Caption: A peep into the great Westinghouse Electric plant at South Philadelphia....A busy section of the sky-lighted pattern shop. Pattern making is the first step in transforming an engineer's plan into reality.
Image donated by Corbis-Bettmann
Caption: In the early 1900s, Pennsylvania mills accounted for about one-third of the silk manufactured in the United States. In 1912, Philadelphia boasted 40 silk factories, including Sauquoit, one of the largest silk mills in Pennsylvania, which had 400 looms and 20,000 spindles. Headquartered in New York, the Sauquoit Silk Manufacturing Company also operated mills in Scranton and Bethlehem.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Carpets and rugs were a major part of Pennsylvania's house wares production. Shown here is a step in the manufacturing process at Hardwick and Magee Company of Philadelphia. September 17, 1925.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: The more than 3,000 miles of roads and 1,200 miles of canal built by the state and private companies between the 1790s and 1860 were part of a transportation revolution that sped the interchange of coal, lumber, food products and other materials in Pennsylvania's booming economy.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: American Sheet and Tin Plate Company worker trims tin plate.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Workers at Charles Cramp and Son's were proud of being known as the best shipfitters anywhere, 1918.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Committed to the welfare of his employees, Henry Heinz in the early 1900s provided them a broad range of amenities and services, including a lecture hall, library, art gallery, lunch rooms, roof garden.
Image donated by Corbis-Bettmann
Caption: In the early 1900s, skyscrapers reached for the stars, and the demand for plate glass in America virtually ‘went through the roof!" By 1925, the United States was producing nearly 120 million square feet of plate glass each year, and PPG was the nation's largest producer. The booming auto industry was also fueling the demand for glass, as manufacturers shifted from open touring cars to sedans.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Production; wrapping department, Kiss; female employees; assembly line, women verifying weight of 2 pound boxes, 1936-1937
Hershey Community Archives
Caption: Hershey Press Company; Interior; workers with printing equipment and machinery; signs visible on walls, ca 1911-1915.
Hershey Community Archives
Caption: Production; knock out department; bar production; female employees catching molds, 1930-1935.
Hershey Community Archives
Caption: Craftsmen Charles Butterweck, Lawrence Rothenberger, and Milton Derr standing in the Boyertown Carriage Works paint shop around 1913.
Courtesy of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles
Caption: The Sauquoit Silk Manufacturing Company operated mills in Scranton and Bethlehem, PA. The Bethlehem mill operated from 1887 until the Cutter Silk Mill Company ceased operations in 1984.
From Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. Vol. 1, 1905 and Lehigh University
Caption: Hemlock produced inferior lumber, but its bark was rich in the tannin used in the curing of leather. Dependent on ready supplies of bark, many tanneries set up near the great stands of hemlock in northern Pennsylvania forests. By the late 1800s hemlock also was used for paper pulp, rough construction work, and boxes. High levels of production led to the rapid exhaustion of the region's forests and widespread pollution of streams and rivers.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Pennsylvania tanning operations continued to thrive into the twentieth century. Today, in spite of an overall decline in demand and competition from man-made materials, leather tanning survives in Pennsylvania, especially in the northern-most region of the state.
Pennsylvania and Its Manifold Activities, 1912.
Caption: Capping off window glass cylinders preparatory to flattening, circa 1912.
From Pennsylvania and Its Manifold Activities, 1912.
Caption: In 1912, it was written that Pittsburgh was regarded as the "cradle of the glass industry in America", because of the city's improvements in the process of making glass and generating revolutionizing machinery for the glass industry.
From Pennsylvania and Its Manifold Activities, 1912.
Caption: J. B. Stetson Hat Company employees finish hats. Stetson Hats are sold worldwide.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: A glass blower works with a blowing iron and molten glass to blow a window-glass cylinder, Pennsylvania, circa 1900.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: REA; TVA; Stringing rural TVA transmission line.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Caption: The War Emergency Act of 1917-1918, allowed Pennsylvanis's Hog Island Shipyard to build merchant ships, which the company's employees did faster than any other shipyard at that time.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Women assembling dolls on a long worktable at the Shrenhat Toy Company, Philadelphia, Oct. 1912
National Archives and Records Administration
College Park, MD
Caption: Logging in Pennsylvania peaked in the latter half of the 19th century. Basic hand tools were used to fell immense trees.
Courtesy Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: Transporting logs off the mountains often involved the use of trains. Paths cut into the mountains and the pollution caused by the trains themselves added to the devastation of forests.
Courtesy Pennsylvania State Archives
Caption: In the late 1800s young women left farms for jobs in Pennsylvania's growing industrial labor force. Many of them found employment working in agricultural related industries, such as Burpee seed processing plants.
Courtesy of the Burpee Seed Company
Caption: During the years leading up to World War II, through the late 1940s, Pennsylvanians witnessed unparalleled factory production, as well as the greatest rise in union membership in the state's history.
Courtesy of Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, from Carnegie Library at the Balch exhibit,"Discovering America: The Peopling of Pa."
Caption: Jones and Laughlin, one of the largest iron and steel manufacturers in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, was headquartered in Pittsburgh. In the corporation's early years, production included wrought iron, iron bars and plates, from which rails were made. However, by 1894, Jones and Laughlin was totally out of the iron business and solely produced steel.
Library and Archives Division, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Caption: Across the state, rural Pennsylvanians pitched in their money and their labor to bring electricity to their homes and communities. On May 3, 1941, power first flowed along the first 35 miles of lines to members of Adams Electric Cooperative in Gettysburg.
Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association
Caption: Tool forgers A. Bosonier and J. Mascairilli in a blacksmith's shop, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Lester, PA, March 9, 1920.
Courtesy of Hagley Museum and Library
Caption: Workers with sample carts, inside of the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, Vandergrift, 1913.
Courtesy of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society