This is a collection of Cope's articles, papers, notes, lectures, notebooks, and some correspondence. There is much on his research pertaining to Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, and other topics in the history of science on which he wrote.

The collection includes both loose lecture notes and three bound notebook volumes taken from Planck's lectures on mechanics at the University of Berlin. There are 11 additional bound volumes, all relating to physics, including minutes of meetings of the Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, 1910-1919; 2 volumes on the history of physics; and a volume of data on the radiometer, including Cope's Ph.D. dissertation on the radiometer as a measurer of electric current.

The collection also contains notes on electric circuit theory lectures (1924-1925) by J. R. Carson; notes on lectures on relativity (1921) by Einstein; lectures by W. F. G. Swann (1928); and information about the Pennsylvania Academy of Science and on radiation (1909). There is significant correspondence from Lionel G. Dixon and Viktor Engelhardt.