Synopsis
Podcast by Hagley Museum and Library
Episodes
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Tasteful Design: Peter Schlumbohm & the Chemex Coffeemaker with Clark Barwick
25/12/2023 Duration: 26minAmericans 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 supp
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llusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century with Brent Cebul
11/12/2023 Duration: 47minIn 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
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Pirates of the Caribbean: U.S. Satellites & Media in the 1980s Americas with Fabian Prieto-Nañez
27/11/2023 Duration: 24minThe 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 t
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Philadelphia's Pencoyd Iron Works: Forging Along the Schuylkill River with Kevin Righter
13/11/2023 Duration: 01h05minKevin 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 manufa
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Who Can You Trust?: Brands, Deception, & Markets with Jennifer Black
30/10/2023 Duration: 26minWould 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 o
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Organized Baseball: Reworking the Transnational Circuit, 1946-1965 with Evan Brown
16/10/2023 Duration: 36minBaseball 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
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Willing Communist Collaborators?: DuPont in China, 1946-1953 with Juanjuan Peng
02/10/2023 Duration: 32minThe 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 Busi
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The Rhetorical Prehistory of the New Deal with James Kimble
18/09/2023 Duration: 48minWhat 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
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TV Town: New York City & Broadcast Media with Richard Popp
04/09/2023 Duration: 29minNew 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, poten
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An Artist in the Archive: Researching & Sculpting Nylon with Emily Baker
21/08/2023 Duration: 26minArtists 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 bou
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Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em: American Tobacco & Broadcast Media with Peter Kovacs
07/08/2023 Duration: 26minThe 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 t
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Forms of Persuasion: Art & Corporate Image in the 1960s with Alex Taylor
24/07/2023 Duration: 42minIn 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 cul
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American Advertising: Researching Capitalism from the Inside Out with Cynthia Meyers
10/07/2023 Duration: 38minWhat 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 agenc
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Old Brains: How Corporate America Measured Aging with James Leach
26/06/2023 Duration: 17minCognitive 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
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Kerosene Antimonopoly: Standard Oil & the People Who Hated It with Minseok Jang
12/06/2023 Duration: 29minHow 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 opp
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Building an Oral History of DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department with Joe Plasky
29/05/2023 Duration: 45minJoe 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
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Survival is Improvisational: Casual Labor in Postwar America with Maia Silber
15/05/2023 Duration: 28minEven 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.
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Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding with Hannah Farber
01/05/2023 Duration: 55minIn 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 as
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How Florida Happened with Anna Andrzejewski
17/04/2023 Duration: 33minThe 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
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Black Powder, White Lace: The DuPont Irish & Cultural Identity in 19thC USA with Margaret Mulrooney
03/04/2023 Duration: 01h17minThis 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 ever