Today is National Inventors’ Day in the United States, and has been since 1982, when Senate Joint Resolution 140 designated the date as such, choosing this specific day on account of it also being anniversary of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison.
We’re marking the date with this undated photograph of chemist and inventor Hudson Maxim (1853-1927). Hudson is best known for his work in the development of smokeless gunpowder and military explosives, and came from a family of inventors. His eldest brother, sometime employer and frequent rival was the prolific inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim, who created the Maxim gun, the first truly efficient automatic machine gun. His nephew was Hiram Percy Maxim, inventor of the Maxim Silencer.
While this photograph of Maxim experimenting with black powder is undated, it appears to have been taken after 1894, when Maxim lost his left hand experimenting with the explosive mercury fulminate.
This photograph is from Hagley Library’s Hudson Maxim collection of graphic materials (Accession 1996.312), from which selected materials were chosen for inclusion in a digital collection of materials related to Hudson Maxim. The items in this digital collection chronicle Hudson Maxim's life and work from the late 1880's, when he began working for his eldest brother, to the final years of his life.
Hagley’s Hudson Maxim digital collection documents not only his scientific work, but also his collaborations with the du Pont family and company, as well as his personal business affairs and family life. It also includes coverage of his various, less successful efforts to expand his empire, including his promotion of "Maxim-feast" (a soybean-based food supplement), "the Game of War" (a supposed improvement on chess), and the Maxim Munitions Corporation, which he withdrew from when its managers tied his name to a scheme to turn water into gasoline. There are also writings covering Maxim’s second career as a public speaker and inveterate writer of magazine articles and letters to the editor, freely venting his many, many (so many) opinions on poetry and language as well as invention, progress, war, pacificism, women’s rights, Prohibition, and public affairs.
This #WorkerWednesday, we’re sharing this 1903 photograph of a group of squib workers at an anthracite coal mill in western Pennsylvania. Squibs were explosive devices used by miners to separate coal from rock. Workers like these women and girls performed the often dangerous work of making squibs by filling parchment tubes with explosive black powder and sealing the ends of the finished squib.
The photographer was Frank E. Schoonover, whose many illustration jobs included “Children of the Coal Shadows,” an expose of child labor in the coal counties of Pennsylvania, which was published in McClure’s Magazine in February 1903. The following October, Schoonover traveled to Scranton and lived with a coal mining family for two weeks while photographing and sketching the mines and surrounding areas.
This photograph is part of Hagley Library’s Frank E. Schoonover negatives (Accession 2017.239) collection. For a selection of other digitized material from this collection, visit the collection page on our Digital Archives.
We’ve all been there. The dishes in the sink. The litter box. The piles of dirty laundry. The piles of clean laundry. Can’t somebody else do it? Can’t . . . dynamite do it?
According to Letting Dynamite Do It, a rare example of pre-1930 film and the oldest DuPont motion picture film in the Hagley collection, the answer is maybe! Or probably! I’m not actually sure.
This 1926 film, along with similar sales pitches like "Farming With Dynamite", was distributed by DuPont to theaters to promote the use of DuPont dynamite. In this video, dynamite is shown providing solutions for lumbering, raising a blast furnace, clearing roads, removing an old water intake in Lake Michigan, and to blast rock during the construction of the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia.
You can watch and read more about this film by clicking here, or visit the film directly in our Digital Archive by clicking here. And to view a curated selection of short articles on our favorite films in Hagley’s collections, check out our #HagleyFromHome Hagley Video Showcase.
Letting Dynamite Do it is part of our Sponsored and industrial motion picture film collection (Accession 2018.222).
This #WorkerWednesday, we’re spending the day with an employee of the Ballistics Lab at the Indiana Ordnance Works. This photograph was taken in 1941, when the works first began manufacturing military explosives, propellants, and smokeless powder.
The Indiana Ordnance Works was built near Charlestown, Indiana by DuPont to fulfill World War II contracts for the U.S. government. The Works continued to manufacture ordnance for military use throughout the ensuing decades, though it was operated by a variety of corporate entities. In 1964, its name was changed to the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant. In 1992, it was deactivated, and the property was converted to other uses, including an industrial commerce center and a state park.
This photograph is part of the Hagley Library’s collection of Indiana Ordnance Works, Ballistics Lab photographs (Accession 2001.209). To view this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.
Explosives Procurement Research, Pricing Strategies, Negotiation Strategies, Cost Modeling, Procurement Best Practices, Strategic Purchasing, Pricing Trends, Market Research for Procurement Professionals.
The explosives procurement category is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.97% during 2022-2026. The prices are outlined to rise by 3%-4% during the forecast period and suppliers will have moderate bargaining power in this market. AECI, Austin Powder, and Chemring Group are a few of the key suppliers in the explosives market.
