Dayton Spice Mills Co. - Steam locomotive, Public domain image

The Charles and Laura Dohm Shields Trade Card Collection is housed in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library at Miami University. Donated in 1987 by Charles Dohm Shields the collection contains several thousand advertising trade cards dating from the late 19th and early 20th Century. The collection was started by Charles's mother Laura Dohm Shields. Trade Cards were typically used to advertise products and services including such items as patent medicines, thread, sewing machines, food and beverages, farm equipment and others. Trade cards reached the height of their popularity during the 1880's and 1890's. Reduced postal rates and the rise of magazine publishing led to the eventual decline in popularity of this unique American form of advertising.

This image dataset is generated from our world's largest public domain image database. Made in two steps (manual, and image recognition), it comprises of more than 35,000 images of all types and sizes - an astonishing number if keep in mind that the total number of steam locomotives ever built was just one order of magnitude larger. All images are in the public domain, so there is no limitation on the dataset usage - educational, scientific, or commercial. Please contact us if you need a dataset like this, we may already have it, or, we can make one for you, often in 24 hours or less.