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Trade Literature Collection
Image: Electrice Electric Refrigeration leaflet
Source: Museum Victoria
Museum Victoria's Trade Literature Collection is the largest and most diverse collection of its type in any Australian public institution. Comprising about 50,000 items, representing more than 5,000 Australian and overseas manufacturers, the collection documents manufactured products made, marketed or used in Australia between 1850 and the present.
Trade Literature can be broadly defined as any text or text-and-image-based publication produced by manufacturers or distributors to promote, market, explain or maintain their product lines. It includes items such as promotional brochures, advertisements, product catalogues, repair and maintenance manuals, price lists, accessory lists, parts lists, sales bulletins, specification sheets and technical bulletins.
Advertisements are defined as a specific category of trade literature that appears as an insert within a more general book, newspaper, journal, trade directory or other publication. Advertisements usually occupy only a single page or a portion of a page within a larger publication, although in some cases they may run to several pages.
The Trade Literature Collection is used by museum staff and external researchers to:
- Provide items for exhibition, display and reproduction.
- Document aspects of Australian technological development in areas in which the museum is unable to develop and maintain extensive three-dimensional artefact collections.
- Identify and date technological artefacts found or used in Australia.
- Provide insights into the social and technological context in which different types of products were originally developed and marketed.
- Provide insight into changes in marketing techniques and graphic design used in the promotion of products over time.
- Examine processes of innovation, industrial design and the way companies have promoted their new product ideas.
- Examine what technologies were available in Australia at different periods and the process of technological transfer from overseas.
- Provide information about the relative cost of technological products and how they were marketed.
- Understand in more detail how particular technologies worked or were designed and manufactured.
- Research the impact and distribution of different technologies in Australia in a historical context.
- Provide information that can be used in the restoration, conservation and interpretation of technological artefacts.
Items per page: 10 50 (showing 61 - 70) 504 items
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Publicity Leaflet- H.V. McKay Massey Harris 'The New Model 44K', 1948
Publicity leaflet advertising the Model 44K Tractor emphasising its "comfort, performance and dependability" with features for "convenience, endurance and economy." The front cover cont ...
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Publicity Brochure - H.V McKay Massey Harris Pty Ltd, No. 6B Reaper Binder, 1940
"Universal Satisfaction" is the catch cry used for this Sunshine Massey Harris No.6B Reaper and Binder publicity leaflet. This collection of 24 testimonials from local farmers is common ...
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Publicity Flyer - H.V. McKay Massey Harris, Suntip, Chaffsaver, circa 1945
This 1 page flyer is a concise, fact filled marketing tool for a single product. Possibly used as a handout to potential customers, it's illustrations clearly show the "ingenious arrang ...
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Publicity Leaflet - H.V. McKay Massey Harris Pty Ltd, 'No.2 Model Sunnie Overbeam Disc Plo ...
Sales publicity leaflet promoting key features of the Sunnie Overbeam No.2 Model 3-Furrow Disc Plough. On the front cover is an overhead view of the plough hitched to a Massey-Harris t ...
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Instruction Book - H.V. McKay Massey Harris, Sungrade, Stump Jump Disc Plough, 1941
The booklet gives detailed instructions on adjusting and operating the plough, and contains explanatory diagrams on each page. The Sungrade Stump Jump Reversible Disc Plough was pulled ...
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Price List - H.V. McKay, South Australia, 1939
A book format price list of Farm Machinery in South Australia. This publication has a soft cardboard cover with decorative printing around the title. The inside cover page lists the det ...
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Price List - H.V. McKay, South Australia, 1941
A book format price list of Farm Machinery in South Australia. This publication has a soft cardboard cover with decorative printing around the title and an engraving of the Sunshine Har ...
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Price List - H.V. McKay, South Australia, 1945
A book format price list of Farm Machinery in Victoria. This publication has a soft cardboard cover with watermark printing and title on the front. Printed engravings on the rear show a ...
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Price List - H.V. McKay, South Australia, 1948
A book format price list of Farm Machinery in South Australia. This publication has a soft cardboard cover with printed engravings on the rear showing an aerial view of the Sunshine Ha ...
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Instruction Leaflet - H.V. McKay Massey Harris, 'How to Sling the Sunshine Header', 1944
One page users guide gives information for safely lifting machinery in cases of transport. Includes large instructional drawing and shows the limitations of this type of equipment in te ...
Images: 2
