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Finding Aid

Lionel Sully Collection

MSS-311

Size: .25 linear feet

Provenance: Donated by Lionel Sully

Access: Open

Related Collections: Owens-Illinois Inc., Company Records, MSS-200; Dana Holding Corporation Records, 1891-2012, MSS-242.

Collection Summary: Newsletters from the Edison Industrial Systems Center.

Subject(s): Business and Commerce

Copyright: The literary rights to this collection are assumed to rest with the person(s) responsible for the production of the particular items within the collection, or with their heirs or assigns.  Researchers bear full legal responsibility for the acquisition to publish from any part of said collection per Title 17, United States Code.  The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections may reserve the right to intervene as intermediary at its own discretion.

Completed by: Tom Smith, June 2016 

Historical Sketch

Formed in 1987 through Ohio’s Thomas Edison Program, the Edison Industrial Systems Center (EISC) was conceived as a resource for manufacturers in the technology sector, providing support through funding as well as opening communication between institutions and corporations. Members included Dana Corporation, Owens-Illinois, the Medical College of Ohio, and the University of Toledo. The newsletter of the EISC, Synergy, was published in order to update members on the state of the EISC and new developments in the tech sector at large. A key concern of the issues of Synergy archived in the Canaday Center is the emerging role of the Internet and information technology in manufacturing during the 1990s and early 2000s. Though its original focus was on industrial manufacturing, by 1995 EISC had begun a transition towards food manufacturing. It eventually became known as the Center for Innovative Food Technology (CIFT) which still exists today in the same offices as EISC.

Scope and Content Note

The collection is donated by Dr. Lionel Sully, former Vice President for Technology for EISC. The collection contains physical issues of Synergy from November 1989 (possibly the first issue) to Winter 2006. The collection is incomplete partly because of breaks in publication and/or issues having been mislaid by the donor. There are very few issues from after 2002, as after his retirement from EISC in 2002, Dr. Sully visited the center only infrequently. However, even incomplete, the collection provides particular insight into the operations of EISC, its staff, and its impact on the industrial sector of the Toledo economy in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.

Folder List