HIST 2011 - Selling the American Dream: Advertisement in Modern America

"Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University. The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library." --- Duke University Libraries

"Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.

The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s. All of the commercials held in the DMB&B Archives will be digitized, allowing students and researchers access to a wide range of vintage brand advertising from the first four decades of mainstream commercial television." --- Duke University Libraries

"The Early Advertising of the West collection consists of over 450 print advertisements published in local magazines, city directories, and theater pamphlets from 1867 to 1918. These advertisements were selected and digitized in order to help researchers and students examine social, cultural and economic trends during this period. The collection is categorized into thematic groups and features advertisements about health care and hygiene products, liquor, tobacco, machinery, manufacturing, transportation, fashion, food and household goods and local tourism. Due to the lack of government drug inspection and regulation during this era, patent medicines and medical treatments such as tonics, tablets and electrical body belts are well represented.

The information for the Early Advertising of the West collection was researched and prepared by the UW Libraries Special Collections Division in 2008. The advertisements in this database were selected from materials from various book and theater program collections held at the UW Libraries Special Collections Division. The images were scanned on a flatbed scanner or captured with a digital camera from originals as TIFF files, manipulated in Adobe PhotoShop to achieve the best and clearest possible digital image and loaded into the Contentdm JPEG2000 software and linked with descriptive metadata. Selection for the Early Advertising Collection was done by Kristin Kinsey and the research and descriptive metadata was prepared by James Hancock." --- University of Washington Libraries

"Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

This collection presents over 3,300 items relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture. The project was made possible by grant funding to Duke University from the 1998 Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition." --- Duke University Libraries

By the 19th century, American newspapers were awash in patent medicine advertising. Their advertising and labels were very enticing: "Eckman's Alterative for all throat and lung diseases;" "Cerralgine Food for the Brain, a safe cure for headache, neuralgia, nervousness, insomnia, etc.;" and "Drs. Mixer, sole manufacturers and proprietors of Mixer's Cancer and Scrofula syrup; the world renowned blood purifier."

"The Living Room Candidate contains more than 400 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952, when Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower that short ads during such popular TV programs as I Love Lucy would reach more voters than any other form of advertising. This innovation had a permanent effect on the way presidential campaigns are run." --- Museum of the Moving Image

"About 600 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

This collection explores the complex relationships between modern medicine and modern advertising, or "Madison Avenue," as the latter is colloquially termed. It presents images and information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines. These ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s. The collection represents a wide range of products such as cough and cold remedies, laxatives and indigestion aids, and vitamins and tonics, among others. The majority of images in MMA are from the "Competitive Advertisements Collection" (Pre-1955 files) within the J. Walter Thompson Company Archives." --- Duke University LIbraries

"A portal to more than 30,000 images of outdoor advertisements from five different source collections.

The Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions 2.0 (ROAD 2.0) project comprises images related to outdoor advertising from the twentieth century. It originated as a metadata-only database in 2003, funded by an grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Later, using a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), Duke University Libraries digitized many of the images described in the original database. The digitized version of the collection launched in spring 2011 with over 22,000 items selected from four archival collections: the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) Archives, the OAAA Slide Library, and the papers of prominent outdoor advertising figures John Paver and John Brennan. A fifth collection, the R.C. Maxwell Company Records, was digitized as a complement to the NHPRC grant-funded collection, and was added to the ROAD installation later in summer 2011. ROAD 2.0 is now a portal to over 31,000 outdoor advertising images." --- Duke University Libraries

The Internet Archive preserves historical information in many different formats.
As of 2024 The Internet Archive has archived:
*** over 800 billion web pages
*** over 44 million books
*** over 15 million audio recordings
*** over 10 million videos

The Wayback Machine is found and accessed at the top of the Internet Archive website. Search the Wayback Machine by keywords or by web address (URL).

The Internet Archive began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today the Internet Archive has 28+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine