Industrial Design and Innovation

The Eagle Rises to Unveil the Statue of Liberty. New York: Eagle Pencil Co., [ca. 1890].

Lift the American eagle on the pedestal and see Lady Liberty rise with a handful of pencils and holding an ad for them. This beautifully chromolithographed trade card also shows the Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, in the background. Many companies appealed to patriotism to make their ads attractive.

The Keystone Line of Agricultural Implements. Sterling, IL: Keystone Manufacturing Co., [ca. 1890].

Like a rotating catalog, this chromolithographed trade card features a wheel with Uncle Sam demonstrating Keystone’s agricultural products. The potential buyers, e.g., Native Americans, sheiks, and Black, Turkish, and Chinese people, are the most diverse I’ve ever seen in an advertisement. The advent of the internal combustion engine not only changed life for the middle class, it changed the way farming was done throughout the world.

Vente annuelle un million de machines [One million machines sold annually]. Paris: Singer Sewing Machines, 1900.

The Singer sewing machine, patented by Isaac Singer in 1851, grew into a phenomenal success. It changed women’s lives immensely by freeing them from hand sewing and giving them experience using machinery, a workshop skill. This chromolithographed trade card, offering a 10% discount for paying cash, was made for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris, where the machine won the Grand Prize. The machines sold for 90 French francs and up. Like Verger and Bouquet, the printer, J. E. Goosens, created many movable trade cards for Au Bon Marché and other stores.

Rolltops [Desks]. Paris: Standard [Furniture Company], 1900.

With a pull of the tab, the executive leans back in his chair and the roll top desk cover is lifted by the secretary, clearly demonstrating this product’s feature. The scene is jam-packed with information, which includes Herkimer, New York—“the desk capital of the world”—featured on the map above the desk. Like many trade cards of the era, this one boasts winning the Grand Prize at the Exposition Universelle of Paris in 1900, where almost 9000 Grand Prizes were awarded. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movable is worth so many more.

High Lights [sic] on Lower Manhattan. New York: Trinity Buildings Corp., [ca. 1907].

This triptych brochure unfolds to expose two pop-up Trinity Buildings sited on a lower Manhattan map. It goes on to explain in detail the advantages of tenancy and its location, along with floor plans. As a sales tool, it compacts a great deal of information in a small space and graphically demonstrates the selling points.

For … those who cannot or should not climb stairs. New York: Sedgwick Machine Works, [ca. 1927].

In the 1920s, riding in an elevator would have been a rare event and having one in the home rarer still.  Flip up the card and watch the elevator go down. This movable paper design was patented in 1927. The smallest Sedgwick elevator sold for $600 at this time. Another mechanical card perfectly demonstrating the product it promotes.

Insta-Aid: First Aid at a Glance. CA: B. F. McDonald Co., 1932.

The B. F. McDonald Co. was a California-based purveyor of safety equipment. It makes sense that they would produce this first-aid giveaway. Double-sided with two die-cut holes on each side of the volvelle, the user could turn to the injury at the top and see the treatment on the side. The skeleton with anatomical landmarks helps. Several other safety equipment companies dispensed the same card with their name and logo on the accompanying sleeve.

Waterman’s for speedy writing. Waterman’s, [ca. 1930].

The discriminating well-dressed man buys his own pen, the best-selling Waterman’s Ideal fountain pen #52. Open and close the card to see his hand with the pen moving across his desk. Signs of success surround him: a telephone, secretary, and an assistant in front of filing cabinets. Graphic designers portray the sales message in one glance.

What do we need to add to our contentment? A Tesla radio! Czechoslovakia: Tesla Radios, [ca. 1957].

Communist Czechoslovakia was determined to become a major industrial nation exporting household products. This English-language advertisement shows an upscale sophisticated couple wanting more consumer goods, like the Tesla radio. Pull out the tab and see the radio, the list of the radio’s attributes, and the answer to their question.