Du Mont Publications
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Du Mont, Allen B. (Allen Balcom), 1901-1965
setName: label: See more items in
content: Allen Balcom Du Mont Collection
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1933-1963 and undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.0018, Series 12
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: This series consists of DuMont publications produced for the general consumer public for advertising and sales.  The series is divided in ten subseries: General, Audio products, Cathode Ray Tube instruments, Instruments, Mobile communications, Navy/defense work, Television  general, Television  marketing,  Television  Technical, and Television  Transmitter Department. The General subseries includes anniversary booklets for the company's tenth, twentieth and twenty fifth anniversaries and booklets that provide overviews of the company.  There is also "Television is a Funny Business," a booklet of cartoons about  television, mostly collected from The New Yorker, compiled by  Allen Du Mont. (The originals for this publication are in Series 14).  The Audio Products subseries consists of one folder of  advertisements for DuMont radios, hi fi sets, and phonographs. The Cathode Ray Tube instruments subseries consists of catalogs for automotive test equipment, cyclographs (metal quality testers), and oscillographs and oscilloscopes.  There are operating and service manuals for the latter, as well as a fairly complete 1937 1956 set of the Oscillographer, a publication for oscillograph users.  

The Instruments subseries has bulletins and catalogs for non cathode ray instruments and general catalogs for DuMont technical products.  Mobile Communications represents an interest the company appears to have pursued in the late 1950s; it contains advertisements and other marketing means, as well as one issue of Point to Point, a mobile communications department newsletter.  

The subseries on Navy and defense work consists of some general brochures on DuMont's facilities for defense production during and after WWII and instruction books for radar and oscilloscope equipment produced for the Navy.  Television  General contains general materials on the development of television, particularly color television.  Television  Marketing contains advertisements, brochures, materials on cathode ray tubes (Teletrons) for televisions, marketing materials for the Duoscope (a television marketed in 1954 that received two programs simultaneously), and materials on television and education.  Television  Technical contains service information and instruction manuals.  Television  Transmitter Department contains binders for prospective purchasers of broadcast equipment. There are also extensive materials on the Electronicam TV Film system, the DuMont television camera that was the subject of a lawsuit with Camera vision, Inc., in 1955 (see Series 4, Other Legal Matters subseries).  Information on industrial television details television's uses for security, surveillance, and information transfer, especially in manufacturing and banking. There is one folder of brochures on the Telecruiser, a self contained vehicle for television broadcast.  Folders in this series are arranged chronologically.