Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
The Southern California Edison Records consist of materials created, maintained, and collected by the company. The Southern California Edison Records contain books, catalogs, correspondence, journals, ledgers, log books, meeting minutes, newsletters, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, photographs, press releases, reports, scrapbooks, and other materials documenting the history of the Southern California Edison (SCE) Company. The records cover the years 1848 to 1989 with the bulk of the material ranging from 1911 to 1965. The material is largely textual with the exception of a few non-paper items scattered throughout.
mssSCE
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Visual Materials
The Southern California Edison collection of negatives and photographs consists of approximately 80,000 images created and acquired by the company from approximately 1883-1989, with the bulk of the collection covering 1910-1960. Formats include glass and film negatives, photo cards, loose photographs, photograph albums, lantern slides, and related materials. Most of the images were produced by Edison staff and contract photographers to document Edison facilities, products, operations, activities, and employees and for the purposes of education, advertising, training, and liability. The SCE collection offers a range of subjects far broader than the company's original intent. In addition to infrastructural images of transmission lines, steam plants, substations, equipment, vehicles, and hydroelectric plants, the company captured the uses of light and electricity in its myriad capacities, including night lighting of streets, billboards, storefronts, and gas stations; electric kitchens and appliances in domestic and industrial settings such as restaurants and cafes; agricultural innovations in the dairy and poultry industries; lighting for recreational uses such as swimming pools, bathhouses, tennis courts; golf courses; office work; and accident scenes and disasters, particularly the St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928.
photCL SCE