"The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920" collection in the Library of Congress documents birth of the professional advertising industry and how it evolved in relation to the rise in consumer culture in America in that time period. There are over 9,000 images in the collection altogether and they were all pulled from the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Market History and the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, both located at Duke University. Images can be browsed for by the origin of advertisement or by the product it was created to sell. The images contained in the collection all are either scans of the original flyer/printed ad or are photographs taken of the advertisement if it happened to be an example of outdoor advertising.
Alongside the artifacts, there is a link back to the Duke University site many of these items came from that gives a relatively detailed timeline of the advertising industry from 1841-1920. This timeline also includes important dates such as the inventions of the telephone and the phonograph machine. This aids the person browsing the collection in seeing how the advertising industry evolved, what technologies it was then able to utilize, and what how it advertising spread from one media to another.
This is a photograph from the collection was taken 1922 along a boardwalk. Along the street there are an abundance of billboards and other signs visible. This is typical of the collection because it is one of the documents made of the industry's early forays into outdoor advertising.
There are many other artifacts similar to the ones shown here located in the collection. This collection provides an incredibly detailed history of the U.S. advertising industry, its functions, and how it has involved into the types of advertising we see today.