Here's a behind the curtain look at the 'Dancing Molecules' act of the 'Wonderful World of Chemistry' show at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair's DuPont Company Pavilion.
The 'Wonderful World of Chemistry' was a large-scale corporate industrial musical revue and science demonstration - parts one and two have been digitized and are watchable in our Digital Archive.
This photograph comes from Hagley Library's DuPont Company Product Information Collection (Accession 1972.371). In 1952, the DuPont Company organized a Product Information section within the Public Relations Department. Its main purpose was to create news releases accompanied by photographs that would be run editorially by trade journals and newspapers to create inexpensive publicity and indirect advertising.
To be used, the news releases had to include interesting information about a DuPont product, its development, manufacture, or applications. They could not be direct commercial promotions of a product itself as that would be the work of the Advertising Department. Product Information photographs and their news releases told the reader what DuPont did, why it was important, and sometimes, how it was done.
This collection has not been digitized in its entirety, but a selection of materials from it, mostly photographs taken from the 1930s through the 1950s, are available to view in our Digital Archive. Click here to take a look!