Readco and the Transition to Military Manufacturing in World War II

Posted by on Dec 1, 2019 in | Comments Off on Readco and the Transition to Military Manufacturing in World War II Once the United States entered World War II in December 1941, every facet of American life was affected. The unprecedented quantities of ammunition, weapons and vehicles required to sustain the war effort called for many Pennsylvania manufacturers to retool their production to fulfill these critical needs. Companies like Ford’s assembly plant in Chester, Delaware County, began producing military...
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Pennsylvania Icons: State Treasures Telling the Story of the Commonwealth

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Icons: State Treasures Telling the Story of the Commonwealth   Pennsylvania Icons is a landmark exhibition at The State Museum of Pennsylvania that tells the story of the commonwealth and its people, places, industries, creations and events with more than 400 artifacts and specimens from the museum’s collection. The State Museum contains the largest and most comprehensive Pennsylvania history collection in the world, with a diverse array of objects...
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Pennsylvania’s First Television Station: “Loving What We Were Doing”

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s First Television Station: “Loving What We Were Doing” No champagne corks popped at Philadel­phia’s old Philco plant on October 17, 1941, to celebrate. The achievement failed to rate even a few lines in local newspapers as reports of the increasingly grim drama unfolding in Eu­rope took chilling precedence. Like so many of the seemingly minor events that herald major changes in our way of living, America’s first commercial network...
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From Manayunk to the Metropolitan: Philadelphia’s Martino Family of Artists

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on From Manayunk to the Metropolitan: Philadelphia’s Martino Family of Artists Asked to name a leading Pennsylvania family of artists, many will invariably cite the Calder, the Wyeth, or the Peale dynasties. But there is another family of fine artists, also deeply rooted in Philadelphia and environs, that produced credible and talented artists. They are the two generations of the Martino family — seven brothers, two wives, and two daughters. The talented brothers were the...
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Frank Rizzo: Philadelphia’s Tough Cop Turned Mayor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Frank Rizzo: Philadelphia’s Tough Cop Turned Mayor On Saturday night, August 29, 1970, unknown assailants shot to death Philadelphia police sergeant Frank Von Colln while stationed in a small guardhouse in the Cobbs Creek section of the city’s expansive Fairmount Park. No one witnessed the killing, but police suspected that it was the work of the Black Panther Party, an African American revolutionary organization that endorsed violence as a...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Harmony in Wood: Furniture of the Harmony Society by Philip D. Zimmerman published by the Friends of Old Economy Village, 2010; 214 pages, cloth, $60.00 Creators of an immensely successful nineteenth-century utopian society, the Harmonists, led by George Rapp (1757–1847), emigrated from Germany and first settled Harmony in Butler County in 1804, moved west to Indiana ten years later where they...
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