Fairbanks Standard Scales. Made with the Latest and Most Valuable Improvements [Wordless Advertisement]

New York: Wemple & Company, n. d. (1876). Leaflet; 5 3/4 x 3 1/4; pp. [4]; off-white, pictorial card stock; two chromolithographed illustrations; mild age-toning to margins; tiny nicks to tips of spine; in very good condition.
A beautiful and unusual wordless advertisement for the Fairbanks Standard Scales, it illustrated the primitive scale technology in 1776 (with two men using it) and the sophisticated scales of 1876 on the facing page (only the year 1776 present, though a similar Fairbanks advertisement at the Free Library of Philadelphia lists both 1776 and 1876, presumably for comparison). One of the oldest industrial manufacturing companies in the US, Fairbanks Scales began with brothers Thaddeus and Erastus Fairbanks and their foundry, initially built in 1823 for the manufacturing of wagons, cast iron plows, and stoves. Working through the arrangement of levers and platforms, the brothers applied for their first scale patent in 1830. A tremendous success, by the beginning of the Civil War, the Fairbanks invention would play a major role in the country's industrialization and would be, arguably, the best known American product in the world. (Inventory #: 003975)