Early experiments in catching the eye
No blame will be assigned if you have never heard of the Massasoit Varnish Works or B.T. Babbitt’s Best Soap. And rest easy if you have forgotten that during the late 19th century, for the modest sum of 50 cents, you could purchase from the New York Dental Co. of 7 Tremont St. in Boston a device for the painless extraction of teeth. And yet blame and shame are all yours if sometime this month you don’t see “The Art of American Advertising,” an exhibit open through Aug. 1 in the North Lobby of the Baker Library/Bloomberg Center at Harvard Business School. The idea: illustrate the rise in America of artful, profit-making, culture-shaking advertising from 1865 to 1910. During that period of robust economic growth, a confluence of factors contributed to a boom in how products were advertised for sale. National markets were expanding fast, hastened by a rise in consumer demand....