As cars became more widespread during the early 20^th century, mechanized vehicles began to replace horses and wagons in wartime. While tanks were tested on the battlefield during World War I, there was also a need to remove wounded soldiers from the front quickly, safely, and efficiently. Ford Motor Company’s Model Ts were light, economical, and easy to operate, which made them perfect for this need.

We’ve just digitized dozens of photographs and drawings showing these innovative World War I–era Ford Model T ambulances, including this October 1918 demo picture, with the wartime message “On to Berlin” visible on the shoe soles of the “patient.”

Visit our Digital Collections to browse more photographs and technical drawings of Model T ambulances.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Strategy Manager, Collections & Content at The Henry Ford.

Michigan, Europe, 1910s, 20th century, World War I, Model Ts, healthcare, Ford Motor Company, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl

In the “With Liberty and Justice for All” exhibit in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, you’ll see a number of Civil Rights–related buttons, including one from the 1963 March on Washington, one declaring “Black is Beautiful,” and one featuring a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the slogan “Practice Nonviolence.” These all come from the Kathryn Emerson and Dr. James C. Buntin Papers, a collection we’ve recently been digging into.

Kathryn Emerson and Dr. James Buntin were interested and active in social causes such as welfare rights, Civil Rights, and education, among others, during the 1960s and 1970s, and the collection contains dozens of buttons that we’ve just digitized, including this one proudly declaring “Be Black Baby.” We’ve also recently digitized some of the couple’s clothing, books, and other materials.

Browse all of the digitized material from this fascinating and still-very-relevant collection by visiting our Digital Collections, and watch for an upcoming blog post from Curator of Public Life Donna Braden exploring Dr. Buntin’s library.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

Civil Rights, Henry Ford Museum, African American history, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections

One of the challenges of digitizing our collection is that we can’t just work on brand-new artifacts—we’re also always updating our records for already-digitized items.  A change might be as “simple” as refining a date based on new research, or adding a description of the artifact for context.  For imagery, we have to account for the fact that camera technology advances at an astounding rate. Photos that we considered top of the line 10 or 15 years ago now may not meet today’s baseline standards.

An artifact we’ve just rephotographed, in honor of Black History Month, is the Rosa Parks Bus. Using the latest lighting, photography equipment, hardware, and software, Photographer Rudy Ruzicska and Digital Imaging Specialist Jillian Ferraiuolo recently took new images of the bus, including this shot, which features Rosa’s seat right in the middle of the picture. 

To see all of the new images, visit the Rosa Parks Bus record in our Digital Collections.  You’ll also be able to check out two new 360-degree views of the bus, one from Rosa’s seat, and one from the driver’s seat, to get up close and personal with this iconic Civil Rights artifact.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

Henry Ford Museum, African American history, digitization, photography, Rosa Parks bus, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl

Last summer, our 2016 Edsel B. Ford Design History Fellow, Meredith Pollock, investigated materials in our collection related to Edsel and Eleanor Ford’s philanthropy, including a thread concerning the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded February 12, 1909, on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.  The goal at the time, as the NAACP’s website notes, was to “secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the equal protection of the law and universal adult male suffrage, respectively.”

Judge Ira W. Jayne of the third judicial circuit of Michigan reached out to Eleanor Ford for a donation to the Detroit branch of the NAACP in 1922.  In a letter we’ve just digitized, Jayne calls the organization “the most intelligent and wholesome effort for and in behalf of the betterment of race conditions in the country today” and notes that his “knowledge of [Eleanor’s] interest in fair play for the under man has prompted this letter.”  Jayne did succeed in his goal—a reply two weeks later from Edsel Ford calls the NAACP’s goals “commendable” and includes a donation for $100.

Visit our Digital Collections to view more artifacts related to the NAACP. 

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

digital collections, Michigan, Detroit, African American history, Edsel Ford, philanthropy, by Ellice Engdahl

We bring hundreds to thousands of new artifacts into our collection every year, and many of those enter our digitization stream so visitors can access them online. We’ve just digitized a series of posters that came into the collection in September 2016.

Created around 1960 by the Ford Motor Company Research and Information Department, the educational works depict a number of ways humans have measured length, including the fathom, and how these measurements have increased in precision over time.

View all eight of these new additions by visiting our Digital Collections.

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communication, by Ellice Engdahl, education, posters, Ford Motor Company, digital collections

As you might expect, a car company with as long a life and as many different vehicles in production at various times as Ford Motor Company needed to document down to individual nuts and bolts each part of each vehicle. Over the 50 years between 1903 and 1957, Ford produced more than one million parts drawings, a comprehensive microfiche set of which now reside in The Henry Ford’s Benson Ford Research Center. We’ve just digitized several hundred of these parts drawings, including a couple dozen, like this one, that cover Model T ambulances built by Ford to be used during World War I. 

Go online to learn more about our parts drawings holdings, or browse all the digitized Ford parts drawings in our Digital Collections.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

Europe, Michigan, 1910s, 20th century, World War I, Model Ts, Ford Motor Company, drawings, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl, archives

We continue to digitize one of the highlights of our vast auto racing collections, the Dave Friedman collection of photos. Over the course of 2016, we added 2,330 new items from this collection to our online holdings, bringing the total digitized from the Friedman collection to almost 21,000 images.

While these images capture the drama and the spectacle of car racing in the 1960s, nearly nine out of ten of those we’ve digitized thus far are black-and-white photos. However, we’ve just digitized a set of several dozen color images from the 1960 United States Grand Prix at Riverside, including this shot where you can enjoy the vivid red noses of the cars.

See more pics from the same race, or browse all our digitized color images from the Dave Friedman collection in our Digital Collections.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

California, cars, race cars, 20th century, 1960s, racing, photographs, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl

One of the key aspects of the Dymaxion House in Henry Ford Museum is its central mast, which supports the entire structure. Buckminster Fuller, who created Dymaxion, had a lifelong interest in creating maximal structural strength with minimal materials and weight, most famously seen in his work with geodesic domes. When Fuller won his first commission for a geodesic structure, the Ford Rotunda, he worked with the Aerospace Engineering Lab at the University of Michigan to create a truss for load testing. Saved twice from being discarded by university staff, this test module was donated to The Henry Ford in 1993. 

It’s newly digitized and available for viewing in our Digital Collections, along with many other artifacts related to geodesic domes, Buckminster Fuller, and the Dymaxion House.

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

design, Michigan, Dearborn, Ford Motor Company, engineering, Buckminster Fuller, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections

If you’ve been watching Season Three of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, you’ve already gotten to learn about artifacts from our collection that include the quilts of Susana Allen Hunter, the Herschell-Spillman carousel, and the 1957 Cornell-Liberty Safety Car.  We’re always working far ahead on these stories, though, so we’re currently digitizing artifacts for upcoming stories.

One segment will feature Curator of Transportation Matt Anderson explaining the origins of air mail. While sending a letter or package overnight may seem mundane today, it was once new and exotic. Daring pilots captured public attention, as demonstrated by the 1930 publication Couriers of the Clouds: The Romance of the Air Mail.

See more artifacts related to air mail by visiting our Digital Collections—and keep watching The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation to learn more!

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.

Additional Readings:

• Just Added to Our Digital Collections: Detroit News Photographic Negatives
  
• Neil Armstrong: Reluctant Hero
  
• Amelia Earhart: Designing Fashion to Finance Flying
  
• Reliability Tours Land Public Trust

correspondence, communication, flying, 20th century, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, aviators, airplanes

Santa Claus is a fan of The Henry Ford. Every year, he visits Henry Ford Museum and spends time with guests of all ages. This year, you’ll find him at the North Pole—in the Heroes of the Sky exhibit, right next to the Fokker Tri-Motor flown over the pole by Richard Byrd. Behind Santa is an enticing display of toys—but what you might not know about these is that all of them are artifacts in our collections, including this “Designed by You” Faber-Castell Fashion Studio set.

To learn more about the other toys in Santa’s Arctic Landing, or to put together a last-minute Christmas list for yourself, visit our Digital Collections to see more toys on display throughout Henry Ford Museum. 

Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford

toys and games, Henry Ford Museum, holidays, Christmas, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections