This clip comes from the 1948 industrial film "The Talking Hoist", produced by Fuller & Smith & Ross, Inc. and Cinecraft, Inc. for the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company. We're sharing it this week on the occasion of the anniversary of one of fourteen patents by the inventor Linus Yale, Sr. (1797-1858).
Yale's history as a patent holder dated back to January 1830. On June 13, 1844, he received his eighth patent; U.S. Patent 3,630 for a pin tumbler safe lock. The lock, however, was not produced by the company that now bears his name. Linus Yale, Sr. was a partner in Lamson, Goodnow & Yale, which was best known as a manufacturer of gun-making machinery for weapons manufacturers. Linus Yale, Sr.'s other patented inventions included other lock mechanisms, but also encompassed a threshing machine, sawmill components, and other machine parts.
Yale's son, Linus Yale, Jr. (1821-1868) followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a mechanical engineer and inventor. Yale, Jr. founded the Yale Lock Manufacturing with the mechanical engineer and investor Henry Robinson Towne (1844-1924) in Stamford, Connecticut in 1868. By 1883, the company had renamed itself, becoming the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, though the Yale name was retained for branding purposes.
While the company specialized in locks (especially for banks, safes, and other high-security facilities) it eventually branched out into other machine-work after 1928, when it acquired the company of H&T Vaughan, a well-known English lock manufacturer that became involved in the early motor industry, eventually necessitating the creation of a promotional video for it's line of industrial hoists.
This video is part of Hagley Library's collection of Culley Family Cinecraft Productions Collection (Accession 2018.201). Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty (Buehner) Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company and producer on many Cinecraft films until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations.
Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the 20th century that specialized in motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, business and/or sponsored films. While ownership has changed twice since its founding, Cinecraft is still in business and rightfully claims itself the “country's longest-standing corporate film & video production house.”
This collection has not been digitized in its entirety; to view a selection of materials curated from the collection online now, click here to view its page in our Digital Archive.