Giving musically themed gifts at Christmas has been popular for a long time, as you can see from this 1915 advertisement for Victrolas. The Victor Talking Machine Company, maker of the Victrola, was founded in 1901 by Eldridge R. Johnson to manufacture machines specifically designed to play the disc records Emile Berliner had patented. In […]
A new exhibit at the Smithsonian – American Enterprise in the Innovation wing of the National Museum of American History – is telling the history of American business and innovation. According to the Smithsonian, this exhibit “chronicles the tumultuous interaction of capitalism and democracy that resulted in the continual remaking of American business–and American life.” […]
Advertising cards, also known as trading or trade cards, originated in 18th century England and made their way across the Atlantic. They were very popular in the Victorian era and functioned somewhat like a modern business card would today. They are highly collectible and offer a pretty window into advertising and companies in the 19th […]
As we enter this new year, many of us have made resolutions to spend more time with family, to volunteer, perhaps to stop smoking, and of course, to get fit and lose weight. The widespread desire to become healthier and shed those extra pounds is met with a plethora of weight loss products, programs, and […]
In July 2013 we published a post that featured an advertisement from the New York Edison Company. In it were a series of stylized characters doing a number of activities illustrating the usefulness of electricity. It turns out this was just one of many advertisements over several years that used similar illustrations. The image in […]
Every Thanksgiving people stock up on the food and ingredients they will need for their feasts. Because retailers want shoppers, and their goal is to let people know what they have and what deals are to be had, special fliers are run in newspapers and commercials are aired on television. This advertisement from the Rock […]
For the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Games I wrote about an exhibit I created of ‘classic’ winter sport and game books (1800-1950) in the post He Shoots, He Scores: A Love of Winter Games. In this post I mentioned that the Library has been involved in digitization of its pre-1923 U.S. monograph imprint collection. Over the […]
On Thanksgiving Day I received with my newspaper a hefty amount of fliers from various retailers all touting their Christmas bargains. Advertising for Christmas shopping isn’t exactly a new concept, but what I find interesting is the evolution of the buying season and the tricks advertisers have used in their advertisements to influence shopper behavior. […]
Anyone who knows me knows I don’t spend much time cooking. That makes it a little funny that these advertisements caught my eye. They both ran on the same page in the September 25, 1911 Washington Herald. While it was the “Cook With Gas” advertisement that initially attracted my attention, it was the sister advertisement […]
While doing research I got distracted by this wonderful advertisement published in the New York Tribune on October 5, 1920. It was an advertisement from the New York Edison Company touting the benefits of electricity, mostly for efficiency and safety, for businesses. But what really caught my attention was the hand drawn caricatures, for lack […]