tycoon you’ve never heard of, Billy Durant. The motive force behind the early success of Buick and the founding of Chevrolet and General Motors, William C. Durant developed business practices that transformed the automobile industry. Durant was a businessman of marked tenacity and impatient of restraint, and he used these qualities to amass a fortune and to fend off would-be interlopers in his arena of corporate power.
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian Bernie Carlson, professor at the University of Virginia, discusses his research into the role played by William Durant in the early automobile industry. Carlson suggests that the prominence of Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet in the historiography of automobiles obscures the diversity of business practice that flourished in the early decades of the industry. Among Durant’s key innovations was the development of the holding company as a corporate form with control over subsidiary firms for manufacturing and distribution.
Using Hagley Library collections, including the John J. Raskob papers and the Z. Taylor Vinson collection of transportation ephemera, Carlson discovered that Durant faced stiff competition from rival capitalists P.S. du Pont and J.J. Raskob, who wished to intervene in General Motors to rationalize its management and operations as they had recently done with the DuPont Company. Durant refused to cede control of his company, and through complex financial machinations managed to retain it. Carlson describes his research methods as “reading dead people’s mail” and “following the money.”
To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Carlson received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.
For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.
Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.
Image: General Motors studies the small car in 1925, PC20110510_726, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs and audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Business photographs (Accession 1993.230.II), Audiovisual Collections and Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Library.
THE TVS OF TOMORROW: RCA AND THE INVENTION OF THE FLAT SCREEN TELEVISION with Benjamin Gross by Hagley Museum and Library
1918—it was an explosive time. The nation was at war. Political movements for workers and women's suffrage were gathering steam. The world was on the brink of change.
What better place to explore an explosive moment in time than at an explosives factory?
In our first episode of this four-part series, we dive into the conflicts and disruptions of the year 1918—from U.S. entry into World War I to the influenza epidemic—and learn how they influenced the lives of the men and women who were making the munitions for the U.S. and its allies at DuPont's Brandywine Works, and the families and communities that depended on them.
See more photos, interviews and scripts: https://www.hagley.org/explosive-time
At the turn of the 20th century, the modern magazine was taking shape, and printers, publishers, illustrators, and advertisers were playing around with new styles and techniques for capturing their readers’ attention. In this episode, Jennifer Greenhill (associate professor of art history at the University of Southern California and author of "Playing it Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age") explores how artists incorporated insights from psychology and advertising into their designs and page layouts. Using blank space, typography, and color, they helped establish a modern aesthetic of magazine illustration and design that was intimately connected to the world of advertising.
In the late 1960s, the civil rights struggle had given way to a more militant black power movement. The Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) offered a business-friendly alternative: black empowerment through job training and economic advancement. In this episode, Jessica Levy (postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University's Department of African American Studies) talks with us about how OIC offered vocational and corporate education programs for African Americans in partnership with American companies like Gulf Oil and General Motors.
Following their success in America, OIC and American businesses exported these methods to apartheid-era South Africa, arguing that the lessons of desegregation in the United States could apply there too.
Seth Lunine (lecturer in the Geography Department at University of California, Berkeley) explores the history of the high explosives industry in California and DuPont's eventual acquisition of many of these West Coast Companies. Lunine explains that he saw a hole in the historical research and discovered that the high explosives industry began in the west and came east.
In this episode, Mallory Huard (Ph.D. candidate in history and women’s studies at the Pennsylvania State University) introduces us to the women who picked up rod and gun as part of the Progressive Conservation movement, and how they were depicted in images, advertisements, magazines, and newspapers.
More info: www.hagley.org/stories
In this author talk, which took place at the Hagley Library on May 10, 2018, Wesleyan history professor Courtney Fullilove explains how Turkey Red Wheat became the predominant variety planted in the U.S. Great Plains in the late 19th century — the breadbasket of the world at the time. She explains how both plant explorers and Mennonite farmers helped transplant this important product, demonstrating that, far from being remote backwaters, the wheat-growing regions of the world have been connected in highly cosmopolitan ways.
What did urban workers do for fun in the 19th century? With not a lot of money, a grueling work schedule, and only Sundays off, it could be difficult to escape the routines of the city and its toil. In this episode, Marika Plater (Ph.D. candidate in history at Rutgers University) digs deep into the archives to get at how working-class New Yorkers spent their limited free time, and what this reveals about their attitudes toward nature.
More info: www.hagley.org/stories
Gerardo Con Diaz (Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis) takes us back in time to when programs were not so intangible, and explains the different strategies that computer firms pursued to turn programs into profitable inventions.
More info: www.hagley.org/stories
From Honda to Nikon, Kawasaki to Nintendo, Japanese brands are ubiquitous in America with a reputation for quality and reliability— but this wasn’t always the case. Around the time of World War II, most Americans were loath to buy Japanese products, not only because of the conflict, but because their goods on American shelves were often shoddy and cheap. How did Japanese companies turn that hostility into hospitality — and why did American consumers change their minds?
William Chou is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Ohio State University.
Between 1836 and 1880, the U.S. Patent Office required that anyone applying for a patent submit a scale model along with their application. Reed Gochberg, the first researcher to dive into Hagley’s extensive collection of patent models, tells us about these fascinating objects and her attempts to understand how 19th-century Americans experienced and understood them.
Reed Gochberg is a lecturer in history and literature at Harvard University.
Railroad stations were the transportation hubs of the nineteenth century, nodes in a network connecting people and places across the country. But while they represented mobility, they were also places where travelers could be stopped in their tracks.
In this episode, Zachary Nowak (Harvard University) explains how large urban train stations reshaped city life as powerfully as the railroads transformed rural America. Centralized depots called “union stations” became the malls of their era: private buildings that served as public spaces, but where police and railroad officials could apprehend criminals, restrict the movement of suspicious persons, and exert their power.
From sidewalks to roads to buildings, concrete surrounds us in our daily lives, but we rarely stop to think about it. In this episode, Vyta Baselice (Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the George Washington University) talks about her efforts to understand how concrete became the quintessential modern building material, showing up not just in big construction projects, but in everything from coffin vaults to imagined building projects on other planets.
In this episode, we talk with University of Virginia Ph.D. candidate Alexi Garrett about her efforts to uncover the lost history of female business owners in the nineteenth century. At a time when married women’s property and income passed to their husbands, some single and widowed women were able to carve out economic niches for themselves, even becoming heads of major industrial concerns. But these women had to tread the fine line of gender roles as well, and often emphasized their femininity over their business acumen.
Garrett tells the story of Rebecca Webb Pennock Lukens, who, through inheritance, marriage, and widowhood became the head of the Lukens Steel Company in Coatesville, Pennsylvania in 1825. She walks us through the documents she found in the company’s records at Hagley, helping us understand why Lukens focused on romance and marriage in her autobiographical memoir, and how Lukens’s social status growing up allowed her to escape the prospect of indentured servitude that girls from poorer backgrounds faced.
Nicole Mahoney (doctoral candidate at University of Maryland: College Park) discusses early elite Americans and their interest and obsession with French high culture.
In this recorded lecture "Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape," Francesca Russello Ammon explores how postwar America came to equate this destruction with progress. Although the decades following World War II were marked by rapid growth and construction in the United States, those years were also a time of large-scale destruction.
In order to clear space for new suburban tract housing, interstate highways, and urban renewal projects, wrecking companies demolished buildings and earth-moving contractors leveled land at an unprecedented rate and scale.
In his talk, Alan Meyer provides an engaging account of private aviation, taking the audience inside a community that required exceptionally high skill levels, celebrated facing and overcoming risk, and encouraged fierce personal independence. Meyer uses the rise and fall of the Ercoupe, a personal plane lauded for its safety and intuitive operation, to show how ideas about pilot skill influenced the market for small airplanes in the postwar era—and the makeup of the flying community. Despite the Ercoupe's revolutionary—and life-saving—design, it was largely spurned and ridiculed by this community of mostly male aviators, who valued the high barriers to personal flying. Through the failure of the Ercoupe, Meyer explains how the technology of flying continued to reinforce these values.
Jesus Ruiz (Ph.D. candidate at Tulane University) discusses his research on the ideological origins of the Haitian Revolution. He explains the historical significance of the war and describes the Hagley materials that are pertinent to his research. These sources include journals from Louis de Tousard, Cambefort and others.
In this author talk on "Industrial Design for Modern Life," Dr. Danielle Shapiro explores the life and career of John Vassos, a Greek émigré who rose from anonymity as an advertising artist to become one of the pioneering founders of the industrial design profession. As the Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) leading designer, Vassos shaped the aesthetics of modern technology in the postwar era and became one of the most influential industrial designers of the twentieth century.
Ryan Tate (Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University) discusses his research on the development of coal mining in the Fort Union coal formation in the American West during the 1970s. See more at hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks
Cari Casteel (Ph.D. student at Auburn University) discusses her research in the cultural and technological history of deodorants and anti-perspirants. Why was deodorant marketed solely to women at first and how did the consumer boon after WWII changed that?
Casteel explains how she is using Hagley Museum and Library's collections of old advertisements and the papers of designers and marketers like Irv Koons, Raymond Loewy, and Ernest Dichter.
Linda (University of Montana) and Marsha (Kansas State University) Frey discuss their use of the du Ponts' family letters to support their research on the French Revolution. In the interview they discuss some of the challenges the du Ponts faced as a family during the French Revolution, such as Pierre Samuel's imprisonment in France and the problems of getting mail in and out of a country in a near constant state of war.
Davor Mondom (Ph.D. candidate in the history department at Syracuse University) discusses his research on the politics of the Amway corporation and the Chamber of Commerce. He describes how both organizations supported free market ideals and the Reagan administration. Mondom also describes the ties between the two organizations and discusses how Jay van Andel, a founder of Amway, led the Chamber of Commerce.
A clip from a longer interview available in the Hagley Digital Archives (digital.hagley.org)
Laura Perry {Ph.D. candidate, English department, University of Wisconsin} discusses her research on cellophane in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Perry's research seeks to understand why Plath used cellophane imagery instead of other similar materials. To engage with this issue she is consulting DuPont's cellophane advertisements as well as the findings of consumer focus groups.
Dr. David Kinkela (professor of history at the State University of New York: Fredonia) discusses the history of plastics and plastic ocean waste. Kinkela traces the impact of plastic products from their initial stages of development and advertisement as a new modern convenience to the realization that the world's oceans are full of floating pieces of plastic garbage.
In this episode, Nicholas Osborne discusses the history of savings banks in America that served the emerging middle class in the nineteenth century. He traces the difference between how these banks were supposed to encourage their customers to handle their money and how they actually did. More at hagley.org
Dr. Ana Maria Otero-Cleves (assistant professor at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia) discusses her use of correspondence from the Lanman and Kemp company and their business deals with Latin America, especially Colombia.
Eva McGraw (Ph.D. candidate in art history at CUNY) discusses her research on the Civil War naval art of Xanthus Smith. Smith painted naval engagements of the Civil War and during the war he was a sailor and the personal secretary of Samuel Francis du Pont. Smith tried to make his naval engagement paintings as accurate as possible, he did this by corresponding with the officers of the ships that he painted. Many of his works featured then new ironclad ships.
Jesse Tarbert discusses a time in the 1920s when good government meant big government. He explains how the Republican party sought to make the federal government run like a large corporation while the Democrats attempted to keep the federal government small and state level government strong. Tarbert is a Ph.D. candidate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dr. Roger Horowitz discusses at the Hagley Museum and Library the history of modern kosher food and the growth and development of the kosher food industry in the 20th century. In explaining how Coke became kosher he talks about how rabbis used Jewish law and modern chemistry to determine what food products were kosher and how food manufacturers could change their ingredients and methods to adhere to Jewish dietary law. Horowitz also discusses the mass appeal of kosher foods to non-Jewish consumers. He cites a statistic that at one time only one quarter of kosher food purchasers were Jewish. Horowitz concludes with a brief section on kosher meat production and how the output of a once large industry has become a specialty product due to issues of economy and changes in the meat industry. Throughout the lecture Horowitz discusses his own family history and personal background, having grown up in an observant Jewish household.
Dr. Conn discusses his research into the history of American business schools. He talks about how he is using Hagley's materials to answer questions about how business schools react to economic crises and tensions on college campuses.
Dr. Kaufmann Buhler, an assistant professor of design history at Purdue University, discusses her research into the evolution of open plan offices and her use of trade catalogs from systems furniture manufacturers from Hagley's stacks.
Dr. Christopher Magra, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee specializing in early American history, discusses his research into chocolate in colonial America. He discusses the business papers of Mifflin and Massey at the Hagley Museum and Library and how Mifflin and Massey manufactured and sold chocolate in the city of Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tanaka discusses her research on the correspondence between Pierre-Samuel du Pont de Nemours and Madame Lavoisier and the language of debt (intellectual and financial) in their letters.
Dr. Tanaka is an adjunct professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Rachel Lance discusses her use of Lammot du Pont's notes on black powder explosions and how they may relate to her broader research on the sinking of the H.L. Hunley.
Rachel Lance is a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Duke University.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Dr. Julia Abramson discusses her research into the separation between people's personal lives, their financial lives, where those two things meet and her use of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours' personal letters.
Dr. Julia Abramson is professor of the French language and culture at the University of Oklahoma.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Paul Taillon discusses his research on the Pennsylvania Railroad's relationship with organized labor during the 1920s and his use of materials from the Railroad Labor Board and the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Taillon is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Auckland.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Jonathan Free discusses his research on the coal industry and the shifting of risk from the miner's bodies on to the surrounding ecosystems and communities and his use of materials from the collections in the Hagley Library.
Free is a Phd candidate at Duke University and the Miller Center and Hagley Library Dissertation Fellow in business and politics.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Ai Hisano discusses her project on food color and her use of materials from the collections in the Hagley Library.
Ms. Hisano is a PhD Candidate and Hagley Fellow at the University of Delaware.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Wim De Wit discusses his research into industrial design history, and his use of the Thomas Lamb papers and other collections from the Hagley Library for his project.
Wim de Wit is adjunct curator for architecture and design at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. Bryce Evans discusses his research into food at the Irish pavillion in the 1939 World's Fair, and his use of materials from the Hagley Library for his project.
Dr. Evans is Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool Hope University.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, James Panza discusses his research into the Trailer Train Company, its history and operations, and his use of materials from the Pennsylvania Railroad collection at Hagley Library for his project.
Mr. Panza is a retired employee of Trailer Train Company, and member of the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Dr. Mariana Saad discusses her research into institutional philanthropy and welfare reform in revolutionary France. She also discusses her use of materials from the du Pont family papers for her project.
Dr. Saad is a visiting researcher at Queen Mary University of London.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Dr. Yda Schreuder discusses her research into immigrant labor and the leather tanning industry in Wilmington, Delaware, and her use of materials from the Hagley Library for her work.
Dr. Schreuder is professor of geography at the University of Delaware.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Neal Hurst discusses his research into the American privateer ship Revolution, and his use of Winterthur collections as well as the Samuel Morris Papers from the Hagley Library.
Mr. Hurst is a Lois F. McNeill Fellow at the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. Audrey Russek discusses her research into restaurants as sites of social change, and her use of the Pahlman Papers and trade catalogs from the Hagley Library.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. Arwen Mohun discusses her research into social adaptations to changing technological risk, and her use of materials from the collections in the Hagley Library.
Dr. Mohun is professor and department chair in the University of Delaware Department of History.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
Dr. Sara Wermiel discusses her research into railroad contracting, and her use of materials from the Pennsylvania Railroad collection in the Hagley Library for her project.
Dr. Wermiel is an independent scholar with a current appointment in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. David Gray discusses his research into motivational communication techniques in the mid-twentieth century, and his use of materials from the National Association of Manufacturers collection in the Hagley Library for his project.
Dr. Gray is a visiting assistant professor of American Studies at Oklahoma State University.
This interview was conducted as part of the Hagley Center's Stories from the Stacks project.
In this interview, David Haslam discusses his research into the Pennsylvania Railroad T1 locomotive, and his use of materials from the collections in the Hagley Library for his organization's project to build an accurate, fully functional reproduction of the T1.
Mr. Haslam is marketing director for the T1 Trust.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. Shinichi Korogi discusses his research into the development of managerial accounting, and his use of materials from the DuPont company papers in the Hagley Library for his project.
Dr. Korogi is a professor in the Commerce Department of Kurume University.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In this interview, Dr. Kate Holliday discusses her research into telephone buildings, and her use of materials from the MCI collection in the Hagley Library for her project.
Dr. Holliday is a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas Arlington.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.
In his interview, David Reinecke discusses his research into federal involvement in development of high speed rail in the United States, and his use of materials from the Robert B. Watson papers in the Hagley Library for his project.
David Reinecke is a PhD candidate in sociology at Princeton University.
Stories from the Stacks is an ongoing program from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society featuring interviews with researchers who share the excitement of discovering the rich and varied historical materials in the Hagley Library’s collections. Listen to additional episodes at www.hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks.