My next source was found on the website www.smithsonianmag.com. I found this to be a perfect source of information because the Smithsonian is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. With me having an understanding of how important the smithsonian is, I have a sense of the smithsonian’s invented ethos. This magazine has been publishing articles for over 40 years and I would imagine that the information that the Smithsonian Institution is giving out would be accurate. I also believe that the audience of this article wouldn’t depend on the area of the reader, but more about the age of the reader. This article could be specified towards Wisconsinites just because the history of Pabst is geared in the city of Milwaukee, but besides that, I would be surprised if I saw anyone under the age of 30 picking up a smithsonian magazine. This is an obvious statement, but the audience would also have to be somewhat interested in history.

This article is talking about how Pabst went from Pabst’s Best Select to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” This article begins with the author talking about how Pabst was in his life with stories about his grandfather and himself. Then it gets more into the history behind the blue ribbon. It all started during The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. This fair was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. Pabst Best Select ended up winning the top beer award that year at the exposition. The award was a blue ribbon. Because of the amount of awards that this beer had won, the Captain Pabst began putting blue ribbons on the beers, even before the Exposition in 1893, as a sense of pride. That blue ribbon that was being put on the beers caused the beer to be recognized as “The Blue Ribbon Beer.” Shortly after the exposition, the beer changed from Pabst’s Best Select to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” By the 1900’s, Pabst was going through more than one million feet of ribbon per year, but had to stop during World War I because of the silk shortage. Towards the end of Prohibition was when the Blue Ribbon became iconic when they were put on the newly created cans of beer.

I found this source to be useful in helping me really understand where the name “Pabst Blue Ribbon” came from. This is a different type of history where I am not getting a sense of history of production or where the company started, but I get to know of how the name and iconic symbol of the blue ribbon came to be today.