Stockings, Cap Braids and Bomber Turrets: Wyomissing Industries Mobilizes for World War II

Posted by on Dec 1, 2019 in | Comments Off on Stockings, Cap Braids and Bomber Turrets: Wyomissing Industries Mobilizes for World War II   “Textile Machine Works suspends production of knitting machines for the duration.” – The Yarn Carrier, October 1942 The Textile Machine Works was one of a handful of companies with common ownership that became known as Wyomissing Industries, located just west of Reading in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The 13,430th and last knitting machine, a “Reading” model, was the embodiment of 40 years...
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Philadelphia’s Forgotten Inventor: The Untold Story of Rudolph M. Hunter

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Philadelphia’s Forgotten Inventor: The Untold Story of Rudolph M. Hunter The lot at 3710 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia is all but empty now – a low scraggly hedge in front, a scattering of shade trees, a long concrete walk on the right, skirting Penn Newman Catholic Center. It’s hard to imagine the fanciful Victorian mansion that once adorned the site – a “pretty residence of brick,” the Philadelphia Press unimaginatively put it in...
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Erie County: Where Geography Has Shaped History

Posted by on Nov 28, 2013 in | Comments Off on Erie County: Where Geography Has Shaped History Erie County forms the northwest corner of the state, bounded by Lake Erie on the northwest, the states of Ohio and New York on the west and east respectively and parts of Warren and Crawford counties on the east and south. Historically the county was divided into two sections. The sou them region of 259 ,000 acres fell within the original land grant to William Penn. The northern portion of...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Parrish Frederick Parrish (1870-1962) – who later adopted the family name Maxfield as a middle and then professional name – was born into Philadelphia’s Quaker community and reared in a culturally privileged environment. From his father Stephen, an acclaimed etcher and landscape painter, he inherited his talent for natural observation and an understanding of the business of...
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In Franklin’s Footsteps: An Interview with Ralph Archbold

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on In Franklin’s Footsteps: An Interview with Ralph Archbold Greater hero worship may be accorded to other historical figures, but Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) has, for better or worse, been more commonly identified with the American national character. His remarkable success as a printer, as well as the popularity of his essays, aphorisms, and almanacs, allowed him to spread his notions of industry and frugality among the common people. In the process,...
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The Lady and the Titan

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Lady and the Titan Before the creation of the Pulitzer Prize, long before Woodward and Bernstein, there was Pennsylvania’s own Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944). Best known as the muckraking journalist who single-handedly took on the mighty John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), she was among the most feared and admired women of her time. Writing during the Progressive Era, an age of hope and reform running roughly from...
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The Big Engines That Could

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Big Engines That Could On a blustery, chilly day in autumn of 1939, a dapper-looking man in his mid-forties climbed onto a railway station platform in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to watch the approach of a train. Amid billowing steam, shrouds of smoke, and rumbling loud enough to unnerve him, he watched an enormous locomotive scream past his vantage point. The sleek, sculpted machine, effortlessly pulling a passenger train,...
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“Atoms for Peace” in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Atoms for Peace” in Pennsylvania In 1957, Shippingport, along the Ohio River in far western Pennsylvania, became home to America’s first commercial nuclear power plant under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. Just two decades later, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) converted the Beaver County plant to a light water breeder reactor that successfully demonstrated the feasibility...
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