The conference program for this year's meeting of the Economic and Business Historical Society, to be held April 14-16 in Columbus, Ohio, has now been posted on the Society's website. Participants familiar to BHC members include R. Daniel Wadhwani (on the origins of the Indian IT sector), Janice Traflet (on Charles Merrill re-evaluated), Jari Eloranta (on interwar demand for military spending), Mark Billings (on British retail banking, 1945-1970), and Lynne Pierson Doti (on the housing boom in 1970s California). The keynote speaker is Richard Steckel of the Ohio State University, whose talk is entitled “Keeping Score: New Biological Measures of the Standard of Living.”
The Princeton University Library has digitized a number of posters from the Interborough Rapid Transit Subway Company . The posters, designed by the public relations firm Ivy Lee, were displayed in subway cars to provide information to riders about changes in fares and routes, safety issues, and other matters of interest. The collection consists of 385 images dating from 1918 to 1932; many of them provide financial information about rates, company dividends, and a general look at an early rapid transit system. October 29, update: Jonathan Rees over at "More or Less Bunk" was moved by this post to go off in search of a better site, and found the massive collection of the London Transport Museum , which displays over 5,000 items in a searchable collection .
