Hello, and welcome to the Season 2, Episode 11 of the Bones & Bobbins Podcast!
If you’re looking for this episode’s show notes, options for listening, and ways to connect with us, you’re in the right place. Welcome, creepy, vintage-y friends!
Listen:
The Bones & Bobbins Podcast, Season 2, Episode 11: Not So Mellow Yellow
S02E11: Dr. Cyr, the father of School Bus Yellow, and the concerningly yellow canary girls of WWI.
Step right up and learn why school buses are bright yellow, and one of the many reasons that babies probably shouldn’t be.
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Show Notes:
Here are links to the sources and resources we used while researching this episode:
Links to research materials:
School Bus Yellow:
School bus, Carpenter/Dodge, 1939. 1982.0600.01.
- School bus yellow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_bus_yellow
- Obituary for Frank W. Cyr: https://web.archive.org/web/20070119021919/https://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss1/record2101.36.html
- The History of how School Buses Became Yellow: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-how-school-buses-became-yellow-180973041/
- School bus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_bus
- Noxious History of School Bus Yellow: https://diedfamo.us/blog/2020/1/17/noxious-history-in-school-bus-yellow
- On the School Bus: https://americanhistory.si.edu/america-on-the-move/school-bus
- 1936 Dodge school bus: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1211869
The Canary Girls:
- Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One by Kate Adie: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18514872-fighting-on-the-home-front?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=EJ18Eb4Dit&rank=1
- Imperial War Museum Voices of the First World War Podcast Episode 16: Munitions: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-munitions
- EPA Technical Fact Sheet on TNT https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-03/documents/ffrrofactsheet_contaminant_tnt_january2014_final.pdf
- A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War by Patricia Fara: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36849105
- Teaching Chemistry Using The Girls With Yellow Hands: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.512.2708&rep=rep1&type=pdf
- Department of Humanities, Northumbria University Honours Dissertation Women’s Work in Munitions Factories during The First World War: Gender, Class and Public Opinion. by Jessica Carr: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/academic-departments/humanities/research/history-research/history-dissertation-repository/-/media/corporate-website/documents/pdfs/departments/humanities/history/history-research/ug-dissertations/jessica-carr.ashx
Further Reading:
- Article about a really great war comic that covers the Canary Girls: https://www.brokenfrontier.com/to-arms-the-alternative-world-war-one-anthology-is-irrefutable-evidence-of-the-importance-of-the-gosh-comics-process-group/
- Imperial War Museum: Nine Women Reveal The Dangers of Working in a WW I Munitions Factory: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/9-women-reveal-the-dangers-of-working-in-a-first-world-war-munitions-factory
- Cowkeeper’s Wish: The Canary Girls of WWI: https://thecowkeeperswish.com/2018/07/11/the-canary-girls-of-ww1/