Thompson Products Inc. was established in 1900, in Cleveland, Ohio, as the Cleveland Cap Screw Company. It began producing automotive parts and underwent several reorganizations, becoming the Electric Welding Products Company (1908), the Steel Products Company (1915), and Thompson Products Inc. (1926). It expanded to include branch plants and the production of aircraft parts, and fostered a company union, the Automotive and Aircraft Workers Alliance (later the Aircraft Workers Alliance). It grew during World War II due to defense contracts. After the war it entered the jet and aerospace industries. It merged in 1958 with Ramo Wooldridge Corporation to become TRW Inc. Outside activities include the National Air Races and the Crawford Auto-Aviation Collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society. The collection consists of individual aircraft; reciprocating, jet, and rocket aviation power plants; personalities; famous flights; and miscellaneous images related to all aspects of aviation history through the mid-1960s. The collection represents the history and development of aviation airframe and power plant technology. Over 200 aircraft manufacturing types and over 100 power plant manufacturing types are represented, including numerous images of Curtiss and Wright aircraft, as well as many lesser known manufacturing types. The collection also contains many images of dirigibles, blimps, and balloons. The photographs in this collection were acquired by Thompson Products of Cleveland, Ohio from the Dearborn Library-Henry Ford Museum, the Wright Patterson Air Force Technical Museum, and from various aircraft and aviation related industries, including the Curtiss-Wright and Boeing corporations, and were used by Thompson Products as an aviation photographic reference source.
