American Studies - American Decades: Primary Source Subject Websites

"Best pix on the net" HD images

Search tip Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: computer source:life

Prints & Photographs Division staff have selected sets of images on frequently requested topics, focusing on images for which there are no known restrictions.

NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections,

sports history from 1955. Includes articles, pictures, covers - even the swimsuit issue!

basketball history

Includes Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939, Baseball cards to 1914 and Jackie Robinson & Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

Spanning 1840 to 1964

"A vintage fashion and beauty archive" covers the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. Clothing, make-up etc.

“We Wear Culture” is a collaboration between Google and more than 180 museums, schools, fashion institutions, and other organizations from all parts of the globe. It’s part of Google’s Arts & Culture platform, which is digitizing the world’s cultural treasures, and functions as a searchable guide to a collective archive of some 30,000 fashion pieces.

Western Costume History by Period

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Once you are inside a major time period, you will find photographs of television sets from around the world, year-by-year links to important facts, magazine covers and advertising. See examples of the world's first television sets, up to and including HDTV models.

Information on older film technology including color, sound and widescreen

The Interviews collects in-depth video oral histories with TV's greatest legends and pioneers. Browse the collection by person, show, topic or profession.

This section of the American Food LibGuide gives even more links!

Airplane pioneers

Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.

More than 11,000 images of outdoor advertisements and slide presentations from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the primary professional organization in the field

The Museum has preserved advertising campaigns for several familiar companies, such as Marlboro, Alka-Seltzer, Federal Express, Cover Girl, and Nike. It also holds the records of the NW Ayer Advertising Agency and business papers from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Carvel Ice Cream, and other companies. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana comprises thousands of trade cards, catalogs, labels, and other business papers and images dating back to the late 1700s.

he Medicine and Madison Avenue Project presents images and database information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines. These ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s.

100,000+ vintage advertisements to explore. Some of the ads are sharp and can be enlarged - others are of poor quality.

Digitized exhibition catalogs from the Guggenheim Museum, including essays from 1937 to the present

Can search by topics or search the decade in the search box: example: 1960s (NEVER USE AN APOSTROPHE!)