Just Added to Our Digital Collections: Dexter Press Photographs
John Margolies is both a photographer and a collector of items related to American travel and its unique sights. In preparation for our upcoming exhibit about Margolies and the American roadside, we’ve digitized a number of selections from this collection, including 35mm slides taken by John Margolies himself, and pennants and hotel/motel do-not-disturb signs he collected. This week, we add another grouping to that list: Dexter Press photographs dating between 1935 and 1950, designed to be used as postcards. The images, collected by Margolies, capture the same types of establishments he would photograph decades later: gas stations, diners, salons, and stores, such as the Dixie Liquor Store in St. Louis, MO, shown here. Browse more than 30 Dexter Press photos and postcards by visiting our Digital Collections, and be sure to mark your calendar to come see many of our Margolies items in person in the exhibit “Roadside America: Through the Lens of John Margolies” between June 20, 2015 and January 24, 2016.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
20th century, 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, travel, Roadside America, photographs, John Margolies, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
It's usually a safe bet that when someone asks us, "Do you have FILL IN THE BLANK in the collections at The Henry Ford?" odds are pretty good that we do. Today is #NationalSpaceDay and, as you guessed it, we've got space-related artifacts in our collections to share. Digital Access & Preservation Archivist Brian Wilson took a look in our archives and found these designs from Sundberg-Ferar. Take a look. - Lish Dorset is Social Media Manager at The Henry Ford.
In the early 1980s, Detroit-area industrial design firm Sundberg-Ferar, Inc. worked with the Lockheed Corporation and NASA to develop concepts for a manned space station.
Through a series of drawings, including those shown here, Sundberg-Ferar illustrated what life in space could be like for astronauts aboard the station.
The designers considered how the astronauts would perform normal earthbound tasks in the tight quarters of the space station, including the need to exercise, bathe and sleep, and how a near-zero gravity environment would affect those tasks. For example, the shower design features a retractable toe restraint in the floor, while the treadmill uses a waist belt to keep the user in place.
In addition to the space station renderings, our collection of Sundberg-Ferar material includes their work on designs for a variety of other transportation and travel vehicles dating from the 1960s-1980s, including supersonic transport and large passenger jet planes, commuter trains, and rapid transit rail cars used in San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Atlanta.
Brian Wilson is Digital Access & Preservation Archivist at The Henry Ford.
by Brian Wilson, by Lish Dorset, space, drawings, design, archives
It frequently happens that we find mysteries in our collections, just waiting to be unlocked. This is the case for a series of about 200 glass plate negatives, which were found in a Highland Park, Michigan, house and eventually donated to The Henry Ford in 2012. The negatives mostly depict scenes from the Ford Motor Company Highland Park and Rouge plants, and seem to fill a gap in our collection of material created by the Ford Motor Company Photographic Department. However, there are some outliers in the group that could certainly use context, such as the barefoot girl posing for a portrait, or the children sitting in a mule-drawn carriage. If these images or the snowy scene depicted here pique your interest as a history detective, check out all the digitized negatives on our collections website, and let us know what you recognize.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, Ford Rouge Factory Complex, Ford Motor Company, photographs, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
On this weekend's episode of The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation you'll learn about our 1976 Apple 1 computer. Want to learn more about the history of personal computers? Take a look below.
Read
The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation
Lish Dorset is Social Media Manager at The Henry Ford.
by Lish Dorset, technology, computers, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation
Remember “New Coke”? April 23, 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of its celebrated—and controversial—introduction. This soft drink lasted less than three months but its legacy lives on as a cautionary tale of marketing and branding. Was this attempted innovation a great marketing blunder or did it turn out to be a great marketing success? It depends on how you look at it.
On April 23, 1985, The Coca-Cola Company introduced “New Coke” as a replacement to the old Coke that had been around for almost 100 years. The sweeter, more syrupy taste of New Coke—based on the company’s Diet Coke formula but without the artificial sweeteners—was intended to compete successfully with Pepsi. Over the years, more and more people—especially young people—had come to prefer the taste of Pepsi over Coke. Now, in numerous blind taste tests among consumers, New Coke successfully beat out Pepsi time after time. Coca-Cola spent over four million dollars developing, testing, and marketing New Coke. The company was sure they had a winner on their hands. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, 20th century, 1980s, popular culture, by Donna R. Braden, beverages
As part of our collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and other Detroit-area community organizations to provide additional context for the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit exhibit at the DIA through July 12, 2015, The Henry Ford has been digitizing parts of our collection that relate to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and their relationship with the Ford family and Ford Motor Company. We ran across a couple dozen 1932 photographs, including this one, of the Ford Motor Company Mexico City plant, all marked “Kahlo Foto,” and wondered whether these might be the work of Frida Kahlo’s father Guillermo Kahlo. An essay in the exhibit catalog by Diego Rivera’s grandson Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera notes “Don Guillermo was considered the finest architecture photographer in Mexico, a master in the field…. Diego respected Don Guillermo … for his studies of industrial machinery: Don Guillermo recorded the day-to-day modern development of the country; every factory and every major engine installation became the subject matter of his photographs, which were published in the Mexican press as an indisputable symbol of the nation’s advancing progress.” We haven’t yet found any further information about the genesis of these images, but it seems likely, given the labels on the images, Guillermo Kahlo’s architectural photography background, and the year the images were taken (the same year Rivera started work on the Detroit Industry murals at the DIA), that these images have a tie to Frida and Diego’s time in Detroit and relationship with the Fords. Visit our collections website to see all of these images, as well as the other related material we’ve digitized.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, Detroit, 20th century, 1930s, photographs, Ford Motor Company, digital collections, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, by Ellice Engdahl, art
Ultra-Mileage in the Motor City: The 2015 Shell Eco-marathon Americas
Earlier this month, we at The Henry Ford were excited to participate in the Shell Eco-marathon Americas, held in Detroit’s Cobo Center from April 9-12. More than 1,000 high school and college students, representing the United States, Canada, Brazil and Guatemala, competed to determine which of their 113 teams produced the car capable of the best fuel mileage.
Shell, the global energy company, sponsored fuel-mileage competitions as early as 1939, but more recently the Eco-marathon has evolved into three events held annually in Europe, Asia and the Americas. This year marks the first time that the Americas competition took place in the Motor City. Teams may enter cars in one of two classes. Prototype cars strive for maximum fuel efficiency with exotic materials and designs. Urban Concept cars resemble street vehicles complete with lights, signals and working horns. Teams using internal combustion engines may power their vehicles with gasoline, diesel, natural gas or ethanol. Those using electricity can choose between lithium-based batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. Whatever the fuel, the goal is the same: squeeze as much distance out of it as possible. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, Michigan, making, events, environmentalism, education, Detroit, childhood, cars, by Matt Anderson
"Adequacy is sufficient: everything else is irrelevant."
Adam Osborne, founder of the quintessential boom-and-bust Silicon Valley tech company, built the first portable computer in 1981. The Henry Ford holds examples of the few products the ill-starred Osborne Computer Corporation ever developed. What can Osborne’s innovative products and boom-and-bust company history tell us about computing and the high-tech economy? Continue Reading
California, 20th century, 1980s, technology, entrepreneurship, computers, by Suzanne Fischer
On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by assassin John Wilkes Booth while sitting in a chair at Ford’s Theatre. This week, 150 years later, The Henry Ford is holding events to commemorate the fallen leader. As part of this effort, we’ve digitized a substantial amount of material from our Lincoln-related collections, going beyond the well-known chair and the Logan County Courthouse (where a young Lincoln practiced law). One newly digitized item is this copy negative showing the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre the day after the assassination, but visit our collections website to browse all our curators’ selections. The topically arranged sets cover the Logan County Courthouse, the Lincolns in Springfield, preserving the Union, the Lincolns in the White House, Lincoln’s 1864 reelection, the assassination, the Lincoln rocker, mourning the slain president, remembrances of Lincoln, Lincoln portraits, and Henry Ford’s interest in Lincoln.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
20th century, 19th century, presidents, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, Abraham Lincoln
What's new on The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation this weekend? Host Mo Rocca shows us the hardware store robot; the incredible patent models from Thomas Edison that show us the beginning of our electronic world; how the USG Corp. is leading the way with grooming the next generation of engineers and mathematicians; the Israeli inventors of a printer that fits in your pocket. Learn more here and see a sneak peek below.
Lish Dorset is Social Media Manager at The Henry Ford.
printing, technology, by Lish Dorset, Thomas Edison, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation
