Silicon Valley History Online

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Photo, Thin film, Intel Corporation, 2003, Silicon Valley History Online
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This small archive provides more than 850 images from the mid-18th century to the present of the Santa Clara Valley in California. Browse the archive or view images through six thematic groupings: agriculture (91 images); education (147 images); people (467 images); technology (182 items); transportation (125 items); and urban life (78 items). There is some overlap between the collections. Keyword and advanced searches are also available. There are seven lesson plans on the history of the Santa Clara Valley, primarily for high school. Topics include the 1906 earthquake, the history of technology, urban development, the Ohlone Indians, women in Santa Clara County, and transportation.

Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills: Gold and Gold Mining in Georgia, 1830s-1940s

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Photo, Two men searching for gold in a sluice flume, Thar's Gold in. . . site
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This website examines gold mining in Georgia's Lumpkin County from the late 1830s through the early 1940s with 90 primary sources, including letters, memoranda, photographs, picture postcards, and selected legal, financial, and promotional documents, including company prospectuses. The main concentration is the period between Reconstruction and the turn of the 20th century. Subjects include account collection, companies, leases, machinery, mineral rights, operations and techniques, and ore handling. An essay on Georgia gold mining history with links to primary documents discusses the Georgia Gold Rush, the "Great Intrusion" and Cherokee Removal, the U.S. branch mint in Dahlonega, gold mining in Georgia during the second half of the 19th century, the Second Georgia Gold Rush, 20th-century gold mining activity, and gold tourism. "Players and Places" provides brief descriptions of the people and places involved. "Suggested Readings" lists 38 related books, articles, and web essays as well as 14 mining company prospectuses and reports available at various archives and libraries. There is also a list of related archival collections.

Minnesota Maps Online

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Map, 1874, Alfred Theodore Andreas, Minnesota Maps Online
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This site allows the visitor to search and view Minnesota's original public land survey plats created by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office during the years 1848 to 1907 and the later General Land Office and Bureau of Land Management maps of the state. The collection includes more than 3,500 original land survey maps; an 1873 map book of Hennepin County; late-19th-century plat books of Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, and Winona counties; and an 1871 illustrated historical atlas of Minnesota. Browse all the maps and plats or search the collection by county, township/range, or keyword. The advanced search feature allows the researcher to search the collection by title, subject, description, creator, publisher, date, source, or coverage. A useful resource for those researching the social, economic, environmental, or political history of Minnesota and its counties and towns.

Automobile in American Life and Society

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Hartford Auto-Jack advertisement, 1911, Automobile in American. . . site
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This website was designed as an academic resource for courses focused on the automobile and the automobile industry. Each section—design, environment, gender, labor, and race—has a short introduction and two illustrated scholarly essays (often including annotated bibliographies). The complete text of each essay can be viewed in a separate window and each essay is accompanied by a student and teacher resources section with one or more questions for reading, discussion, writing, and research, as well as questions making connections between the essays. "Design" also offers a list of 110 "automotive oral histories" available in the Benson Ford research center, but only 17 are available on the site. Visitors can search the site by keyword but no advanced search is available. This site is a useful resource for students and educators studying the role of the automobile in American culture and society.

Manufacturers' Catalogs from the First Decade of American Automobiles

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Image, Men and women watching the horse. . . , 1909, Taking the Wheel site
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This collection allows the visitor to explore the early history of the American automobile through images from 69 manufacturer's catalogs published in 1909. There are more than 800 total images. In each catalog, clicking on "view image details" brings up a larger version of the selected image with full bibliographic data. Clicking on "enlarge image" brings up a new window with an even larger image where the visitor can read all the details of the catalog picture. Of particular interest are a 27-page Ford catalog with a price list of parts for the company's Model N, R, and S cars; a similar catalog from the E.R. Thomas Motor Company; a Studebaker catalog of "electric pleasure vehicles" featuring a description of the Model 22f Electric Coupe, a car "for evening social engagements, for use in inclement weather in the summer and for winter use, a comfortable and stylish vehicle"; a catalog describing Packard Motor Car Company's "Packard Truck," with images of the truck delivering various types of goods; and a 17-page instruction book on the "Matheson six-cylinder car" with detailed technical diagrams of the car's engine, transmission, and controls. Besides its interest to those researching the history of the automobile, this collection is also a useful resource for those researching the history of advertising, consumer culture, or science and technology in the early 20th century.

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920

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Image for Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
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These 9,000 advertising items and publications date from 1850 to 1920. Selected items illustrate the rise of consumer culture in America and the development of a professionalized advertising industry.

Images are grouped into 11 categories: advertising ephemera (trade cards, calendars, almanacs, postcards); broadsides for placement on walls, fences, and buildings; advertising cookbooks from food companies and appliance manufacturers; early advertising agency publications created to promote the concepts and methods of the industry; promotional literature from the nation's oldest advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson; early Kodak print advertisements; Lever Brothers Lux (soap) advertisements; R.C. Maxwell advertising company images; outdoor advertising; scrapbooks; and tobacco ads.

Each category contains a brief overview, and each image is accompanied by production information. The site, searchable by keyword or ad content, includes a timeline on the history of advertising from the 1850s to 1920. This easy-to-use collection is ideal for researching consumer culture and marketing strategies.

Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia 1876

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Image for Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia 1876
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The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, unofficially known as the Centennial Exhibition, was held in Philadelphia in 1876 and was attended by more than nine million people. This website presents 1,500 images, including photographs, lithographs, engravings, maps, scrapbooks, and albums, searchable by keyword or subject, on this event.

"Exhibition Facts" provides statistics, a summary of the fair's significance, photographs of buildings erected by foreign nations, and images of sheet music. A timeline traces the fair's lifespan from the 1871 Act of Congress that created its planning commission to the removal of exhibits in December 1876. A bibliography lists more than 130 related works and 17 websites. "Tours" features an interactive map of the fairgrounds. "Centennial Schoolhouse" offers activities, including excerpts from a 17-year-old boy's diary. This website provides revealing images of the event that introduced America "as a new industrial world power."

Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers

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The papers of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), more than 4,600 items, are presented on this website. Materials include family papers, general correspondence, laboratory notebooks from 1891 to 1893 and 1910, scientific notebooks, blueprints, journals, articles, lectures, and photographs.

Writings address a range of subjects, including the telephone, deaf education, experiments with aeronautics, and other inventions. There are more than 100 letters to and from Helen Keller, family correspondence, and material on life in Washington, DC and Nova Scotia, where Bell had a summer home and conducted experiments. Ten "collection highlights," including notebook pages, document his first success with the telephone, essays on Bell's career and on the telephone, an annotated timeline, a 19-title bibliography, and a list of related sites.

Business Plan Archive

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A collection of business plans and planning information, this archive documents the "Birth of the Dot Com Era." Documents can be browsed (free registration required) by alphabetical listing of companies, document type, market sector, or market audience, or the archive can be searched by company name. An advanced search option is also available.

Currently, there are 2,445 companies in the archive with one or more documents and more than 3,400 archived documents. Each company record includes a brief description of the company, historical information on the company (if available), and related documents. "What We Can Learn" offers three articles on the kinds of observations we can extract from the dot com boom and bust. "Research Corner" offers tips on using the archive in the classroom, announcements, and other project news. Of particular interest are the entries on guidelines and recommendations for studying companies and for using the archive.

AIDS at 20

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Image for AIDS at 20
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A 1981 reference to an unusual pneumonia in Los Angeles, California, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention marked the beginning of public discussion of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, known as AIDS. More than 350 selected New York Times articles from 1981 to 2001 related to the AIDS epidemic are available on this website. Materials also include nine articles specifically related to the course of the epidemic's devastation in Africa.

There are nine videos, six multimedia presentations, five fact sheets, and four in-depth reports on such subjects as HIV medications, AIDS in New York City, HIV and teens, women and AIDS, the Federal response to the crisis, and the history of AIDS. The in-depth reports cover a diverse range of people affected by AIDS, including those of different ethnic backgrounds, and cover a wide range of locations within the U.S., including rural and urban areas.