Digital Collections

This collection, digitized here in its entirely, consists of photographs of the laboratory apparatus and facilities used in the manufacture of dyes at the Althouse, Bates, and Crompton Chemical Companies. The photographs span 1946 to 1974, but primarily document operations at the Althouse facilities in Reading, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and the Crompton & Knowles Research Laboratories in Gibraltar, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s. The photographs mainly depict various steps in the manufacturing and quality control process and key apparatus used, including autoclaves, blenders, spectrophotometers, and portable pH meters. The photographs were collected by Dr. James F. Feeman during his career as a research chemist with the companies.