The Company Histories — and One That Was Not Read

Harris (1964) and The Wheelabrator Way (1976), read; Babcock (1966), named and not read

What it is: the firms' own histories, which for a factory city are a shelf of their own. Tony Harris's 1964 history of Wheelabrator was read whole by the Businesses and Exports legs — its account by the company's historian, dated 1 June 1964, carries the firm's complete export history and the Indabrator agreement, and it settles a counting trap: American Foundry Equipment is the same house under its 1920–1946 name, not a missed firm. The Wheelabrator Way (July 1976) and the firm's employee magazine PARADE (vol. 26, no. 3, May–June 1967, read from the digitized magazine itself for the one documented fashion show) stand beside it; Uzumeri and Black's 1995 Auburn University case study carries the firm's later analysis.

Its standing, from this build's experience: company histories are advocacy with archives inside them — used here for names, dates, product lines and the firm's own figures, attributed as the firm's, and tested where an outside record exists.

Where it fails: at the shelf's most wanted volume. Kenneth Babcock's History of United States Rubber Company (1966) is named again and again in this build's notes — for the 1922 Ball Band acquisition terms, for the works' local chiefs after Saunders, for the First World War product lines — as a settling source, which is this build's word for a source not yet read. It stands on the pull list at full size. An apparatus that listed it among the books read would be lying in the precise way this section exists to prevent.

Sources:

1. PARADE item, and the Babcock namings as settling source.