Library and Archives - Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/index.cfm?forumid=7 en-US FuseTalk Standard Edition 3.2 Build 80405 Jonathan Cable Particle Physics and the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=62334 2015-07-16T15:47:55 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=62334#comments 0 A group of four letters recently came to light in the IET Archives which were written from the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge to the Professor of Physics Silvanus P Thompson between 1900 and 1906. The two letters from 1906 were particularly interesting because they were discussing J J Thomson and the electron – Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the same year that the letters were written (1906) for the discovery of the electron and for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.

It is fascinating to see how two contemporary physicists view and absorb a new discovery/theory concerning particle physics in 1906 and perhaps compare it with how modern particle physicists have reacted to the discoveries/theories resulting from the work at the Large Hadron Collider beneath the Franco-Swiss border.

Extract from Letter of 6 March 1906

“My dear SPT, ashamed of delay, but I am lazy. J. J. T. [J J Thomson] atom is not a hollow shell of pos. [positive] E. [energy] it is a solid uniform mass (or sphere) or jelly of it in the substance of which the electrons are embedded. This is to get at law of direct distance, and therefore, the equal periodicity of orbits independent of varying amplitude, shape etc…… I like it much. Of course the treatment of + E [positive energy] is excessively provisional. That is the real outstanding puzzle, and until + E can be tackled the whole theory is vague.”

Extract from Letter of 17 October 1906

“Dear Silvanus Thompson, I am bringing out a new edition of ‘Modern Views of Electricity’. I don’t want to change it much less to reopen it. I shall not be dealing with the electron business: that occurs in another volume; but the old book is often enquired for, and I think would still be useful to elementary students who should not lose sight of the old facts in attending to electrons and new facts…..”

Who Were These Individuals?

Sir Oliver Lodge, FRS (1851-1940), the writer of the letters, was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder for key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz’ proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures, Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the ‘coherer’. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920 and was awarded the IEE’s Faraday Medal in 1932.

 

 

Silvanus Phillips Thompson, FRS (1851-1916), the recipient of the letters, was a professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, and was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author. S P Thompson was the President of the IEE in 1899.

 

 

Sir Joseph John Thomson, OM, FRS (1856-1940) was an English physicist who was appointed to the Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics at the Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1884. In 1897 Thomson showed that cathode rays were composed of previously unknown negatively charged particles, which he calculated must have bodies much smaller than atoms and a very large value for their charge-to-mass ratio. He is therefore credited with the discovery and identification of the electron and with the discovery of the first subatomic particle. Sir J J Thomson was awarded the IEE’s Faraday Medal in 1925.

Where Did the Letters Come From?

S P Thompson’s large scientific library and pamphlet collection came to the IEE in the early 20th century some years after his death. Thompson had a habit of enclosing his correspondence with authors and scientists and engineers amongst those books and pamphlets.

In the case of the books any letters discovered inside were subsequently extracted for their own protection and now form a separate collection within the IET Archives. However not all the letters were found at the outset and further ones have emerged since that time. These four letters between Lodge and Thompson probably come from within the pages of those books and pamphlets and had been put to one side at some point over later decades. The letters have been catalogued as collection SC MSS 265 and can be consulted in the IET Archives.

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Jonathan Cable Nuclear Reactor Plates in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61747 2015-05-14T09:01:42 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61747#comments 0 Amongst the items held by the IET Archives are two nuclear reactor plates taken from the Merlin nuclear reactor. However, there is no need for the archivists to get out a Geiger counter every time we bring out the plates because they are information plaques attached to the outside of the reactor. The first plaque, shown below is from the opening of the reactor in November 1959.

 

 

The Merlin Reactor and Aldermaston

Merlin was a 5 MW research reactor at Aldermaston Court, Aldermaston, Berkshire, England, which operated from 6 November 1959 until 1962 before its license was revoked/surrendered in 1963. It was the first commercial scientific reactor in Britain and was privately owned and operated by Associated Electrical Industries (AEI). A British Pathé recording of the opening of the reactor (without sound) can be found on the British Pathé website here - Merlin Reactor Opening.

Aldermaston Court is a country house and park built in the Victorian era for the British Member of Parliament, Daniel Higford Davall Burr (1811-1885) with elements incorporated from buildings of earlier centuries that had been present on the site. In 1939 AEI bought the house and immediate grounds for £16,000, but despite this purchase, the government soon earmarked the location for an airfield, RAF Aldermaston. During WWII the land and house were requisitioned by the government as a barracks for the Women’s Land Army.

After the war, the airfield remained in use but after the airfield’s closure in 1950, the park was returned to AEI, which used it as a plasma research laboratory. AEI built the now demolished reactor between the house and its lake. This facility became the UK’s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment later the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) for research, commissioning, and de-commissioning of most such weapons.

How did the plaques come under the care of the IET Archives?

A little of the provenance of these items is unclear but they most likely came into the archives with the donation of the papers of Douglas Richard Chick, FIEE.

In 1946 Chick joined the Research Laboratory of AEI at Aldermaston, where he was appointed Section Leader of the Nuclear Physics Section. He later became Group Leader of the newly-formed Nuclear Sciences Group. In 1963, after the closure of the Merlin reactor, Chick moved to become Research Manager of the Vickers Company Research Laboratory, Ascot, where he remained until 1966, when he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the new University of Surrey. The Chick papers include many of AEI’s research papers including reports about the Merlin reactor.

The second plaque, which is shown below, perhaps hints at the frustration of the engineers, technicians and scientists at Aldermaston when the Merlin reactor was shut down in 1962.

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Jonathan Cable Can You Really Trust a Label? http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61640 2015-05-01T16:54:39 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61640#comments 0 On occasion objects come into the archive collections which are labelled and usually these labels are taken at face value unless there is good reason to believe otherwise. However, we recently examined an object label which caused us to question the accuracy of the information on the label.

Through a chance set of circumstances two particular boxes of objects were brought back to the IET Archive Centre from storage at the same time. Once those boxes had arrived it was noticed that the online catalogue showed two items with a different reference number, supposedly one in each box, and each with an identical description.

The description for both items was ‘gavel set presented to the IEE by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Technician Engineers upon the centenary of the IEE in 1971’.

The first thought was that there must be some duplication in the catalogue and there was an expectation that upon examining the contents of the boxes we would find that only one gavel existed. However, when we opened the boxes we did find a gavel set in each box.

The first gavel (new reference OPC/1/161/7) is shown below:

The wood for the gavel and stand match (wood colour and grain) and there is a metal engraved plate which says ‘THE INSTITUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS - CENTENARY YEAR. Presented by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Technician Engineers, 17 May 1971'

The second gavel (new reference OPC/1/161/9) is shown below:

 

 

The mount (in 2 sections), with typed label glued to the base, and its associated gavel appear to be a second gavel gift set (the set is the same colour and wood grain - though these are different from the first gavel set) presented by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Technician Engineers to the IEE upon its centenary in 1971.

Which is the real gavel presented by the IEETE to the IEE in 1971?

Whilst it is possible that the IEETE gavel the IEE two sets of gavels and stands this would be highly unusual. If the IEETE only presented one gavel set then the question becomes which set is likely to be the genuine set? Our belief is that the top gavel set is the original as someone has gone to the effort of having a metal plate engraved and this would be an appropriate treatment for a centenary presentation gift from one professional body to another. It is also unlikely that an organisation would stick a typed label to such a high profile gift.

Our guess, and it is no better than a guess, is that the second gavel set was discovered without a label at some point after 1971 and that it was assumed to be the IEETE’s gavel gift. The 1970s was a period well before the advent of archive cataloguing software and tracking tools such as barcodes and even the IEE’s Archives only came into existence after 1970.

The catalogue entries for these two gavel sets have now been amended to refer to each other and to mention the uncertainty about the provenance of the second gavel set.

Note: The IEETE and the IEE are both predecessor organisations of the IET. The IEETE, after a number of mergers and name changes, was one of the organisations that merged to form the IIE in 1998, which itself merged with the IEE in 2006 to form the IET.

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Jonathan Cable Early History of the IEE in the North-East and a Recent Discovery http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61375 2015-04-10T15:09:25 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61375#comments 0 The first local centre of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in the North-East was the Newcastle Local Section which was formed in 1899. The Teesside Branch was spun out of this Section in 1912 and became the Teesside Sub-Centre in 1919 whilst the Newcastle Local Section itself changed its name to the North-Eastern Centre in 1919.

A Recent Discovery of Early Minutes Belonging to the Newcastle Local Section

In 2014, a donation was made to the IET Archives of the minute book of the Newcastle Section (archive reference IET/CEN/15/1/94). The donor had no idea how the minute book came to be in his attic but we were nevertheless very grateful to receive this wonderful volume. The minute book covers the period 1913 to 1921 and includes not only the minutes of the Newcastle Local Section Committee and its successor the North-Eastern Centre Committee but also includes minutes of the Teesside Branch Committee.

Other than a list of the members of the 1913-1914 Dinner Committee pasted to the inside cover, the first entries are for the Annual General Meeting of the Section held in Armstrong College on Monday 26 May 1913 and the 12th Committee Meeting of the Section for the 1912-13 session held again at Armstrong College, Monday 22 September 1913. These first entries are shown below.

 

 

The minute book gives a particularly valuable insight into the regional activities of the IEE. Until the discovery of this volume the IET Archives only held the minutes of the North-Eastern Centre dating from after 1920.

Formal regional groupings of IEE members around the UK were called Centres for most of the 20th century. Centres organised most of their own affairs, and whilst they would usually send copies of their minutes to the IEE at Savoy Place in London they were under no obligation to send their original records to the IEE’s archives. The original IEE Centre minutes that exist today in the IET Archives are those that particular centres chose of their own volition to send to London and several gaps remain in the series of Centre minutes.

Are minutes really that interesting?

The IEE Centre minute books from the early 20th century are quite unlike a modern set of minutes where there is typically only a brief record of a meeting and where much of the detail is in the supporting reports. The early minute books were written in great detail, were very wide ranging and contain much social history as well as personal opinions.

As might be expected the Newcastle Local Section minute book contains details of lectures, visits, and dinners that formed key elements of the Section programme. For example the first lecture mentioned, which was given at the 1913 AGM, was on the subject of ‘notes on gas engines’ given by Albert P Pyne (many years later Albert became the Chairman of the Section). The September 1913 Committee minutes noted a recent visit to see the SS Tynemouth at the Walker Shipyard belonging to the famous shipbuilders Messrs Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson. Swan Hunter was well-known in the early 20th century for its building of RMS Carpathia in 1903 and RMS Mauretania in 1913. The SS Tynemouth of Newcastle was stranded off the coast of Northumberland in May 1913 and was probably in the Swan Hunter shipyard for repairs. The 1913 Board of Trade wreck report on the Tynemouth can be found here - SS Tynemouth wreck report. 

The minutes also discuss cooperation with the IEE in London and subjects of particular interest to the Section/Centre. There is also an example of the Centre adopting a different attitude to the IEE Council. In March 1919 the Centre Committee wrote to other Centres about an IEE Council decision to support a Board of Trade report on electric power supply with which the North-Eastern Centre ‘regretfully’ could not concur.

There is a significant amount of coverage in the minutes of the relationship of the Section/Centre with other technical and engineering organisations in the region such as the Junior Institution of Engineers and given the period covered there is a large amount of material relating to WWI.

The extract from the minutes shown below comes from a meeting held Monday 30 July 1917 in the boardroom of another famous North-Eastern engineering company, Merz & McLellan. The minutes shown discuss the proposed formation of an Electric Light & Signal Company and the committee proposed seeking the immediate cooperation of the Chamber of Commerce Electrical Section to organise a mass meeting of the electrical industry to bring this about.

 

 

Prominent and Noted Engineers Involved with the North-Eastern Centre

Many well-known engineers were Committee members and they have signed the pages of the minutes or have added entries by hand. These individuals include;

C Vernier (Section Chairman 1913).

Philip Vassar Hunter (Section Chairman 1914-1916 and President of the IEE 1933).

Henry William Clothier (Section Chairman 1916-1917).

Albert Henry Weaver Marshall (Section Chairman 1917-1918).

Albert P Pyne (Centre Chairman 1918-1919).

William Cross (Centre Chairman 1919-1920).

James Robert Beard (Centre Chairman 1920-1921 and President of the IEE 1940).

The eminence of the individuals can be illustrated by Philip Vassar Hunter (photograph below).

 

 

Philip Vassar Hunter was made the Head of the Electrical Department of Merz & McLellan in 1909, was loaned to the Naval Staff as Chief Engineer of the Experiments and Research Section of the Anti-Submarine Division for WWI, and after the war became Joint Manager and Chief Engineer of Callender’s Cable and Construction Company. When British Insulated Callender’s Cable Co (BICC) was formed in 1945 he became a Director and Engineer-in-Chief and later he became Deputy Chairman of the company.

P V Hunter as well as being the IEE’s President in 1933 was also made an Honorary Fellow of the IEE in 1951 and the IEE recorded a film of him in 1951 as it did of many other Honorary Fellows and Faraday medallists. The IET Archives holds film files including the scripts for many of these films including that of P V Hunter in which he talks about his experiences and work in WWI and WWII and the power distribution work carried out by Merz in the early 20th century.

History of Technology TPN Event in Newcastle – June 2015

There has always been a strong relationship between engineering and the North East of England and on the weekend of 6-7 June 2015 at the Newcastle Discovery Museum there will be a conference on the history of power generation, distribution, utilisation and other engineering specialisms. This conference is being organised by the History of Technology TPN and there will be an opportunity to visit the Discovery Museum’s ‘Arcs and Sparks’ collection. There will also be an optional visit on Sunday 7th June to Cragside House, a National Trust property which was the first private residence to employ hydroelectric power.

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Jonathan Cable Transatlantic Cables, Mermaids and Messages in Bottles http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61126 2015-03-16T15:48:03 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=61126#comments 0 The IET Archives has several important collections of papers, photographs and other material related to transatlantic telegraph cables. In particular collections related to the 1st and 2nd transatlantic cable expeditions of 1858 and 1865/66 respectively are frequently consulted by researchers. 

More information about these expeditions, including images, can be found on the IET Archives web pages here The First Transatlantic Telegraph 1858 and also here The Transatlantic Telegraph Cables 1865-1866. The IET Archives also holds segments of various transatlantic cables. The image below shows a section of what was to become the 2nd transatlantic cable.

 

 

The cable has been set in a brass ring and mounted on a wooden block probably intended as a presentation gift. The words inscribed on the brass ring are ‘ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH CABLE 1864’. The date might be a little perplexing as the 2nd transatlantic telegraph cable expedition didn’t commence until 1865. However, the cable for this 2nd expedition was already being manufactured by the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Co. Ltd (Telcon) in 1864 and the cable was being stowed, and continually tested, on board the ship Great Eastern where the water tanks protected and preserved the gutta percha insulation (see ‘The Cable: The Wire That Changed the World’, by Gillian Cookson, 2003, p.140).

The manufacture of the cable was eventually completed in May 1865 and an invitation was sent out by Telcon to witness the completion of the cable’s manufacture on 29 May 1865 (invitation shown below in included in the ‘1865 Telegraph Album’, reference SC MSS 254).

 

 

Mermaids and the Early Transatlantic Cables

The state of progress with the transatlantic telegraph cable project featured regularly in the pages of the press of the day, and cartoonists often took the opportunity to poke fun often employing images of Neptune and mermaids. The illustration below is one such cartoon, published in Punch, 5 August 1865, and it accompanied a 5 verse poem titled, ‘Neptune to the Mermaids’ which celebrated the cable but implored the mermaids to leave it alone!

 

 

The caption for the cartoon titled, ‘a word to the mermaids’, has Neptune saying, “Ahoy there! Get off of that ‘ere cable can’t yer – that’s the way t’other one was wrecked!!!”

Later Transatlantic Cables

Another transatlantic cable collection in the IET Archives is that of Cecil Herbert Finnis (1885-1951), an electrical and mechanical engineer involved with Siemens Brothers’ cable laying vessel the CSS Faraday. (collection SC MSS 77). This includes Cecil’s handwritten diary from a cable repairing expedition carried out by the CSS Faraday in 1903. The cable to be repaired was that belonging to the Direct United States Cable Company (DUSCC) which had been laid in 1875.

The extensive diary entries include depth soundings and weather conditions from every one of the 73 days spent at sea beginning May 19th 1903. The diary begins, “started from Charlton [on the Thames river], opposite the works at about 6 pm. Father and some of the gents accompanies us to Gravesend & left at 8pm with the cry, ‘Simla’ after a lunch at 7 pm.”

The CSS Faraday was built in 1874 at Newcastle upon Tyne and was purpose-built for Siemens Brothers as William Siemens had found chartering vessels for cable-laying totally unsuitable. Over 50 years SS Faraday laid over 50,000 metres of cable before being sold for scrap in 1924. More information about the CSS Faraday can be found on the website titled History of the Atlantic Cable. Siemens’ own website also has a history of Siemens involvement with the transatlantic cable the DUSC and the CSS Faraday and can be found here Siemens and the CSS Faraday.

The image below is one of several photographs taken by Finnis on that expedition using a Kodak box camera and shows individuals on the deck of the CSS Faraday.

 

 

Message in a bottle

One of the more unusual items in the Finnis collection is a handwritten note that Finnis originally put into a bottle and dropped into the sea on Thursday 23 July 1903, the day on which the final splice of the DUSC took place. In that letter shown below, Finnis offered to pay a reward and expenses to any finder of the message in a bottle who returned it to Finnis at his home in Chiswick.

 

 

The letter was found over 5 months later by Joseph Andrew on Praa Sands beach near Marazion in Cornwall, UK on 12th January 1904 and it was returned by Mr Andrew to Cecil Finnis in order to obtain the reward (letter shown below).

 

 

To view and consult any of the items mentioned above please contact the IET Archive Centre.

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Jonathan Cable 28 February 2015 - 80th Anniversary of the Birth of British Radar http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60848 2015-02-19T17:17:25 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60848#comments 0 On the 26th February 1935 a test took place known as ‘The Daventry Experiment’ which is considered to be the precursor of radar in Britain. The test involved the Daventry transmitter of the BBC’s Empire Service and an RAF Heyford bomber which had been assigned to this test by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough.

The full story of The Daventry Experiment, written by Brian Austin appears in the February/March 2015 issue (issue no. 153) of the vintage radio enthusiast magazine ‘Radio Bygones’. I am grateful to Brian for allowing me to extract elements from his story.

The plan was for the bomber pilot, Flight Lieutenant R S Blucke to fly to Daventry where, on arrival, Blucke would fire a Verey light to indicate his presence. He would then follow a particular course that would take him along the transmitted beam from the BBC transmitter at an altitude of 6,000 feet. After executing an about turn over some designated marker he would fly back to Daventry while losing altitude to around 1,000 feet. After firing another Verey light he would then return home.

On the ground, near to the village of Weedon, Sir Robert Watson-Watt and A P Rowe from the Air Ministry had joined Arnold Wilkins, a Scientific Officer at the Radio Research Station (RRS) a vastly experienced radio engineer, together with the driver of a converted Morris ex-ambulance that was used as the RRS’s ‘travelling laboratory’. The previous night in preparation for the test, Wilkins and the driver had erected two parallel antennas in a co-operative farmer’s field.

When Blucke’s aircraft appeared on the morning of the 26th February it was initially well to the east of the agreed flight path and no indication of its presence appeared on the cathode ray tube (CRT) screen. However, on its next pass, now closer to the observers, there were definite variations on the CRT screen – described by Wilkins as a ‘rhythmic beating’. This happened again on the following run and Wilkins and Watson-Watt estimated that they were able to observe the Heyford over a distance of about 8 miles.

There was much more to be done before Watson-Watt’s eventual radar system, came into existence but it all began with this Daventry experiment.

Sir Robert Watson-Watt and Radar

Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892 – 1973), known as the father of British radar, was celebrated in an IEE History of Technology lecture in February 1993 to mark the centenary of Watson-Watt’s birth. Sir Robert, who had been a member of the IEE, had also been at one time the Chairman of the IEE’s Radio Section. An abstract from that lecture, written by the lecturer, Professor R Hanbury Brown, is set out below;

“Radar was ‘invented’ by Watson-Watt in response to an enquiry about a death-ray. His great achievement was not simply to invent a new gadget; it was to apply this invention to an urgent and historically important problem, the air defence of Great Britain. The original work on RDF, as radar was called, started secretly in 1935 at Orfordness. In 1936 it was moved to a nearby mansion, Bawdsey Manor, where for three years Watson-Watt was the Superintendent and the lecturer was a junior member of the staff. The principal objective to this early work was to develop a chain of radar stations to detect and locate enemy aircraft so that Fighter Command could intercept them. The first, almost disastrous, attempt to demonstrate this use of radar in 1936 is described. In due course a chain of radar stations (CH) was built all-round the coast and proved to be a vital factor in the defence against daytime raids of the Battle of Britain. For defence at night Watson-Watt, perhaps prompted by Sir Henry Tizard, foresaw the need for a radar to be carried in the fighter and in 1936 he started the first and only team in the world working on airborne radar. Radar-equipped night-fighters (AI), guided by ground control radars (GCI), were used effectively against the heavy night raids in 1941. In 1938 Watson-Watt left Bawdsey for the corridors of power in Whitehall. After the war he formed a small firm of scientific consultants and eventually moved to Canada.”

A video version of the lecture was made featuring Professor Brown presenting his lecture material, interspersed with many images and film clips (archive reference IET/SPE/3/2/7/1). It covered Watson-Watts' history and his involvement with the early days of radar. The video has been digitised and is available to watch via the IET Archives Centre.

Professor Brown worked with Watson-Watt at Bawdsey Manor as a junior member of the team and tells many fond stories about Watson-Watt including his humorous use of unintelligible phrases which Brown used to ‘collect’. The image from the video below shows the Professor mentioning one such phrase which is captioned. Watson-Watt used this phrase when describing his position in the UK to Chiefs-of-Staff in Washington.

 

 

IET Archive letter from Sir Robert

Whilst the IET Archives does not hold a great deal of Watson’s-Watt’s own material there is a curious letter in the IET Archives in the Owen S Puckle collection (NAEST 101) written by Watson-Watt in New York to Puckle – see image below.

 

 

In the letter Sir Robert thanks Puckle for an earlier letter of congratulation (Puckle assisted in the development of the ‘Radio Location’ device). Whilst Sir Robert received many accolades during his lifetime and held many official positions with various institutions it is not clear to what the earlier congratulatory letter refers as most of Sir Robert’s awards came earlier in his life than 1952. Watson Watt did re-marry for the second time in 1952. He married Jean Wilkinson, a Canadian, the widow of historian Professor George M Smith, so perhaps Puckle was referring to Sir Robert’s forthcoming marriage?

For those interested in the history of radar the IET Archives also holds many relevant collections including Sean Swords’ collection of papers on radar (NAEST 144). Sean Swords wrote the ‘Technical History of the Beginnings of RADAR’ in 1986 and this collection comprises correspondence and material used in the production of that book. For example there is a copy of the 1935 letter to H T Tizard from A P Rowe regarding the secret memorandum prepared by Watson-Watt on the possible use of electromagnetic radiation for air defence.

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Jonathan Cable Artistic and Literary Connections in the IET Archives - Diana Lodge http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60762 2015-02-11T17:22:50 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60762#comments 0 Within a recent donation to the IET Archives covering several different collections, there was a single audio cassette tape, unrelated to the other items and annotated ‘Diana, Colin and Tom Lodge 1995’. The tape recording was donated by the researcher who in 1995 interviewed Diana, Colin and Tom Lodge at Diana’s home of ‘Trillgate’ in Slad, Gloucestershire and this was a tape of that interview. A copy of a painting of ‘Trillgate’, painted by Diana and used as a card illustration, is shown below.

 

 

The reason for conducting the interview was that the researcher was interested in the eminent British physicist and writer Sir Oliver Lodge FRS (1851-1940) who was involved, amongst other things, with important developments in wireless telegraphy. Diana Lodge, the interviewee, was the 2nd wife of Sir Oliver’s eldest son also called Oliver Lodge. Diana had many memories of Sir Oliver Lodge from her earlier life and it is some of these memories that are recorded on the cassette tape.

In addition to his important scientific contributions Sir Oliver Lodge is also known for his studies in psychical research and spiritualism and he wrote many books on the subject. For those interested in finding out more about Sir Oliver, the 1974 biography called, ‘Sir Oliver Lodge’, by W P Jolly, can be found in the IET Library. The IET Archives also has a number of letters written by Sir Oliver Lodge to W H Preece (see collection NAEST 21). For example in the letter below dated 4 March 1898 Sir Oliver writes to Preece about his magnetic telegraphy scheme about which he says, ‘naturally I should like the Government to take it up, as I believe that it is the most powerful and by far the simplest plan possible’. This letter is shown below.

 

 

Given the importance of Sir Oliver Lodge it would be easy to overlook the interviewee, Diana Lodge, but Diana also had a fascinating, but very different life.

Diana Lodge

Diana Lodge (1906-1998), the Welsh painter, was born Diana Violet Irene Mabel Uppington, and became the second wife of Oliver W F Lodge in 1932. Oliver William Foster Lodge was a poet, author and painter unlike his 5 brothers who all qualified as engineers. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and associated with artists such as Eric Gill and David Jones.

Oliver W F Lodge met Diana Uppington, 10 years after the death of his first wife in childbirth, when she answered his advertisement for a model. Diana had previously modelled for other artists and had appeared on stage as a Tiller Girl. Following Oliver’s death in 1955, Diana changed her name by deed poll to Diana Kohr following her involvement with the Austrian economist Leopold Kohr, who had met Oliver and Diana in the USA during WWII. She changed her surname back to Lodge in 1966 following her separation from Kohr. Continuing the literary connections Diana was also a neighbour and friend of the writer Laurie Lee. A television documentary for HTV called ‘Inner Journeys’ by Jonathan Stedall was aired in 1993 and covered personal stories of ten individuals including Diana.

Given Diana’s background it is perhaps fitting that the first story she tells during her interview is about visiting her father-in-law in the period before WWII (after Sir Oliver’s wife Mary had passed away). At that time Diana recalled that two of Sir Oliver’s daughters, Lorna (1892-1987) and Norah (1894-1990) took it in turns to stay with Sir Oliver and look after him. Diana stayed with Lorna and they, together with another daughter Violet, visited Sir Oliver at his home, Normanton House, and pretended to be a Russian dancing troupe. Diana remembered Sir Oliver putting an arm around her shoulders and saying, ‘this one can dance’! Diana also recalled that every night before bed at Normanton House they would dance, typically a waltz.

The interview, around 55 minutes long, only contains a limited number of stories and comments about Sir Oliver, typically tributes about his character. The interview, which was also conducted with Diana’s sons Colin (1944-2006) and Tom (1936-2012), contains many more reminiscences about Sir Oliver’s other children including Brodie (1880-1967) and Alec (1881-1938) who set up the Lodge Plug Company and also Raymond who died in WWI at Ypres. It was a poignant moment during the interview when Diana read out 2 poems written by her late husband Oliver W F Lodge, one in memory of Oliver’s brother Raymond, and one in memory of his father Sir Oliver.

Tom Lodge, another interviewee was no less interesting. He moved to Calgary, Canada, when he was 18 and became a cowboy, a used-car salesman, a fisherman and a gold-miner before becoming an announcer for the Canadian Broadcasting Company. On his return to the UK he was involved with the launch of Radio Caroline and became one of its presenters (Tom’s obituary can be found in The Independent, 2 April 2012).

The audio cassette has been digitised and catalogued (reference SC MSS 236) and it can be consulted in the IET Archive Centre.

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Jonathan Cable The Schrödinger's Cat Conundrum - What Really is in the Box? http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60591 2015-01-27T16:56:18 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60591#comments 0 Stretching the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment analogy – the IET Archives recently received a small box that supposedly contained a ‘permanent detector’ a component that was used in connection with crystal radio sets of the 1920s. A permanent detector made by the company Radio Instruments (RI), made by the company between 1922 and 1930, was what was advertised on the box – but was that really the item that could be found in the box?

Well there was something in the box and it looked a little like the illustration on the outside of the box, but it was definitely a different object. Upon very careful examination, in a certain light, at a certain angle, the faint lettering ‘Brownie Permatector’ could be found.

This item was nothing to do with the eponymous dessert square, developed in the US at the end of the 19th century, but instead a permanent detector made by a rival firm to RI called the J W B Wireless Company (Brownie was a brand name). Both companies manufactured permanent detectors for crystal radio sets in the 1920s. The Brownie permanent detector found in the box, which the company introduced in 1926, is shown below.

 

 

The crystal radio receiver, or crystal set, contained a .cat’s-whisker detector, an electronic component consisting of a thin wire that gently touches a crystal of semiconducting mineral. The Brownie permanent crystal detector shown above comprises a nickel-plated housing with a crystal and whisker inside the housing. The whisker could be fixed permanently at a sensitive point on the crystal hence the term ‘permanent detector’.

Given the above, we now have evidence of one reality in answer to the Schrödinger cat conundrum. What is inside the box – it is a cat’s whisker!

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Jonathan Cable Electrical Technical Papers of the 1950s and Radio Objects from the 1920s/1930s http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60537 2015-01-22T15:11:38 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60537#comments 0 The IET Archives recently received a donation of electrical technical papers, dating primarily from the period 1949 to 1955. These papers were amassed by Edward J Back when he was working as a Technical Assistant in the 1950s for the Consulting Engineering Department of the Company Johnson & Phillips. Edward Back was a Graduate member of the IEE before becoming an Associate Member in 1953. This collection has been catalogued with the reference SC MSS 262.

Whilst many of the papers and articles were from journals that can be found in the IET Library such as ‘Distribution of Electricity’, ‘Electrical Times’, ‘The Electrical Journal’ and ‘Electrical Review’, these readily available articles were interspersed with letters and memoranda typically written by S Austen Stigant the Technical Adviser at Johnson & Phillips. The papers are organised by subjects including cables, electro-technology, rotating machinery, transients, and transmission.

The subject matter is understandable given that Johnson & Phillips was a cable making and wire rope machinery company founded in 1875 which by the 1950s had become a specialist in the area of transmission transformation and control of electricity. It manufactured electric cable, cable accessories, switch gear, transformers, capacitors and overhead line materials. It was acquired by the Delta Metal Company in 1964.

The collection is a useful addition to the IET Archives technical collections, particularly because the collection includes brochures and publications of other companies involved in the manufacturing of electrical equipment such as the English Electric Company, British Insulated Callender’s Cables (BICC), and Ferguson Pailin. The illustrations below are from a BICC publication from the early 1950s for its power capacitors which show a layered section diagram of its automatic power factor correction equipment for capacitors.

All layers of diagram showing;

 

 

Overlay 1 removed;

 

 

Radio Objects from the 1920s/1930s

As is quite often the case with collections of papers formed by individuals, some small objects, related to the individual are donated along with the papers. In this case Edward Back was likely to have been a radio enthusiast because the collection included a radio microphone dating from the period 1935-1940, inductors used in radios (coils of wire wrapped on a Bakelite core), and a permanent detector used in crystal radio sets from the 1920s.

The Telsen Electric Co (1935) Ltd ‘Ace’ spring-suspended microphone (type 68) is shown below;

 

 

 

Telson Electric Limited was a British firm that made a spring-suspended microphone (Ace brand) from 1930 to 1939. The company, founded by A Macnamara, based in Birmingham was active from 1924 to the 1940s, and manufactured wireless broadcast receivers, components, microphones and construction kits. It was founded by A Macnamara and had a cabinet making department which made the furniture into which the wireless receivers were built. It purchased Bakelite cases from Edwin Elliot of Birmingham; produced components for the building of a home wireless receiver, and produced blueprint layouts for home construction. The company went into receivership in 1935 but was then bought out of receivership. After this the company traded as The Telsen Electric Company (1935) Limited.

Telsen microphones were used for both home recording and public address. The Science Museum has a Telson microphone in its collection but that is a different model, likely to be a model 58, rather than the microphone above which is a model 68. Here is a link to the model in the Science Museum collection. Telsen Ace microphone at Science Museum.

 

SC MSS 262 can be consulted in the IET Archive Centre. Details for visiting the Archive Centre can be found on the archive web pages here - Archive Centre details.

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Jonathan Cable The Education and Training of Engineers Born Between 1915 and 1925 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60456 2015-01-16T14:46:33 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60456#comments 0 The subject of the training and education of engineers has been a topic very dear to the hearts of the members of the IET and its predecessor organisations for decades going back to the 19th century. These subjects appear time and again in the minutes of these organisations such as within the IEE’s Council minutes. Material on education and training can also be found extensively throughout the other, non-organisational collections, found within the IET Archives such as the papers of Sir Arthur Fleming (NAEST 70) who established a trade apprentice school at what became Metropolitan-Vickers.

Training and availability of engineers has been an issue that many governments have sought to address and concerns have resulted in many significant reports such as ‘Engineering Our Future’, known alternatively as the Finniston report, published in 1980, and shown below.

 

 

The subject remains very topical and when EngineeringUK’s report, ‘Engineering UK 2015: the state of engineering’, was published earlier this week, it received widespread media attention

http://www.engineeringuk.com/Research/Engineering_UK_Report_2015/.

Given this background the IET Archives has been fortunate to receive a recent donation of questionnaires and related correspondence which was the output of a project undertaken in 1994 and 1995 to look at the education and training of engineers born between 1915 and 1925.

The 1994/1995 Survey of Engineers

Dr Colin Hempstead, an academic at the University of Teesside, carried out a survey in 1994, targeting engineers who had been born between 1915 and 1925. Dr Hempstead sought participants via 'IEE News' in 1994 and via other channels such as the 'Newcomen Bulletin'. He asked engineers born between 1915 and 1925 to complete a survey questionnaire about their education and training. The questionnaire was very detailed and asked questions under the categories of; personal details; education; qualifications; training, funding of education and sociological information such as mother’s and father’s occupation, reasons for leaving school and reason for becoming interested in engineering.

Many of the respondents provided additional personal histories and biographical information to supplement the completed questionnaires. Whilst the survey was not exclusively aimed at the Institution of Electrical Engineers and its members, the majority of completed questionnaires came from IEE members from who circa 150 replies were received.

This detailed information on the educational and training background of engineers in the first half of the 20th Century is likely to be a very useful and valuable resource for researchers in the future but they will have to wait for several more decades before these records are made available for open consultation.

As this collection contains detailed personal information on individuals who provided this information relatively recently in 1994/1995 the files will remain closed to researchers in the short to medium term in line with the IET Archives’ closure policy in respect of collections containing personal or sensitive information. Using extracts of information from the collection, where individuals cannot be identified from the information provided, would be possible in the intervening period.

This new deposit has been catalogued as SC MSS 261, although the catalogue entries do not mention the name of individual respondents to preserve anonymity until the closure period has expired.

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Jonathan Cable Oral History and Papers Related to the H W Sullivan Instrument Company http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60319 2015-01-06T08:55:35 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60319#comments 0 The IET Archives recently received a donation of cassette tapes and notes relating to an oral history project carried out in the late 1990s. These items have now been catalogued as NAEST 221 and the audio cassette tracks have been digitised.

The oral history project recorded interviews with several people who were intimately involved with H W Sullivan, the noted British instrumentation company, which began life in 1897 and was taken over by Cambridge Instruments in 1967. Cambridge Instruments was itself taken over by George Kent and then Thorn. In 1972 Thorn, which ultimately became Thorn EMI, moved the manufacturing of Sullivan products from Orpington, Kent, to its Dover, Kent, site where Thorn was already manufacturing instrumentation under the AVO brand. The Sullivan brand was maintained for a period and was still being used in the early 1980s. H W Sullivan was known for its precision test equipment and measuring instruments such as Wheatstone bridges and galvanometers. An H W Sullivan product is illustrated below, taken from a telephone cable testing equipment catalogue circa 1955.

 

 

The product below is one of the last products with the Sullivan brand name and comes from the late 1970s.

 

 

The donation was particularly welcome because the IET Archives already has an extensive collection of instrumentation material. Collection NAEST 145 comprises the trade literature and technical manuals of AVO International Ltd including its predecessor companies such as, Thorn EMI Instruments Ltd (renamed Megger Instruments Ltd in 1987), Evershed and Vignoles, and of course H W Sullivan. The HW Sullivan element alone of NAEST 145, mainly technical literature and manuals of the 2nd half of the 20th century, fills 9 archive boxes. 

Brief Chronology for H W Sullivan

1856 Herbert Watson Sullivan born in Malta.

1870 H W Sullivan apprenticeship with Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Co Ltd.

1873 H W Sullivan joined Eastern Telegraph Co, Gibraltar.

1878 H W Sullivan became an Associate Member of Society of Telegraph Engineers (STE).

1879 H W Sullivan joined Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co Ltd.

1892 H W Sullivan became a Member of the IEE (formerly STE).

1893 H W Sullivan granted galvanometer patent.

1895 Donald Arthur Stevens born.

1897 Company H W Sullivan formed; offices at 19 Gt Winchester St; works at Old Broad St.

1914 Works address changes to 104-6 Middlesex St.

1921 Donald Stevens BSc (Civ. Eng.) at KCL, goes to Africa.

1922 The company HW Sullivan Ltd formed with DA Stevens, Lt Commander Walter George Bishop & James Hayne Stevens.

1925 Herbert Sullivan dies and Donald Stevens takes charge.

1927 Company factory moves from Middlesex St (Petticoat Lane) to Leo St, Peckham.

1963 Company factory moves to Murray Road, Orpington.

1964 Donald Stevens retires, with his sons Brian and David Stevens taking over.

1966 Donald Stevens dies.

1967 Company taken over by Cambridge Instruments.

1968 Company taken over by George Kent, with Bill Goldfinch as General Manager.

 

 

1970 Company taken over by Thorn.

1972 Thorn moves manufacturing of Sullivan products to Archcliffe Road, Dover site with AVO.

 

 

1980s Possibly the last use of the Sullivan name in advertising.

The H W Sullivan Interviews

The interviews were typically around 90 minutes long and took place with the following five individuals (summary transcripts of the interviews were made at the time of the recordings);

1. Mrs Mabel Stevens, widow of Donald Stevens. Donald Stevens ran the company from 1925 until 1964, taking over the running from Herbert Watson Sullivan.

2. Mr David Stevens, son of Donald Stevens, who jointly with his brother, Brian, took over the running of H W Sullivan from his father in 1964. Donald focuses particularly on the subject of sales.

3. Mr John Lewis who covers the topic of the H W Sullivan office and personnel and who ultimately became Personnel Director for the whole of Thorn-EMI Electronics.

4. Mr Chris Jones who covers the subject of resistance testing and gives a colourful shopfloor viewpoint.

5. Mr Bill Goldfinch who deals with the subject of the Cambridge Instruments takeover in 1967. Cambridge Instruments was taken over by the George Kent Group in 1968 to form the largest independent British manufacturer of industrial instruments. The George Kent Group was itself taken over by Thorn in 1970. Bill Goldfinch was the General Manager of George Kent Group.

In addition to providing very detailed accounts of the operations of the company, its staff, the competitive environment, and the company’s financial performance, the interviews give some fascinating insights into British industrial and social history.

Mr Jones talks of joining H W Sullivan in August 1941 at the age of 13. At that time the company was “in the hands of the bank who put in Mr Burrows as Manager”. When he was being interviewed in July 1941, he was told he could start on August 4th and when he protested that he would not be 14, the minimum age for work at that time, he was told, “if you want the [expletive] job you start on Tuesday”.

Mr Lewis tells a different story from the war period, “we weren’t used to people walking around without their coats on, they didn’t do it. Mr Stevens always came in a black coat, waistcoat, and black striped trousers. I remember during the war my mother bought me a pink shirt with a Trubenised [brand name] collar at the market, and at five past nine I was on my bike back home to change into a white shirt with stiff collar having been asked didn’t I realise you only wore coloured shirts on Saturday.”

The digitised audio files for NAEST 221 can be consulted in the IET Archive Centre. Details for visiting the Archive Centre can be found on the archive web pages here http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/archives-contacts.cfm .

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Jonathan Cable IET Archives 16mm Film Digitization Project http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60238 2014-12-23T13:33:14 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60238#comments 0 The IET Archives has just completed a project involving the digitisation of some of its 16mm film collection, a project which has been running throughout 2014. 34 films, none of which had previously been converted to other formats, and had therefore been unavailable to view within the IET for several decades, have now been digitised. Browse versions of these films are now available in either .mov or .mp4 formats for viewing on computers and other devices or alternatively they can be copied to a DVD format if required by enquirers. The IET Archives also holds these films in an uncompressed file format for long-term preservation purposes.

The majority of the films digitized, date from the 1930s to the 1950s, and are short 7-10 minute films of individuals who had been awarded the IEE’s Faraday Medal or who had been made IEE Honorary Members. Most of these films were made specifically for the IEE, following a particular award. The still below comes from a film made in 1934 of Sir John Ambrose Fleming, 7th recipient of the Faraday Medal, when it was awarded by the IEE in 1928. Fleming, who invented the thermionic value in 1904, was aged 85 when he took part in this film.

The film was a British Thomson-Houston (BTH) Electrical Recording. BTH was founded as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company of the US but came into British ownership when it was amalgamated with Metropolitan-Vickers in 1928 to from Associated Electrical Industries (separate BTH brand identity remained until 1960).

 

 

The image below is from another of the digitised films but is a little different in that is a General Electric Company film, made in the US in 1932. The film is of Professor Elihu Thomson who was the 6th recipient of the Faraday Medal when it was awarded by the IEE in 1927. In the film Thomson, the person shown on the left below, talks about the merger of the Thomson-Houston and Edison companies to form GE, his life, and also his inventions (Thomson took out 700-800 patents).

 

 

Elihu Thomson (1853 to 1937) although born in Manchester in 1853, moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1858. Together with Edwin J Houston he founded the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in the US in 1883 which was one of the precursors of the General Electric Company of the US which was formed in 1892. The GE film above was an RCA Photophone recording and the interview was carried out by Thomson’s friend, Edwin W Rice Jr, Honorary Chairman of GE at that time, on the lawn of Mr Rice’s home in Schenectady, NY.

The frame above shows a steam train passing by in the background, the sound of which can clearly be heard on the film. This is quite appropriate given that Thomson talks on the film about the development of the railways amongst other things.

Film from the 1920s – BTH’s Work on Sound on Film

The 16mm digitisation project also included two early 20th century films that were donated to the IET in 2013 from a former BTH employee. One film (without sound) from the 1930s is of the production by BTH of its well-known Mazda branded light bulb and shows the complete process of manufacturing, packaging and distribution at its factory. A still from that film is shown below.

 

 

The second film (again without sound) is another BTH film, this time from the 1920s, and shows the company’s work on developing films with sound (the technology for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a picture image on a commercial basis was developed by several competing companies in the US and UK in the late 1920s).

 

 

Coincidentally the IET Archives has several collections containing BTH material, in particularly a collection referenced as NAEST 74. NAEST 74 is a very large group of photographs and glass plate negatives of early BTH sites, equipment and manufacturing processes and installations, primarily covering its Rugby factory. It covers 28 albums and 13,000 glass plate from the period 1898 to 1939. The company products included induction motors, alternators, switchgear, turbo-generators and turbines, as well as a large number of rotary converters and motor converters, primarily for chemical plants. In the period before the First World War, BTH manufactured most of the equipment for railway electrification in Britain and equipped more than fifty tramway systems. In addition the company carried out a great deal of work for the new London Underground lines.

In the New Year the IET Archive online catalogue will be amended for those 16mm films that have been digitised to make it clear that digitised versions of the films are available. Anyone interested in a copy of the digitised films should contact the IET Archive Centre via phone on 020 7344 8407 or via e-mail using archives@theiet.org.

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Jonathan Cable Peter J Baxandall Condenser Microphone Papers http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60201 2014-12-17T17:03:53 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60201#comments 0 A file of papers recently deposited with the IET archives contained over 40 years’ worth of primarily technical notes, thoughts and ideas on the subject of the condenser microphone written by the audio and electronic engineer Peter J Baxandall. The notes cover the period from the early 1950s to the early 1990s. The condenser microphone, also known as a capacitor microphone or electrostatic microphone, was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1916 by E C Wente. Two images of a condenser microphone from amongst the Baxandall papers, probably of experimental models taken circa 1965, are shown below.

 

 

 

Baxandall (1921-1995), wrote a chapter on electrostatic loudspeakers for both the 1st edition (1988) and the 2nd edition (1994) of the Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, that is sometimes referred to as the seminal work on the subject. He also contributed chapters on 'power amplifiers, control units and preamplifiers' which appeared in the 1st and 2nd editions (1994 and 1999 respectively) of the Audio Engineer's Reference Book, edited by Michael Talbot-Smith. However, he had already gained significant attention in the early 1950s for his bass and treble circuit or tone-control circuit about which he published details in Wireless World, October 1952, and which was used in hi-fi audio systems.

Biographical Details for Peter J Baxandall

Peter Baxandall, born in 1921, was educated at Kings College School in Wimbledon before going on to study electrical engineering at Cardiff Technical College, Wales. He graduated with a BSc (Eng) in 1942.

Following graduation Peter spent two years as a radio instructor for the Fleet Air Arm before joining the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE), based at Malvern, where he began work in the Circuit Research Division. He worked for the RSRE until his early retirement in 1971. After that Peter continued to work as an electroacoustical consultant.

Projects on which Peter worked as a consultant included; audio-frequency transformers, radio-frequency carrier microphones, powered loudspeakers, dipole and electrostatic loudspeakers, loudspeakers with motional feedback, bandbass loudspeakers, oscillators, high-speed tape-duplicating equipment, and high-precision microphone calibration methods.

Peter was closely associated with the Audio Engineering Society. He became a Fellow of the AES in 1980 and was awarded its Silver Medal in 1993 which is given in recognition of outstanding development or achievement in the field of audio engineering. Peter died in 1995 and an 'in memoriam' tribute to him was published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, vol.44 no.9, September 1996.

Collection Contents

For anyone with a technical interest in microphones there are dozens of Baxandall’s handwritten notes detailing his experiments, ideas for solving problems, and thoughts and comments on published technical literature. The note titles, written in the first half of 1965 are shown below as an illustration of the types of material to be found.

'Data from advert by International in Journal of the AES', dated January 1965.

'Circuits of transistorized rf condenser microphones', based on article in the January 1965 issue of the Journal of the AES by H J Griese.

'Thoughts re tension and diaphragm in cardioid condenser microphone', dated April 1965.

'Thoughts on what should be done about rf microphone system', dated 19 May 1965.

'Design of miniature pressure capsule', dated 9 June 1965.

'Own thoughts on cardioid capsule theory', dated 19 June 1965.

Peter’s technical notes are interspersed with correspondence with microphone manufacturers, orders for materials for his experimental equipment, and discussions with others who had an interest in the field. It is interesting that there are several notes on the subject of Reg Williamson’s condenser microphone capsule because ultimately this file of material passed to Reg Williamson upon Peter’s death – there is a letter with the deposit dated 1996 (the year after Peter’s death) in which Reg recalls the visit to Peter’s house when he picked up this file of material on condenser microphones. Reg also recalls leaving ‘a vast amount of paperwork’ which he expected to be dumped.

The Peter J Baxandall papers have now been catalogued (reference SC MSS 260) and are available to view in the IET Archives. The contents of the collection can be viewed in the IET Archives online catalogue.

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Asha Gage Discover your engineering past at the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60167 2014-12-15T10:26:33 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60167#comments 0

Image of Oliver Heaviside and his family.

This blog has been written to promote the launch of our new family history leaflet. It supplements what you can find in the leaflet and on our website under the family history section.

Our heritage
The IET was founded in 1871 as the Society of Telegraph Engineers but through an amalgamation with the Institution of Incorporated Engineers in 2006 our predecessor institutions date back to 1854. The Society of Telegraph Engineers began as a learned society for those involved in the electric telegraph industry but to keep up with technological developments of the time it changed its name to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1889. Since then the IEE amalgamated with the Institution of Radio Engineers (IERE) in 1988 and the Institution of Production Engineers (IMfgE/IProdE) in 1991.

It's a family affair
If you are researching your family history or the life of an individual we may be able to help you with some details concerning their profession. Although the term 'electrical engineer' in the nineteenth century did not denote affiliation with a professional organisation if you see the post nominal MIEE (Member), AMIEE (Associate Member), or FIEE (Fellow) then they were members of the IEE.

Our membership application forms from 1871-1901 can help fill in the gaps about an individual's employment, education and social circles. The printed lists of members from 1871-1997 can trace geographical movement as well as mobility through the membership categories. It is now possible to browse a list of members from 1871-1930 online, view the full record and download an image of the original thanks to a partnership with Ancestry.co.uk

Part of this project was to digitise over 170,000 electrical engineer records. Records were selected and scanned on site at Savoy Place, London, using the most current scanning technology to produce high quality images. These are now fully searchable by name, date of birth, location and date of application. For more information on how to access these records please visit our family history section of our website

Other records to help further your study
If the person you are researching was not a member of our Institution we can still help by looking through the Electrical Trades Directory (known as the Blue Books) published from 1883. Within these pages are information on electrical firms, advertisements and an alphabetical classified section on individuals. We also have some other institutional records from the IERE, IProdE and IIE.

Occasionally an obituary or biography may have been written about certain members and published in the Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (JIEE) or in the Blue Books directory.

In addition to paper records we also have some photographs, portraits and films of notable engineers. These include past Presidents, Faraday Medallists and Honorary Fellows.

Our military records can help to learn more about an engineer's role during the two world wars. Some contain biographical information such as the First World War Roll of Honour, which holds details on the member, where they were stationed, military action and how they died.

We also hold a number of interesting collections relating to women in engineering and science, education and the importance of domestic electricity.


Francis Hughes Webb, Secretary of the Socieity of Telegraph Engineers, seated with a child.

Contact us for some advice

If you would like to know more about our records please visit our family history pages on our website or see our new family history leaflet.

This leaflet was produced to highlight the varied collections we hold that may help with family history research. We want to reach new audiences to open up our collections and to assist those who are embarking on their family history with an engineering aspect. The images chosen illustrate the range of material we have to offer.

If you have any enquiries regarding your research please contact us for a chat, we are always happy to help.
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Jonathan Cable James H H Merriman Papers - President of IEE 1974-75 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60125 2014-12-08T13:23:04 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60125#comments 0

The IET Archives recently received a donation of papers belonging to James Henry Herbert Merriman who was the IEE President in 1974-75. The photograph above is the IEE’s formal black & white photograph of James taken at the start of his Presidential term. Perhaps surprisingly the IET Archives has very few collections of former IET/IEE Presidents who held that position after the Second World War so this collection was very warmly received.

Biographical Details for James H H Merriman

James Merriman was born in Pembroke, 1915. He was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon, and King's College, University of London. He obtained his BSc (Hons) in 1935 and did postgraduate research at King's College London obtaining his MSc in 1936.

James entered the GPO Engineering Department, Radio Research Branch, Dollis Hill, in 1936 and was associated with the development of long distance radio communication systems. From 1940 to 1948 James was Officer-in-charge at Castleton radio research station. From 1948 to 1953 he worked as Engineer-in-Chief, GPO London HQ on HF, VHF and microwave system development and planning.

In 1954 James went to Imperial Defence College and in 1955 he became Head of GPO Engineering Department O&M unit. From 1956 to 1959 he was Deputy Director Organisation and Methods Division, HM Treasury. He then became Assistant Engineer-in-Chief GPO with oversight of all transmissions including space systems in 1963, becoming Deputy Chief Engineer in 1965, Senior Director of Engineering in 1967, then Senior Director, Development.  Eventually James became Board Member for Technology 1969-1976. Other positions James held included Chairman National Computing Centre 1977-1983 and he was a member of the NEDC Electronics Committee from 1977-1983.

James who received an OBE in 1961 and his CB in 1969 was Faraday Lecturer 1969-1970, was made a Fellow of King's College in 1972, received an Honorary DSc from Strathclyde in 1974, became President of the IEE in 1974-75 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the IEE in 1981.

When James completed his term in office as IEE President, as was customary at that time, he received a certificate of thanks from the IEE Council which was signed by a Council member, and the new incoming President. James’ certificate is shown below.

 

 

Collection Contents

The deposited collection comprises primarily James’ published papers and articles, annotated typescript versions of lectures and a small number of photographs.

There are some nice black & white photographs from the 1969-1970 Faraday lecture. This was given by James on the subject of ‘people, communications and engineering’. The lectures were given around the country and took place over many weeks. The two photographs below show James on stage at one of the lectures and then the two GPO vans that were required to transport all the equipment need to support the lectures.

 

 

 

The James HH Merriman papers have now been catalogued (reference SC MSS 259) and are available to view in the IET Archives. The contents of the collection can be viewed in the IET Archives online catalogue.

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Jonathan Cable Restoration of Portraits Hanging in the Lecture Theatre at Savoy Place http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60100 2014-12-05T08:56:47 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60100#comments 0 The eye-catching wood-panelled lecture theatre at the IET’s Savoy Place in London has been enjoyed for many decades by IET staff who worked there, attendees at events hosted at Savoy Place and general visitors to the building. However, many of those who have passed through the doors of the lecture theatre may not have been aware of the history of the eight portraits that have hung on the walls, or the people represented in those portraits.

The two images below show the lecture theatre at two different points in its history. The first image is from the 1930s shortly after the portraits were hung for the first time – note that the portraits are framed and hung on top of the wooden panelling. The second image is much more recent and dates from after the major refurbishment of the lecture theatre which took place in 1959-60 (when the paintings were mounted in recesses behind the panelling and also lit) and after the 1990s installation of the ceiling design by artist Tony Raymond.

 

 

 

Who Are the People Shown in the Portraits?

The eight portraits that were hanging in the lecture theatre in early 2014 were of the following well-known people; Sir Joseph Wilson Swan; Lord Kelvin; Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti; Michael Faraday; Alexander Graham Bell; Andre Marie Ampere; John Hopkinson; and Alessandro Volta. Images of two of the paintings following their recent restoration are shown below. They are firstly Michael Faraday, painted by George Harcourt in 1926 and secondly Alessandro Volta painted by Giuseppe Palanti in 1928.

 

 

 

How Did These Particular Portraits Find Their Way Into Savoy Place?

The IEE Council minutes of 1925 show the beginning of the discussion about oil paintings for the lecture theatre. It is probably no surprise that there was much debate about who should be represented in the portraits, who should be commissioned to paint the portraits, and which images of the chosen subjects should be used as the basis for the new portraits.

The first two paintings agreed upon were Faraday and Kelvin both to be painted by Mr G Harcourt ARA for a fee of 400 guineas for each painting. What is perhaps surprising is that the IEE only commissioned and paid for one of the portraits, that of Kelvin. The portrait of Faraday was commissioned by Mr Evershed and then immediately presented to the Institution as a gift. This was the pattern set for the subsequent paintings. Each was commissioned and paid for by a noted member of the IEE and then donated to the IEE. This situation meant that the commissioner of each painting had a significant influence over the subject matter and painter of each portrait. The portraits of Faraday and Kelvin were completed and hung in 1926.

In 1927 a short-list of 6 names for the remaining paintings was noted in the IEE Council minutes. That list included Volta, Ampere, Hopkinson, Bell and Swan all of whose portraits were painted over the next few years. However, the name of Gilbert dropped off the list to be replaced by de Ferranti. Mr Paul donated the Volta painting, Sir Charles Parsons donated the Swan painting, Sir Tom Callender donated the Hopkinson painting, Mr Garcke donated the Ampere painting, Sir Hugo Hirst donated the painting of Bell, and Mr Marryat donated the painting of de SZ de Ferranti.

A 9th and a 10th painting, one of Charles Wheatstone and one of James Clerk Maxwell, were also commissioned as part of this process. However, despite the paintings being produced, they do not appear on the walls of the lecture theatre in the 21st century although the portraits do still exist and are in the IET’s portrait collection.

The Recent Restoration

As part of the process of redevelopment of Savoy Place, the lecture theatre paintings were taken down in early 2014, which involved carefully removing some of the panelling to extract the individual paintings. This opportunity was used to send the 8 lecture theatre paintings to a fine art restorer to clean and restore any damage to the paintings which had been in situ for many decades. This process was completed a few months ago and the paintings are now crated and in storage awaiting their return to Savoy Place in 2015.

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Jonathan Cable Bernard Martin Crowther (1910 - 2005) - Editor of Science Abstracts for Almost Two Decades http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60065 2014-12-02T12:38:19 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=60065#comments 0 Earlier in 2014 the IET Archives received a donation of papers belonging to Bernard Martin Crowther. Bernard Crowther was intimately involved with the history of the IET, particularly the IET’s Inspec database, where he was the Chief Editor from 1945 to 1964 of what was then known as Science Abstracts.

The history of Science Abstracts and Inspec is recorded in detail on the IET Archives web pages here http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/inspec/index.cfm. Bernard Crowther is mentioned in passing on those pages in the section covering Inspec staff memoirs where the recollections are recorded of two Assistant Editors who worked for Bernard, the well-known author Sir Arthur C Clarke, and Gerald Beck.

Bernard’s papers which include extensive records of instructions and notes for abstractors, commentaries on the role of abstracting, and details of the changing face of the office in the mid-20th century, such as the introduction of typewriter composition, are therefore a very welcome addition to the archive collections.

Bernard Crowther’s Life Outside of Science Abstracts

Bernard M Crowther was educated at Oundle School, near Peterborough 1924-1929, then at Clare College, Cambridge, 1929-1932, where he studied in the physics faculty, and was taught by the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford. He worked at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory from 1932 to 1935 and was awarded a PhD in 1936 for his work on 'the separation of isotopes'.

Prior to joining the IEE in October 1945 as Editor of Science Abstracts, from 1936 to 1945 Bernard was a researcher at EMI in Hayes, Middlesex. This was an important period in the development of high-definition television in which EMI was a major player and Bernard worked as a junior colleague with the noted electronics engineer Alan Blumlein.

Between 1943 and 1947 Bernard wrote scripts for a 10-minute BBC World Service programme which included reviews of new issues of Nature and Discovery. This interest in ‘reviewing’ then extended further with an invitation from The Economist in 1947 to write physical science book reviews for the journal. This began an 11-year relationship between Bernard and The Economist and many of his book reviews, written between 1947 and 1958, are included in his papers.

Office Life in the 1950’s and 1960’s

Whilst it might be expected that Bernard’s papers would contain extensive details about abstracting and the world of abstracting, it might be less expected that they would contain a detailed record of office life in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. He kept a work diary and also a memoranda copy book covering the period 1955 to 1963 in which minute details are kept of working arrangements in the office and in which the memoranda to his staff are recorded. The formal nature of the office is perhaps exemplified by the following two memoranda:

Memorandum to a Mr Anderton dated 13 September 1960, “Please supply Mr Lever of Science Abstracts with one Comet stapler to replace one evidently removed from his desk illicitly during his holiday. B M Crowther.”

Memorandum dated 27 April 1960, “congratulations – since 4th March you have kept up a pretty steady average of 16 pages per day – actually, allowing for Easter, you are just 32 pages short of the exact average, counting sheets actually sent off. Please keep this up….  BMC.”

The Launch of Tetra Pak in 1951

Another surprising ‘find’ amongst Bernard’s papers was a folder of publicity material from Tetra Pak on the launch of its innovative product in 1951 which had been sent to Science Abstracts. Tetra Pak, a subsidiary of the Swedish firm Akerlund and Rausing, was formed in 1951 just prior to the public launch of its ‘revolutionary new one-way package for milk, cream, auto-oil, fruit juices and ice cream’. Two of these marketing images showing the new product and the novel way of storing multiple packages are shown below.

 

 

 

Life After Science Abstracts

Bernard gave up his executive responsibilities with Science Abstracts in 1964 although he continued to have an association with it for a few more years, first as an Advisory Editor and then as a consultant. His interest in science, technology and physics did not diminish and within his papers is a set of correspondence from 1981 between Bernard and the Head of Documentary Features at the BBC, Will Wyatt. Bernard had heard that a documentary was planned covering the launch of the BBC’s first high-definition television broadcasting service from Alexandra Palace in 1936. He was concerned about potential inaccuracies in the coverage of the efforts of the EMI research team and wanted to speak to the producer to ensure the accuracy of the documentary. Bernard stated, “I was a member of the research team at EMI at the time of the inauguration of the service, and knew all the principal participants at the EMI end quite intimately”. Bernard also wrote a manuscript list of names of the principal participants which he stapled to the set of correspondence.

The Bernard M Crowther papers have now been catalogued (reference SC MSS 258) and are available to view in the IET Archives. The contents of the collection can be viewed in the IET Archives online catalogue.

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Jonathan Cable IET Archives - Rare Books Back From Storage http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59983 2014-11-28T11:51:13 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59983#comments 0 When the new IET Archive Centre was opened earlier in 2014 at Savoy Hill House there was an initial period when the new strongroom remained empty to allow the environmental conditions to stabilise. Following that period the core archive collections were brought back from storage – those collections that were deemed to be especially valuable or popular. Whilst this process was completed by the summer of 2014, one large gap remained on the strongroom shelves. This was the area allocated to the IET’s collections of rare books particularly those collections known as the S P Thompson rare books library and the Ronalds library.

As the rare books, many bound in leather or vellum, and many of them dating back several centuries, are particularly sensitive to conditions, such as the relative humidity, it was decided to postpone bringing back these rare books until there was a track record of stable conditions through both the colder spring months and also the warmer summer months. Now these collections of rare books have also been returned from storage and sit on the shelves of the archive strongroom. The image below shows the rare books on the strongroom shelves that are predominantly from the Ronalds collection.

 

 

Book Boxing

Prior to the move out of Savoy Place in 2013, many of the more valuable and fragile rare books, mainly from the S P Thompson collection, were measured. These measurements were used to make ‘book boxes’, which were then fitted to provide further long-term protection to the individual books prior to being them being packed and transferred to archive quality storage (compliant with PD5454:2012). Those boxed books are shown in the image below, now situated on the shelves in the strongroom at Savoy Hill House.

More Unusual Subject Matter in the Rare Books Collection

Given that the SP Thompson collection is commonly called ‘the electrical library of Silvanus P Thompson’, there are perhaps unexpectedly, many books on matters perhaps considered less electrical. One such example is an old work on amber, illustrated below.

 

 

 

The volume called, ‘historiae succinorum corpora aliena involventium et naturae opera pictorum et caelatorum…’, by Nathanael Sendel (1686-1757) is dated 1742. Amongst other things this work describes the formation of amber and its properties and contains a series of plates illustrating animals and plants encased in amber. It has been said that this work laid the foundation for future paleobiological amber research.

A Map Puzzle

Within the S P Thompson rare books collection there is a wonderful ‘map of the arctic regions’, 1597, supposedly by Cornelius Wytfliet which is shown below.

 

 

The map comes with two slips of paper written by Thompson. The first slip says that the map, exhibited by S P Thompson, was a map of the artic regions from 1597 and that it was probably by Cornelius Wytfliet. The second slip says the following;

“this map shows at the North Pole a high black rock. It also shows in the artic sea to the north of Eastern Siberia two positions for the alleged Loadstone Rock or magnetic pole, one located on the hypothesis that the line of no variation passes through Cape Verde, the other on the hypothesis that it passes through the Island of Corvo in the Azores. At an outlet of Davis Strait, north of Labrador, it bears the inscription, a furious over-fall.”

However, other sources would suggest that this map, titled, ‘Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio, 1597’ is not by Wyfliet but is instead by C Loew (pseudonym for Matthias Quad), after Mercator, published in 1598 from the book "Meer oder Seehanen Buch", Colonia, 1598.

 

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Jonathan Cable Electrical Association of Women (EAW) Rugby Branch Records http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59748 2014-11-07T12:28:22 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59748#comments 0 Earlier this year the IET Archives received a donation of papers related to the Rugby Branch of the Electrical Association of Women (EAW). The papers came from the family of Mrs D M Bastow who was Chairman of the Rugby Branch from 1976 until the disbanding of the branch and the EAW in December 1986. Mrs Bastow was also a member of the EAW’s National Executive in the final years of the EAW and some of her personal and National Executive papers and material can be found amongst these branch records.

Some of the papers in the deposit had signs of mould and so the collection was originally quarantined, before being sent for treatment. Once the papers had been cleaned they were then in a position to be catalogued.

EAW Records and the Records of the Rugby Branch

The EAW was formed in 1924 and eventually had several hundred branches in the UK and overseas. The Rugby Branch was founded in 1928 and its inauguration certificate from 25 October 1928, which came with the donation, is shown below.

 

 

The menu and programme from the first annual dinner, held at the Grand Hotel, Rugby, 23 November 1929, shows that members enjoyed the following courses; julien soup; fried sole with an anchovy sauce; roast chicken with ham, boiled and baked potatoes, savoy; apple tart and cream; finished with Welsh rarebit and coffee. The meal was accompanied by toasts, a duet, songs and a pianoforte solo.

 

 

A lengthy report of the annual dinner in the local press, detailing all the participants and details of the speeches and toasts, is very much of its time. The proposer of the ‘visitor’s toast’, Mrs H de B Knight, welcomed the visitors and explained to them that, “while the EAW was a women’s organisation, and therefore independent, they welcomed the mere males who were present, because they provided the wherewithal to purchase the many electrical fittings which the modern woman requires in her home”.

After the EAW was disbanded in 1986, the EAW’s central records were deposited in the IEE Archives (reference NAEST 093 and NAEST 093A) together with a selection of EAW branch records (reference NAEST 093B). However the majority of the many branch records were deposited at local record offices.

The EAW was structured so that the branches were affiliated to an Area Federation. In the case of the Rugby Branch it was a member of the East Midlands Area Federation. The records of 4 East Midlands Area branches, Lincoln, Mansfield and District, Mansfield Evening, and Tamworth and District came to the IEE. However other branch records, including some Rugby Branch records were deposited amongst the Records Offices of Humberside, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottingham and Warwickshire. A list of what records went where is held in the IET Archive Centre. The EAW poster below (NAEST 093/11/16) shows the EAW’s branches in the UK, with the colours representing different Area Federations. The East Midlands Area is shown towards the bottom of the picture in pink.

 

 

EAW Tea Towels – The Discovery of Some New Varieties

One of the nice surprises about this donation is that it contained material produced centrally by the EAW but which has not survived in the central collections and which we had not seen before. For example there were two new, previously unseen, EAW tea towel, one of which is shown below.

 

 

There was also Mrs Bastow’s National Executive member medal which does not exist in the central EAW collections.

 

 

The EAW Rugby Branch papers have now been catalogued (reference NAEST 093B/5/5) and are available to view in the IET Archives. The contents of the collection can be viewed in the IET Archives online catalogue by entering the term ‘UK0108 NAEST 093B/5/5’ in the search engine which can be found here http://archives.theiet.org/search.aspx .

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Jonathan Cable Gustav Wikkenhauser (1901 - 1974) - a Television Pioneer http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59714 2014-11-04T16:02:32 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59714#comments 0 The IET Archives recently received a donation of papers belonging to Gustav Wikkenhauser, who was described in his obituary as a pioneer of television. 

Gustav was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1901 and received his degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from the University of Budapest in 1926. He was then employed by AEG in Berlin before joining the laboratories of the Telehor Television Company on its formation in 1929. He worked in Berlin on the early stages of mechanical television and was invited to come to Britain in 1932 to work on television in the UK where he started to work for the company Scophony Ltd. A photograph of Gustav from later in his life is shown below.

 

 

Scophony Limited

Scophony operated internationally in Britain and Germany in the early 1930s and in Britain and America in the late 1930s. It has been described as one of the most highly original television manufacturers of the 1930s and praised for its innovative optical-mechanical television systems which produced large screen high-definition pictures for both the home and cinema. More information about Scophony can be found on the National Media Museum’s blog site here http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/2014/03/21/the-last-remaining-scophony-tv-receiver-high-speed-scanner-motor/ . The blog, also mentions Gustav and his involvement with Scophony and mentions that it was Wikkenhauser who built the two 30 line television receivers that Dénes Von Mihály, the Hungarian inventor and engineer, demonstrated at the 1928 Berlin Radio Exhibition.

R W Burns in his book, ‘British Television: The Formative Years’ (IEE Technology Series No.7), commented, “there is no doubt that the Scophony engineers, Walton, Wikkenhauser, Sieger, Robinson, and Lee, produced some of the most highly original devices ever seen in the field of television.” Burns’ book, available via the IET Library, has a chapter on the work of the Television Committee and high definition television in 1934 which also discusses the four competitor companies engaged in research on high definition systems at that time which were; Scophony Ltd; A C Cossor Ltd; Baird Television Ltd; and Electric and Musical Industries Ltd / Marconi-EMI Television Company Limited.

The War Years

Gustav became a naturalized British citizen in 1941 and was awarded the MBE for his scientific work at that time. It was after the war, in 1946, that Gustav married his second wife, Pamela.

Gustav’s work during the war remains something of a mystery although the depositor of the collection believes that there was a connection with radar. There is a series of Gustav’s papers in The National Archives, dating from 1939 to 1946 (reference HO 405/59934) which until only very recently had been closed (records opened to the public 30 October 2014).

Post-war Years

In 1947 Gustav became Chief Development Engineer for Kelvin Hughes (division of Smith Industries Ltd), of Barkingside, where he researched navigational instruments. Despite his work on early television, Gustav’s obituary comments that he was internationally known for his research into scientific instruments. The photograph below shows Gustav alongside Francis Chichester, the aviator and sailor, in front of Kelvin Hughes’ instrumentation in 1962.

 

 

Despite his involvement with navigational instrumentation Gustav retained an interest in television which we know from photographs contained within the deposited papers. There are several photographs taken at the Milan Fair for International Motion Pictures (MIFED) in 1960 where Gustav is photographed as a speaker alongside other pioneers of television such as Vladimir K Zworykin (inventor of a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes) – see below.

 

 

Gustav was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1958 and was a member of many professional organisations over his career. He was a Fellow of The Television Society, a Member of the British Institution of Radio Engineers (one of the predecessor organisations of the IET), a member of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers, and a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation. He retired in 1967 but continued to work as a consultant for Shell International Marine Ltd, for whom he researched the measurement of ship's motion. Gustav died aged 73 in 1974.

Personal Interests

Gustav, in addition to being an exceptional engineer, enjoyed socialising, and was a keen sailor. There are many personal photographs within the deposited collection and two of these, showing a very glamorous Gustav and Pamela, and Gustav sailing his boat off the Isle of Wight are shown below.

 

 

 

 

The Gustav Wikkenhauser papers have now been catalogued (reference SC MSS 257) and are available to view in the IET Archives. The contents of the collection can be viewed in the IET Archives online catalogue.

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Jonathan Cable Allen West - a Key Figure in British Electrical Equipment Manufacturing http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59652 2014-10-29T10:50:09 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59652#comments 0 The IET Archives recently received the donation of a very large black & white photograph of Allen West, which measures 104cm by 90cm, and which is reproduced below. The name of Allen West will be unfamiliar to many people but he was the founder of the company Allen West & Co. Ltd in 1910 which grew to become one of the UK’s largest manufacturers of control gear and switchgear in the 20th century. The company, which once employed over 3000 people in the UK and had branches and representatives all around the world, no longer exists as Allen West & Co, but following a management buyout in 2007 the rights to the Allen West products and associated records are now held by the company Allenwest Brighton Ltd.

 

 

The story of the Allen West company from 1910-1960 is told in the book, ‘The Allen West Story’ which was published for private circulation by the company in April 1960 – a copy of this volume which was presented to the IEE in 1960 by the company can be found in the IET Library. A cropped version of the donated photograph above appears in the book on page 24.

As well as being an engineer Allen West was also a soldier who fought in the Boer war as well as the two World Wars. On the outbreak of the Boer war, he volunteered as a trooper in the Yeomanry and following rapid promotion was given the command of a squadron which took part in the relief of Mafeking. He was wounded at that time and sent to convalesce in Hove.

Allen West was also associated with the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Association (BEAMA) and was on its Council for many years. Although he gave up the Managing Directorship of the eponymous company in 1933, he remained on the Board for a further 20 years before retiring. He died in 1957 aged 80.

Allen West & Co Ltd

One of Allen West’s first contracts in 1911 was with the Admiralty providing control gear components and it went on to supply starters for many ships of the Royal Navy from aircraft carriers to midget submarines. The company also supplied many industrial concerns such as steelworks, power stations and mines where it supplied controllers for mine hoists and haulages.

In World War II, the company played a part in the development of radar. It manufactured self-contained radar trailers and equipment for long range detector units. It also supplied special control gear for apparatus used to protect vessels from magnetic mines.

The IET Archives also holds some Allen West & Co material within its other collections for example some of its product leaflets can be found in our Croyden ‘A’ power station collection (reference NAEST 001/1/100) as well as connection diagrams within the same collection (reference NAEST 001/1/132). Leaflets for circuit breakers and switches are illustrated below.

 

 

 

The History of the Allen West Photograph

The Allen West photograph was kindly donated to the IET Archives by the Parmley Graham company. It’s Chairman, Mike Wilson, tells the following story about the photograph;

“My first recollection of seeing this rather imposing photograph was on the grand staircase of the Brighton head office of Allen West & Company, when I arrived there for training in 1966. J Parmley Graham & Sons Ltd, the firm which had just recruited me from ICI Heavy Organics Chemical Division, (now Parmley Graham Ltd) had been appointed as the Allen West Agent in North-East England in the early 1900’s just as Allen West was getting started.

Allen West and James Parmley Graham became friends whilst serving their apprenticeships on Tyneside at J H Holmes and Co., a manufacturer which eventually became Reyrolle then NEI, Rolls Royce and is now Siemens. By 1910 JPG as agent had secured the first order for six large reversing haulage controllers for a colliery in the North-East, which were still working twenty years later. The relationship prospered because of the huge requirement there was for Allen West products, like the newly invented drum controller, for use in the coal steel and chemical industries. The firm’s marine control gear was also in great demand and it is claimed that there was not a single Royal Naval vessel afloat in both world wars which was not extensively equipped with Allen West Gear, in the engine room and on deck.

When I arrived on the scene, there were 3500 employees in Brighton, plus those in its subsidiary companies in Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia and France. However, the notion of selling industrial goods through an agent was already passé, but such was the success of the North-East England Agent, it remained in place when every other area of England and Scotland were made into Allen West regional offices.

During those heady days when our links with Allen West were very strong and we were by far their largest distributor, the directors were moved in 1992, to send to me an appreciative plaque celebrating 82 years of co-operation together with a copy (I think) of the photograph of Mr Allen West which I had so revered at the beginning of my career.”

An Interesting Shareholder!

We are also grateful to Mike Wilson for supplying us with a copy of a handwritten list of the early Allen West & Co shareholders shown below.

 

 

Albert Slazenger, of sports equipment fame, appears on the list with a large holding of 23,000 shares. Mike believes that at some point around the time of this circa 1910 list, Allen West was also involved with the manufacturer of Slazenger’s tennis racquets!

The Allen West photograph has been catalogued as SC MSS 256 and can be viewed by appointment at the IET Archives Centre at Savoy Hill House.

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Jonathan Cable Oliver Heaviside, FRS, (1850-1925) - the Brilliant and Controversial Figure who Still Excites Passions Today http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59054 2014-08-27T13:43:45 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=59054#comments 0 Oliver Heaviside, an important figure in the history of mathematics and electrical engineering, has close connections with the IET. He was the IEE's first Faraday Medal winner in 1922, and the IET Archives holds a significant collection of Heaviside's papers (SC MSS 5). The IET also has an oil portrait of Heaviside painted in 1945 by Francis Hodge. A photograph of Heaviside is shown below.

Oliver Heaviside was born in Camden Town, London on 18 May 1850, the youngest of four sons born to Thomas Heaviside and his wife Rachel West, whose sister Emma had married Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1847. Thomas Heaviside was a wood engraver and his wife was a governess and had taught the Spottiswoode family, including Sir William Spottiswoode who became President of the Royal Society. However, the family were very poor and the poverty of those early years had a lasting influence on Oliver. His education began at a girls' school run by his mother, but when this failed he was taught by Mr F R Cheshire at the Camden House School. He did not go to university but became a telegraph clerk for the Anglo Danish Telegraph Company, later the Great Northern Telegraph Company, in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1868.

In 1874 he retired from work due to increasing deafness. He then began work on a series of problems in telegraphy and signal transmission using experimentation, mathematics and vector analysis. He worked on Maxwell's equations concerning the electromagnetic theory of light. He predicted the existence of an ionised reflective layer in the atmosphere which would bounce radio signals back to earth - the ionosphere - which is known as the Heaviside layer in his honour, and also predicted the existence of sub-atomic particles and the idea that the mass of an electric charge increases with its velocity.

Heaviside was a difficult and eccentric man, caused partly by his deafness, and he cared nothing for the opinions of other scientists. He was convinced of the correctness of his workings using mathematical notation (vector algebra) which was almost impossible to understand by his contemporaries but which forms the basis of important areas of electrical engineering theory to this day. He had long and famous disagreements with Sir William Henry Preece over the introduction of inductance to long distance communication cables to improve the transmission of signals. Heaviside also disagreed with Lord Kelvin over the process by which electricity travelled down wires, leading to the production of Heaviside's transmission line equations, and over Kelvin's use of heat diffusion theory to calculate the age of the earth. However, Kelvin remained a lifelong friend of Heaviside.

Heaviside moved to Paignton in Devon with his parents to live near his brother Charles and his family. Both his parents had died by 1896 and in 1897 Heaviside moved to Newton Abbott where he lived until 1908 when he moved in with his sister in law's sister, Miss Mary Way in Torquay. He lived there until his death on 3 February 1925. In addition to the award of the Faraday Medal by the IEE he was made an Honorary Member of the AIEE. His published works include numerous papers and articles, Electromagnetic Waves (1889), Electrical Papers (1892) and Electromagnetic Theory (3 vols 1893-1912).

Heaviside's Papers in the IET Archives

After Heaviside's death in 1925, his nephew (Frederick Heaviside of Torquay) sold most of the papers he had gathered at his uncle's house to private collectors. Two years later in 1927, he sold the residue to the IEE for £120. This material was examined, soon after its arrival, by IEE member H J Josephs who commented, 'it did not contain any letters written by Heaviside himself; but it did contain letters from friends who were trying to get his fourth and concluding volume of Electromagnetic Theory published in America'.

Then in 1957, three large sacks of papers were found hidden under the floorboards of Heaviside's room in the house at Paignton where he lived from 1889 to 1897. These papers, which have been discussed in subsequent monographs, can also be found within the IET Archives Heaviside papers collection.

In addition to the Heaviside papers collection, Heaviside related material can be found widely throughout the other collections within the IET Archives. For example, there is a series of correspondence dating from 1922-1925 between J S Highfield, IEE President, and Heaviside about the award of the Faraday Medal (SC MSS 68), an audio recording on vinyl dating to 1950 which is a tribute to Oliver Heaviside by Oliver E Buckley, President of Bell Telephone Laboratories (IET/SPE/2/55); and there are numerous letters.

One such letter dated 8 October 1922, reproduced below, is a letter from Heaviside to the Brown family, saying that he had read a copy of the late William Gordon Brown's paper, admiring the quality of the work for one so young, and suggesting, "I do not think the Military Authorities should have accepted him as a fighting soldier. Ruffians are wanted for that. And I think the Military Authorities were very wrong in not overcoming the G.B.'s refusal by the simple process of compulsorily promoting him to one of their numerous scientific departments in which high mathematics would have been more useful than in the trenches'.

Heaviside Biographies and Appreciation of Heaviside

A volume titled 'The Heaviside Centenary Volume' was published by the IEE in 1950, which includes addresses made and papers presented at the Heaviside Centenary Meeting, 18 May 1950. However, there have been several recent biographies published since the 1980's., the latest of which is the 2009 work titled, 'Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity' by B Mahon (volume 36 in the IET's History of Technology Series). These biographies are available in the IET Library.

Heaviside's importance continues to be recognised today and there are many enthusiastic supporters and promoters of his legacy. A current project involving Heaviside is called The Heaviside Memorial Project which aims to fund, through public subscription, and organise the restoration of the memorial to Heaviside and his family found in Paignton Cemetery, near Torquay. Here is a link to the website for that project which shows pictures of the cemetery plot and has a photograph of the Torbay Civic Society's blue plaque commemoration of Heaviside on the building where Heaviside lived between 1889 and 1897
Heaviside memorial Project

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Asha Gage A picture is worth a thousand words http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58945 2014-08-14T15:09:53 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58945#comments 0
The science behind the image

It is not the purpose of this blog to discuss the inventor of photography as many can lay claim to this accolade. But for simplicity's sake Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype process in 1839. The metal-based daguerreotype came in to competition from the paper-based calotype negative invented by Henry Fox Talbot. Fox Talbot made the first surviving photographic negative on paper in Britain in 1835.
Since then photography and the chemical process behind it excited scientists in to perfecting the art. One of those scientists was Sir Joseph Wilson Swan.



Swan was apprenticed to a chemist in his native town of Sunderland. He later became a business partner in a pharmacy in Newcastle which manufactured photographic plates. His interest in photography led him to make significant improvements in the field.

The first practical process for negatives on glass was introduced by F. Scott Archer in 1851. A sheet of glass was coated with a thin film of collodion (guncotton dissolved in ether) containing potassium iodide and was sensitised with silver nitrate. The plate had to be exposed while still wet. Swan and his partner, John Mawson, produced collodion and their improved technique gained recognition.

In addition to the collodion process Swan discovered how to make a sensitive dry plate in place of the less convenient wet collodion process and patented the method of printing using the carbon process in 1864. By 1871 R. L. Maddox proposed the use of silver bromide in gelatine to make dry photographic plates. Swan experimented and perfected the process and by 1877 Mawson and Swan's bromide plates were renowned. In 1879 Swan followed this success with the invention of bromide paper.

Swan is also remembered for his work on the incandescent electric lamp. More information about this can be found on the IET's biography on Joseph Swan. Among his many distinctions he was president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1898.

Other scientists and inventors associated with the development of photography and the IET are Michael Faraday, Sir Francis Ronalds, Sir William Crookes and Silvanus P Thompson.

The collections of Faraday and Ronalds correspondence, deposited with the IET Archives, covers the subjects of early photographic processes. There is also a collection of pamphlets belonging to S P Thompson on the subject of photography.

Some examples of different photographs within the IET Archives

The portrait photograph developed from the painted portrait that has its roots in the Renaissance. Photographs of individuals imitated the conventions of portraiture such as pose, background and accessories. They were commissioned by the sitter and taken by a commercial photographer for a fee. Later as photography became more affordable and practical amateurs began to take photographs as a leisure time activity.

The earliest photograph in the IET Archives is a daguerreotype of Michael Faraday and William Thomas Brande in a presentation case. It was taken in 1848 by Maull and Polybank with a note by S P Thompson explaining that it was given to him by Sir William Crookes on 22 February 1913. The daguerreotype is a highly polished silver surface on a copper plate which was sensitised by iodine fumes exposed in a camera and the image developed by exposure to mercury powder. It can be easily damaged by touching therefore the case served as a means of protection as much as having an aesthetic quality.



An expression of time

As with painted portraits the early photograph was designed to portray the positive virtues of the subject. It is often remarked that Victorian photographs are devoid of emotion and facial expression. However, if one understands the conventions of the time then we can appreciate that they were trying to epitomise the ideal expression and reflect that on to the audience. They wanted to project the notion that they were dignified, pensive, absorbed in thought which in turn is what they wanted the viewer to emulate.

Similarly the pose was also important. Standing or seated can mean authority or an ease with his surroundings. Props and backgrounds can tell us a lot about the subject too. This harks back to painted backdrops used to create a stage. Books and scientific apparatus signify education, literacy and expertise in their chosen field.



A sense of touch

The Victorians believed that intimate emotions such as those conveyed through touch were not appropriate on display in publically viewed photographs. Therefore many family portraits or those of husbands and wives will show them distanced from each other or any physical contact is lacking in affection. Yet two photographs in the IET Archives collection show otherwise.

Michael Faraday married Sarah Barnard on 12 June 1821. There is little evidence to suggest as to the congeniality of their marriage but Faraday's collection of correspondence often refers to his wife and this photograph shows warmth between the two. It is interesting to note the direction of their gaze as this did comply with common practice. Faraday looks straight ahead which projected a sense of strength and engagement. Women on the other hand usually averted their gaze to suggest modesty.



Another photograph of F H Webb, Secretary of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, taken c1890 shows a pose with a child. Nothing is known about this photograph but it can be surmised that the child has a close relationship with Webb given the visibly affectionate composition.



This is just a snapshot of the many different types and subjects of photographs we hold in the IET Archives. For more information please see our online catalogue.

If this has sparked an interest in photography why not check out the Newcastle Photography Festival "A celebration of photography inspired by Joseph Swan and his adventures with carbon, collodion and light". It runs from 20-26 October 2014 and more information can be found by visiting: http://newphotofest.com]]>
Jonathan Cable The Young Trophy and the Beginning of a Young Photographer's 60-Year Relationship with the IEE! http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58865 2014-08-08T16:14:28 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58865#comments 0 The Young Trophy is a prize awarded in a sporting competition between the student and graduate sections of professional engineering institutions. The competition first took place in 1933 when the student and graduates sections of the Institution of Civil Engineers and Institution of Mechanical Engineers jointly challenged the Institution of Electrical Engineers to compete in cricket and tennis matches.

Henry Thomas Young, Vice President of the IEE at the time and who went on to become President in 1936, was so impressed by the sporting spirit displayed on this occasion that he presented a trophy to be competed for annually by all three Institutions. This trophy was called the ‘Young Trophy’ in his honour.

Within a few years the sporting competition included additional sports not just cricket and tennis. The Young Trophy continues to be awarded to this day but now embraces teams comprised of students and young professional from a wider range of engineering institutions. In 2014 the format was a 5-aside football tournament and on 5 July 2014 the Institution of Civil Engineers were crowned champions with teams from the Institute of Acoustics and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2nd and 3rd places respectively.

The Origins of the Trophy

The 30th anniversary programme, held in the IET Archives, explains how the first challenge and subsequent tournament began in the summer of 1933 when a challenge was sent to the Students’ Section of the IEE stating:

“The Chairman and Committees of the London Students of Civil Engineering and the Graduates’ Section of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers SUMMON HEREBY the Chairman and Committee of the Students’ Section of the Institution of Electrical Engineers to show their worth and prove their skill at the noble game of CRICKET and other manly sports, failing which shall they be declared poltroons and knaves in the sight of all Sportsmen.”

The reply, delivered in the same tone of humour, said:

“To all Apprenticed Enginewrights and Claypuddlers, know ye that whereas your betters in Council assembled, to wit the Chairman and Committee of the most exalted Institution of Electrical Engineers, have deigned to consider the presumptuous and overweening screed delivered these few days gone by a consortium of rude Mechanicals and indignant Civils (not excluding the Sanitary Branch), and have seen fit of their special grace and mere motion to treat with those arrogant and effete survivals of a murky and uncertain origin. Know ye also, o men of little worth, that ye enter upon this enterprise at your several perils, there being a very present risk of your being smitten hip and thigh by our superior prowess. Take heed, therefore, lest our most puissant might be loosed in tourney against ye. In fine- take heed!”

Following this verbal jousting, battle commenced on 1st July 1933 at Boston Manor and both cricket and tennis were played. The event was attended by Sir Murdoch MacDonald, ICE President; L. St. L. Pendred, Past-President of the IMechE, and Henry Thomas Young, Vice President of the IEE. The report of the event was as follows;

“The cricket began at a fast pace with the IEE batting first with a score of 120 for 8. However, the claypuddlers were on fighting form clocking up 40 runs before the IEE captain broke-up this dangerous partnership in his first over. The challenger's innings closed for 89. The tennis had the difficulty of a shortage of players as they were all in the cricket match! This did not dampen spirits and six doubles were played in all of which the IEE were victorious.”

In the early years it was agreed that the meeting should be a three cornered one. The holder of the Trophy, being challenged by one of the other Institutions, and the winner decided in a knock-out competition. The Electricals followed their success of 1933 by winning the Trophy in 1934. In 1937 the Young Trophy was won for the first time by the Institution of Civil Engineers.

1937 Young Trophy Competition and a Photographer at the Start of his Career as an Engineer

The IET Archives has very recently received a donation of two photographs, taken at the 1937 Young Trophy competition, which can be seen below (catalogued as IET/UNO/2/4). The photographs were taken by Norman R Rice, a Student member of the IEE and also a member of the IEE’s London Student’s Section. The photographs were donated by Norman's son Peter J Rice.

The first photograph shows the Young Trophy being received for the first time in its history by the Institution of Civil Engineers with Mrs H T Young, who presented the trophy, in the background..

 

A report about the 1937 competition, which at that time comprise shooting, tennis and cricket, was printed in the IEE’s Student’s Quarterly Journal under the title ‘Young Trophy changes hands: Civil persistence triumphs’. An extract from the report says;

“Last year the Civils swore by all their gods that they would wrest the Young Trophy from us this year. Their ju-ju appears potent, for they succeeded by a handsome margin. As explained elsewhere, we were a poor second in the shooting tie, scoring only 80 as against 121. Our tennis was certainly on a higher level, but even so we again lost to the Civils by 5-4. This can only be attributed to those members who promised to play and then two days before the matches asked to be excused…. The cricket was much more successful, although here again our team was short of one man. However, we managed to give the Civils a run for their money, and were only beaten by 7 runs.” A full cricket scorecard is also given in the report.

The second photograph shows spectator’s at the Young Trophy including Henry Thomas Young himself (second person on the left).

 

The photographer for these two photographs, Norman Richard Rice, joined the IEE as a Student member in 1931 and he studied electrical engineering at Battersea Polytechnic from 1931 to 1934. Norman graduated with a BSc (Eng.) in 1934 and became a Graduate member of the IEE. His link with the Young Trophy and the London Student’s Section can be explained because in 1933 (aged 20) he was Assistant Secretary for Visits, IEE London Students Section and he became Vice Chairman of the London Students' Section in 1935.

Little could Norman have envisaged at that time that he would retain his link to the IEE for over 60 years! Having joined in 1931, he went on to became an Associate Member in 1940 and a Member in 1966, when the membership category structure changed. His name continued to appear on the IEE’s published membership lists until his last appearance on the list of 1994/1995.).

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Jonathan Cable IEE Pre-1930 Membership Records Now Available on Ancestry - Uncovering the Hidden Engineers including Jekyll and Hyde! http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58751 2014-07-31T14:52:00 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58751#comments 0 The pre-1930 membership records held by the IET Archives consist of the IEE’s membership application forms pre-1902 (no physical application forms exist after 1902) and also the published membership lists of the IEE. In 2013 Ancestry, the company which provides online resources to family historians, began a programme to digitise these records. Those records recently became publicly accessible via Ancestry’s website.

All visitors to the IET Archives, IET Library and Michael Faraday House, Stevenage can access the full Ancestry.com website, not just the IEE’s membership records, for free from selected computer terminals at those locations. In addition IET Members worldwide can access IEE records on Ancestry, by contacting the IET Archives with their membership number, and we will provide details on how to log in. Further information on these digitised records and how to access them can be found on the IET Archives website page with the web address, http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/family-history/ancestry-index.cfm

The digitised pre-1930 records can be used to find the membership application forms of engineers who joined either the Society of Telegraph Engineers (STE), since its creation in 1871, or who joined its successor, the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians, which then became the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1889. Amongst the membership application forms can be found those of many noted engineers for example, Nikola Tesla. The 1891 application form for Nikola Tesla to join the IEE as a Foreign Member is reproduced below.

 

 

Jekyll and Hyde and their links to the Institution of Electrical Engineers

The link between the published membership lists and Jekyll and Hyde is a story that was told by Sarah Hale in the ‘from the vaults’ column in the IET’s Member News, March 2013. The story is repeated below;

“Most people will be familiar with the 1886 novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, the tale of a morally just man who transforms into an evil criminal after consuming a self-invented potion. The phrase ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has since become a by-word to describe anybody or anything with a split personality, but where did Stevenson find inspiration for these intriguing and somewhat unusual names? As a novelist with a vivid imagination, it may be that he simply plucked them out of thin air, indeed, the name Jekyll originates from Stevenson’s native Scotland; but there is some evidence to suggest that he took these names from the first membership list of the Society of Telegraph Engineers.

The link between Jekyll and Hyde and the STE was first noticed by Rollo Appleyard in his book ‘The History of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 1871-1931’. When discussing the early days of the STE and referring to the membership list, which was published in 1872, Appleyard noted “the curious addition of Jekyll and Hyde”. ‘Jekyll’ was Lt H Jekyll, Royal Engineer, and one of the first members to join in 1871, while ‘Hyde’ was Major General H Hyde of the India Office, another prominent telegraph engineer of the time. There is also another name in the list that corresponds with a character in the novella, Frederick C Danvers, who shares a name with Hyde’s victim in the book, Sir Danvers Carew. A number of other characters also share names with civil and mechanical engineers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Inspector Newcomen, who possibly derived his name from the famed steam engine inventor.

Coincidence?

These links were passed off as coincidental and not pursued further until 1949, when the IEE contacted the Society of Genealogists to ask them to research into the possibility of a relationship between Stevenson and Edward Alfred Stevenson, a member of the STE who also appears in the first membership list. The IET Archives hold a copy of the report that the Society of Genealogists sent to the IEE as a result of this research. It was concluded in the report that there was no link between Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Alfred Stevenson, and suggested that Robert Louis Stevenson may have found access to the STE membership lists via his father, who was a prominent Scottish lighthouse engineer. There may have been some truth in this, but it is also possible that Stevenson came across the membership lists another way. As well as being the son of a lighthouse engineer, Stevenson studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Though he would come to loathe the subject and seek a career as a writer, Stevenson developed a close friendship with his professor at Edinburgh, Fleeming Jenkin. While Jenkin was a pioneering electrical and telegraph engineer, both men shared an avid interest in poetry and theatre and took part in amateur dramatics together. When Jenkin died suddenly in 1885 Stevenson was distressed and shocked. To aid the grieving process he began writing a memoir of Jenkin that was completed in 1887.

Friendship

It is Stevenson’s friendship with Jenkin that perhaps provides the strongest evidence that he was inspired by the STE membership list for his characters’ names in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. He wrote the book at the same time as writing Jenkin’s memoir during a period of intense activity and so it is likely that his research for the memoirs may have influenced the thinking behind the novella. This idea is compounded when one actually looks at the page of the STE membership list that contains the names of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. Col H Hyde and Lt H Jekyll are right next to each other, while Fleeming Jenkin FRS MICE, of 5 Fettes Row, Edinburgh, is two places directly below Jekyll. Did Stevenson look up Jenkin’s entry in the STE membership lists, and see the names of Jekyll and Hyde so close together and be inspired, consciously or subconsciously, to use them in his latest work of fiction?”

The first published membership list of the STE to which the above story refers is not one of the lists digitised by Ancestry as the list was published as part of the STE journal, but the entry as published in that journal is reproduced below.

 

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Jonathan Cable 18th Century Italian Earthquake Records - Conservation of Rare Books Held in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58408 2014-07-09T14:06:59 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58408#comments 0 Whilst the large majority of published books and volumes, regardless of age, are held by the IET Library, there are a small number of rare books which because of their value or fragility are held within the IET Archives.

One such volume is the ‘Carta Corografica Della Calabria Ultiore’, a volume of large maps and engravings which was published in the 1780’s and which illustrates the aftermath of the Calabrian earthquakes of 1783. The 1783 Calabrian earthquakes were a sequence of five strong earthquakes, two of which produced significant tsunamis, which hit the region of Calabria in southern Italy which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Naples. The earthquakes occurred over a period of almost two months, all with magnitudes of 5.9 or greater and which have been estimated to have cause the deaths of 32,000 to 50,000 people.

 

 

The Neapolitan Royal Academy sent an expedition to Calabria following the earthquakes which in addition to causing vast numbers of deaths, destroyed hundreds of villages, caused mountains to collapse, and changed the courses of rivers. Even the coastline was altered as a result of the earthquakes.

The expedition comprised a group of scientists including Michele Sarconi, Angiolo Fasano, Nicolo Pacifico, Padre Eliseo della Concezione and Antonio Minasi as well as architects and draughtsmen. Padre Eliseo was the individual responsible for designing the Carta Corografica, a very accurate overview of the changes experienced by the region.

 

 

One importance of this work by Padre Eliseo is that it is the first seismic map produced in Italy and it rectifies the errors in latitude and longitude in previous maps of the region. Pere Eliseo designed the maps with the help of a ‘macchina equatoriale’ which he himself had invented and which is illustrated on the last page.

 

 

In addition to the numerous plates showing views of the area there are several engravings illustrating fossils such as the following illustration of ‘echiniti’ found near Orsigliadi.

 

 

This volume had been in quite poor condition, with a significant amount of dirt, some water damage and some missing pieces of paper around the edges (not affecting the individual plates). A few years ago the decision was taken that the volume required conservation work to stop any further significant and/or rapid deterioration in the volume. A specialist paper conservator was used to clean the individual pages, and repair the edges of the plates including the filling of the holes with a specialist conservation grade paper.

The restored volume, following conservation treatment, is now wrapped in protective paper within its own ‘book box’ and is stored in the Archive Centre strongroom and through this intervention is available to be consulted by both researchers and members of the IET.

Historical records such as these can often be used by present day researchers to re-evaluate past events and develop a better understanding of seismic activity. In the case of the Calabrian earthquakes there was a paper published in 2006 in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences titled, ‘A revision of the 1783-84 Calabrian (southern Italy) tsunamis’, which analysed historical sources to calculate that there had been 3 more tsunamis than previously estimated, and that the tsunamis had been previously underestimated and ‘erroneously considered a minor event’.

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Jonathan Cable New Collections Recently Deposited with the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58333 2014-07-04T14:20:57 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58333#comments 0 The IET Archives continues to receive a steady stream of fascinating deposits related to the history of engineering and technology and to key individuals who made important contributions to those sectors. Two such recent deposits are highlighted below.

Records of the STC Technical Society, latterly The Technical Society

 

The recent deposit comprises papers of the Society, primarily from the 1980’s and early 1990’s, and includes items such as committee minutes, details of programmes and events, and accounts.

The Society was founded as the Western Electric Engineering Society in 1912, a technical society for employees of Western Electric, which held regular technical meetings, lectures and organised visits. Western Electric began life in London as International Western Electric in 1883 (an agent for the US company Western Electric). The original notice proposing the Engineering Society was circulated amongst members of the Engineering Department on 5 September 1912.

In 1925 Western Electric's international operations were bought by ITT Corporation of the US and the company's UK operations were renamed Standard Telephones and Cables.

Soon after the end of World War II the Engineering Society was continued as the STC Telephone Technical Society (TTS). Members were then mostly electro-mechanical engineers and sales engineers with other members of the Telephone Division. Personnel engaged in, and associated with, the Manufacturing Division (Telephones) were allowed to become Associate Members subject to Committee approval. The highest number of members was just under 600 and in May 1985 membership totalled 551.

The 12 May 1989 constitution of the STC Telephone Technical Society (issue 14) shows that Full Membership was open to all employees of STC plc. Associate Membership was open to previous employees of STC plc who had retired and had been approved by the Committee. A class of Honorary Members could be elected by the Committee and there was an Associates class for people connected with Full Members.

In 1991 STC was bought by Northern Telecom of Canada (Nortel) and the name of the Society was changed to The Technical Society still referred to as TTS.

The collection has been catalogued as NAEST 227 and forms a useful addition to the collection of papers of STC, including photographs, related to its site at New Southgate (collection NAEST 211). NAEST 211 is a very large collection and is currently being catalogued as part of a long term project. The photograph below is one of the many images held within numerous albums in NAEST 211

 

 

Paul Voigt papers 

Another recent addition to the IET Archives is a collection of photographs related to Paul Voigt (collection SC MSS 111/3) which joins a small collection of Voigt papers already held in the IET Archives (SC MSS 111/1-2). 

Paul Voigt was born in London on 9 December 1901 and gained a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from UCL at the age of 21. Voigt was first employed by J E Hough Ltd in 1922 at the Edison-Bell works in Peckham, London where he was employed for his specialist wireless knowledge. 

By 1926 Voigt had developed the 1st British electric recording system. Many Edison Bell products were protected by patents taken out by Voigt. After the cessation of trading of Edison Bell in 1933 Voigt set up his own company called Voigt Patents Ltd, based in Sydenham, London, and the company's 'Domestic Corner Horn' was released in 1934. 

During World War II the company's main work came from maintaining its horn speakers installed in cinemas. Voigt moved to Canada with his wife in April 1950, having previously come to an agreement with the Lowther Manufacturing Company to produce the Domestic Corner Horn under licence. 

Paul Voigt died 9 February 1981. [biographical information extracted from Lowther Voigt Museum website]. 

The collection was generously deposited by Mr E H Stubbes, a long-term supporter of the legacy of Paul Voigt and one of the main contributors to the ‘pink fish media’ website which is dedicated to promoting the legacy of Paul Voigt. For anyone interested in finding our more about Paul Voigt here is a link to that website; 

http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?s=085231614b4d40c21d017d4685fce1c1&t=78278.

There is very little material relating to Voigt known to survive and the most important photograph within the deposit is the photograph reproduced below which is a photograph of Voigt from the early 1920’s.

 

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Jonathan Cable Mrs Ayrton and the Hissing of the Electric Arc http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58201 2014-06-23T11:13:30 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58201#comments 0 “more can be learned from a careful observation of small phenomena, by observation and reflection in fact, than by passing any number of examinations…”

In 1899 a paper entitled, ‘The Hissing of the Electric Arc’ was presented to the Institution of Electrical Engineers and published in its journal. The subject matter was not unusual, but this was a first for the institution: a paper written and presented by a woman.

Hertha Ayrton was a mathematician and physicist whose work applied physical principles to practical engineering problems. Born Phoebe Sarah Marks (changing her name as a teenager after a Swinburne poem), she received an usually excellent education at a London school run by her aunt, Marion Hartog. Hertha’s widowed mother thought it was very important that her daughter be well-educated, because ‘women have the harder battle to fight in the world.’

Thanks to Barbara Bodichon, the co-founder of Girton College and a family friend, Hertha was able to attend Girton and study mathematics. After graduating, she returned to London to teach and met her husband William Ayrton while attending classes at Finsbury Technical College. William encouraged Hertha to continue her work after their marriage and the birth of their daughter, but it was a legacy from Barbara Bodichon which enabled her to employ a housekeeper and free up time for research.

 

 

Arc lamps were the first practical electric lamps and would have been seen and used widely in 1899, mainly for external and street lighting. The light came from a bright white spark generated by an electric current travelling between two carbon rods. Sometimes these lamps made humming and hissing noises, and it was the hissing on which Ayrton focused her research. This hissing meant that the arc was becoming unstable and less efficient. Ayrton set out to study the phenomenon in painstaking detail, concluding that it was the result of changes in the shape of the carbon ends. She stated that a) the hissing arc was caused by a crater shape forming on one side of the carbon (this is illustrated by a series of diagrams in the Journal), and b) that the drop in current thus produced is due to the effect of oxygen reaching this crater and combining with the carbon on the surface.

Ayrton concluded by thanking the IEE for giving her the chance to present her paper. This may seem odd to us, but a few years later her request to present a paper to the Royal Society was turned down on the grounds that she was a woman (as was her application for fellowship). Her paper at the IEE, in contrast, generated an enthusiastic response. The President, the electric lighting pioneer Sir Joseph Swan, stated that ‘I am sure that we on our part feel more than honoured that Mrs. Ayrton has chosen this Institution as the medium of [her paper’s] publication.’ A lively debate on the findings of Ayrton’s research followed – the original paper is thirty pages long, with the discussion taking up another twenty. The President concluded with,

“It is the first paper we have had the pleasure of receiving from Mrs Ayrton; I sincerely hope it will not be the last. We do not have the honour of numbering among us any lady members, but I do not know any legal disability against ladies becoming members. If not, I hope we may look forward to the pleasure of numbering Mrs Ayrton among the members of the Institution before long.”

Hertha Ayrton was elected as the first woman Member of the IEE later that year.

Ayrton went on to publish a book on the arc lamp and also extended her research to the phenomena of sand ripples and vortices in water and air. This research would lead to the development of the ‘Ayrton fan’, used in the First World War to expel gas from the trenches.

Links:

IET Archives biography

http://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/biographies/ayrtonh.cfm

 WES Magnificent Women biographies: 

http://www.wes.org.uk/magnificentwomen

 

Anne Locker, IET Library and Archives

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Jonathan Cable Two Recent Deposits Related to the 19th Century http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58032 2014-06-10T10:25:54 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=58032#comments 1 Two recent deposits to The IET Archives have a connection to the 19th century. The first deposit is an object manufactured in 1898 by a US company with an interesting British electrical engineering connection. The second deposit is a privately published biography, published in 2013, about the 19th century electrician and electrical engineer Owen Rowland. 

Weston Electrical Voltmeter, 1898

 

The 1898 object is a Weston Electrical Instrument Co, Newark, New Jersey, USA voltmeter. It comes in an attractive wooden box and has a certificate number 2056 [IET Archives catalogue reference OPC/1/186]. The full title of the voltmeter is a Weston standard portable alternating & direct current voltmeter. The certificate, pasted into the wooden box housing the voltmeter, says that it was standardized at 101 St Martin's Lane, London on 11 November 1898 and was certified by A C Heap. 

The Weston Electrical Instrument Co was founded by the British-born American electrical engineer and industrialist, Edward Weston, in 1888. Edward Weston was a British-born American electrical engineer and industrialist who founded the Weston Electrical Instrument Company. A prodigious inventor, Weston held 334 patents, and helped revolutionize the measurement of electricity. In 1886 he developed a practical precision, direct reading, portable, instrument to accurately measure electrical current. 

Weston, who was born in Shropshire (England), moved to New York, USA, at the age of 20 where he found a job in the electroplating industry. In 1872 he opened a business in partnership with George G. Harris, called Harris & Weston Electroplating Co. He patented the nickel-plating anode here in 1875 and then developed his first dynamo for electroplating. 

By 1875 he moved to New Jersey, and began making dynamos. His company eventually became the Weston Electric Light Company, which won the contract to illuminate the new Brooklyn Bridge. 

In 1887, having left the generator and lamp business, he established a laboratory, and the following year the Weston Electrical Instrument Company began trading. In 1888 he developed a practical precision, direct reading, portable, instrument to accurately measure electrical current. The Weston Standard Cell, developed in 1893, was recognized as an international standard and was used by the National Bureau of Standards for almost a century to calibrate other meters. 

Weston became a U.S. citizen in 1923 and in 1932 Dr Edward Weston received the IEEE’s Lamme Medal ‘for his achievements in the development of electrical apparatus, especially in connection with precision measuring instruments’. 

Biography of Owen Rowland (1820-1877)

 

Two copies of this Owen Rowland biography, written by Michael J Cooke, were recently deposited with the IET by the author, one copy with the IET Archives and one copy with the IET Library. 

This is the first account of Owen Rowland’s activities. Rowland was appointed by William Fothergill Cooke as his resident engineer in 1844 for the construction of the first long-distance telegraph in Britain, and he was commissioned in 1857-58 to install the country’s first ‘truly overhead’ telegraph lines. If this wasn’t enough Rowland set up two periodicals in the early 1860’s, The Electrician and The Telegraphic Journal, and in the 1870’s ran a ‘weather forecast and storm warning’ service supplying daily forecasts to newspapers at a time when the Meteorological Office had stopped doing this. 

The IET Archives’ copy of this volume has an archive catalogue reference SC MSS 255 and is one of several privately published, unpublished, or draft biographies held by the IET Archives.

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Jonathan Cable Objects in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=57897 2014-05-28T15:59:34 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=57897#comments 0 In the first half of the 20th century a decision was made to relocate the objects held in the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Museum. Since then objects have not been part of the IET Archives’ collecting policy. However, this does not mean that there are no objects in the IET Archives or under the care of the archivists or that objects do not, very occasionally, get added to the IET Archives.  

IEE Museum

The IEE started its electrical museum in 1901, in part due to the accommodation problems being experienced by the Victoria and Albert Museum (previously called the South Kensington Museum) which in 1901 included science collections – the Science Museum came formally into independent existence in 1909. Even in 1901 the IEE Council were making arrangements for the ‘South Kensington Museum’ to receive objects of public interest from the IEE collection on loan.

Early in 1923 the IEE Council and the Science Museum agreed to transfer the bulk of the IEE’s museum collection to the Science Museum amounting to several hundred objects. A further batch of historic objects was loaned to the Science Museum in 1953 and in 1994 the IEE converted its entire loan collection at the Science Museum into a gift.

Objects currently held by the IET Archives

Whilst the IET Archives usually decline offers of historic objects, and instead work with potential donors to find other homes for these objects, objects can still be found in the IET’s collections. These objects may be gifts to the IEE/IET and its Presidents and officials. Many such gifts were received in 1971 when we celebrated our centenary. On occasions small objects accompany manuscript donations to the archives such as medals awarded to individuals. Others have important associations with engineering history such as a small section of the transatlantic cable.

Some of the more unusual objects found in the archives include tea towels. One of the most frequently consulted collections is that of the records of the Electrical Association for Women (collection reference NAEST 093) which was formed in 1924. This collection includes a series of tea towels (NAEST 093/10/02) which the EAW used to explain the use of certain electrical items in the home. Tea towel subjects include ‘connections for standard plugs’, ‘which fuse’, and reading a meter.

 

 

The IET Archives only this week received the deposit of 2 tea towels (accession 2014-04), one of which included a new design not currently held in NAEST 093/10/02.

Large objects held in the IET Archives

Most of the objects still remaining in the archives are small items but there are some larger things such as the IET’s portraits, which are under the custodianship of the IET Archives. The largest single object that we currently hold is the metal railway locomotive nameplate ‘The Institution of Electrical Engineers’.

 

 

This sign is a significant item of railway heritage and is item serial number 437 (not designated), registered number 2002/07, on the Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board's list (replaced the Railway Heritage Committee in March 2013). It is described on that list as 'locomotive nameplate: The Institution of Electrical Engineers (86607)'. The item is considered a 'disposed item' within the IET's jurisdiction.

Usually when talking to one of the IET’s archivists you will hear them say that the IET does not hold or accession objects. Whilst true as a general rule, you will now know to take this statement with a very small pinch of salt!

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Jonathan Cable The Importance of a Thimble in the History of the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=57045 2014-03-21T08:57:01 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=57045#comments 1 One of the collections in the IET Archives, rediscovered as a result of the move of the archives out of Savoy Place, is an album of transatlantic telegraph ephemera which contains material from the period 1862 to 1872 (catalogue reference SC MSS 254). The album, titled, ‘Atlantic Telegraph 1865’ is likely to have belonged originally to Sir Peter FitzGerald, the 19th Knight of Kerry (1808-1880). Sir Peter was a Vice-Treasurer of Ireland in the last ministry of Sir Robert Peel and he succeeded his father as an Irish landlord, residing on Valentia Island just off the coast of mainland Ireland.

Valentia is important in the history of the transatlantic telegraph cable as it was the location of one end of the cable that was successfully laid over the period 1865 to 1866 and Sir Peter devoted much of his time and efforts to ensure that the laying of the cable was a success.

The album contains press cuttings, letters, photographs and other paper-based ephemera primarily related to the 1865-1866 Atlantic telegraph cable. There is a significant amount of correspondence with noted politicians of the time such as a letter from William Ewart Gladstone when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, letters from Sir Robert Peel, 3rd Baronet, the Irish Secretary in Palmerston's ministry, and letters from Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. There is also a significant amount of correspondence and ephemera related to those closely involved with the 1865 Atlantic telegraph cable such as the Atlantic Telegraph Company and officers/passengers on the various ships involved with the cable laying operations.

The relevance of a thimble to the transatlantic cable was mentioned to us recently by a thimble researcher, Anne Jansen, who was made aware of a ‘thimble letter’ contained within the album, having heard about it from Tessa O’Connor at the Valentia Heritage Centre in 1988. A press cutting in the album next to the letter says:-

 “The contents of a lady’s thimble would hardly be expected to constitute a very powerful instrument. They would scarcely have been thought capable of one of the most astonishing feats ever performed by science. The Chairman, however, of the Atlantic Telegraph Company informs us that this little instrument has actually achieved such a feat. By way of experiment, the Engineer of the Company joined the extremities of the two cables which now stretch across the Atlantic, thus forming an immense loop line of 3,700 miles. He then put some acid in a lady’s silver thimble with bits of zinc and copper, and by this simple agency he succeeded in passing signals through the whole length in little more than a second in time.”

The letter in the album, relating to this thimble, is reproduced below;

The letter, dated 12 September 1866 is from Latimer Clark, who acted as an engineer for the Anglo-American Telegraph Company at the time (the engineer referred to in the press article) and went on to become the 4th President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers (predecessor of the IET). The letter sent to Emily Fitzgerald, daughter of Sir Peter, says,

“Mr Latimer Clark presents his compliments to Miss FitzGerald and begs to return her thimble with many thanks, assuring her that when containing a little acid and a fragment of zinc, it formed the most efficient battery, and messages were readily transmitted by its means through both the Atlantic cables, even when they were joined together in a loop at Newfoundland, so as to form a circuit 3742 miles in length. Valentia September 12 1866.”

The album contains a small image of Emily next to the letter and the press cutting. The photograph is shown below. 

.

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Jonathan Cable Archive Office Now Relocated to Savoy Hill House http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=56466 2014-02-07T08:58:16 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=56466#comments 0 The IET's new Archive Centre is due to open to members and the public at the end of February. Visitors to the Archive Centre will need to arrange the timing of their visits in advance to allow time for the retrieval of collections from offsite storage (further details regarding visiting arrangements will appear on the library and archives pages of the IET website in due course). The core collections will be stored onsite with the remaining collections stored in a specialist facility in Oxfordshire - these collections will be retrieved as and when required for consultation by researchers. 

The new Archive Centre comprises an archive office, where staff and researchers will be located, and a strongroom which will hold the IET's core collections including rare books and items temporarily retrieved from offsite storage. 

The move of the archive office from its temporary home at Michael Faraday House in Stevenage is now complete and planning is underway for the transfer of the ‘permanent' collections into the strongroom at Savoy Hill House. 

In the last days at the old home of the archives in Savoy Place three pictures of Savoy Hill House were discovered and given to the archives team. It is rather fitting that these three framed pictures now adorn the walls of the new Archive Centre in Savoy Hill House. The pictures, all taken from the same viewpoint, are reproduced below and show; Savoy Hill House in 1926 (a caption describes the picture as the BBC building from the time when the BBC was based at Savoy Hill House); again in 1949 showing the bomb damage to one corner of the building; and finally in 1966 with the bomb damage repaired and the corner of the building rebuilt. 

 

Savoy Hill House - October 1926 (archive reference IET/SPE/1/19/1)

  

 

Savoy Hill House - January 1949 (archive reference IET/SPE/1/19/2)

  

 

Savoy Hill House - June 1966 (archive reference IET/SPE/1/19/3)

 

 

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Mike Dunne New Archive Acquisition - Papers of Professor Brian P Smith, Bsc(Eng), CEng, MIMechE, FIProdE, FBIM, FInstM, FIMC http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55820 2013-12-20T14:43:17 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55820#comments 0 The papers of Professor Brian P Smith, a former President of the Institution of Production Engineers (IProdE), have recently been deposited in the IET Archives. The Institution of Production Engineers was formed in 1921 and changed its name to the Institution of Manufacturing Engineers (IMfgE) just prior to its merger with the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1991.

The IET Archives holds the archives of the IMfgE/IProdE, including a comprehensive set of organisational papers. These include a full set of Council, General Meeting and Committee minutes as well as presented papers for the whole 1921-1991 period. Despite this, the IET Archives holds very few personal papers of prominent members and individuals associated with the IMfgE/IProdE. The exception to this is a small collection of Presidents' papers from the period from 1979 to 1988 when the relevant individual was in office.

The offer of the Brian P Smith papers from the Smith family therefore came as a very welcome offer particularly as they cover not just the period that Brian P Smith was President of the IProdE (1974), but also his whole life. After serving a full apprenticeship at Royal Ordnance Factories from 1941-46, he was one of a small team which established a new tool industry in the Cumberland Development Area, and was its General Manager when he left to join PA Management Consultants Ltd in 1949. He was appointed PA's Director of Research in 1959 and became Managing Director of the UK company in 1966. He became Chairman of the UK company and Managing Director of the international company in 1972 and subsequently Director of Development of the international company.

In 1976 Brian P Smith resigned his permanent position with PA to become an Associate Consultant with them, and on 1 January 1977 became the first Wolfson Professor of Design Management at the Royal College of Art. In this role his aim was to bring closer together the worlds of industry and design, and to build their mutual understanding and respect. He was a member of the Design Council and served on its Finance and General Purposes Committee; he was nominated by the Duke of Edinburgh as Vice-President of the Royal Society of Arts in 1976.

Building on his training as an engineer, his interests in management were to analyse the less tangible aspects of leadership, communications, human behaviour and design. He believed that such subjects were susceptible to a scientific approach and to practical training and that they were at the root of organisation and management performance.

The deposited collection consists primarily of Smith's published papers / articles, and notes / hand-outs for the many talks and speeches on management that he gave during his lengthy career as Managing Director of PA Management Consultants. However, there is also a wealth of additional material about Smith's life including, his own book of verse, his leisure and travel diaries, his journal, images of his many paintings (examples shown below) and audio recordings of two of his speeches including his speech at an IProdE dinner in 1974. The journal and travel diaries are particularly interesting as they cover Smith's thoughts and musings on a very wide range of topics.

 

Buildings 

 

 

 

Correspondence with a wide variety of senior government members and officials, Buckingham Palace and well known individuals such as the actress Joanna Lumley, the American jazz music impresario Norman Granz and the journalist Bernard Levin can be found in the collection.

The collection is titled, 'Papers of Professor Brian P Smith', and has been catalogued as collection SC MSS 251. It can be consulted in the IET Archives once the new archive centre opens in early 2014.

Written by Jon Cable

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Mike Dunne New Archive Acquisition - North London Electricity Supply Papers http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55706 2013-12-11T08:50:51 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55706#comments 0
The main group of papers are related to the North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply Company (Northmet). In addition to a copy of the document titled, 'North Metropolitan Electric Supply Acts 1900 to 1905', there are several interesting diagrams and maps. For example, there is a Northmet January 1907 plan of distributing mains in the Enfield District, and also a circa 1936 map with transmission lines and feeders in the Northmet area showing the lines leading from Willesden Power Station and Brimsdown Power Station. Another interesting item is a 1944 Northmet handbook supplement which includes public lighting maps.



The collection also includes 2 Northmet histories. One paper, written in July 1944 (supplemented in November 1946), marked private & confidential, is titled, 'Outline of the History of the Northmet Power Company', compiled by E T Kingbury and edited by Evelyn Boys. The second history is a contemporary account titled, 'Electricity Supplies in Essex - The First Half Century'.

One original document of wider interest perhaps is an original contract between British Insulated & Helsby Cables Ltd and North Metropolitan Electrical Power Distribution Company Ltd, dated 22 February 1907, relating to the installation of the Enfield Distribution System. British Insulated & Helsby Cables Ltd (BI&HC) was formed in 1902 from the merger of British Insulated Wire with the Telegraph Manufacturing Company of Helsby. In 1925 it was re-named British Insulated Cables Limited which after merging with Callenders of Erith in 1945 became British Insulated Callenders Cables Cables Ltd (BICC). A significant collection of BICC records is held by National Museums Liverpool.

The contract has the original signatures of two of the directors of BI&HC, Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti and Edmund Knowles Muspratt. Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, the noted electrical engineer and inventor, was President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1910 and 1911. Edmund Knowles Muspratt was an English industrialist who was a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry and President of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1885/1886.

This collection of papers titled, 'the Vickers collection of North London electricity papers', has been catalogued as collection SC MSS 250 and can be consulted in the IET Archives once the new archive centre opens in early 2014. This new collection complements our existing collection of Northmet papers which is NAEST 170.

Written by Jon Cable.]]>
Mike Dunne New Archive Acquisition - J E Calverley and T E Calverley Papers http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55555 2013-12-03T10:13:12 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55555#comments 0 The IET Archives recently received a donation from the Calverley family of a small number of the papers of John Earnshaw Calverley and his son Thomas Earnshaw Calverley, who recently passed away and whose obituary appears on page 25 of IET Member News, November 2013. Both the father and the son were very successful and noted electrical engineers whose personal histories are also interwoven with the history of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

John Calverley was the co-inventor of the transverter together with W E Highfield, and the papers deposited in the IET Archives consist primarily of correspondence and agreements related to the transverter and transverter related publications. The transverter was exhibited by English Electric at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 and the majority of papers date from the 1910's and 1920's. Unexpected discoveries amongst John Calverley's papers were letters from John Somerville Highfield, who was the IEE President in 1921. William Eden Highfield was John Somerville Highfield's younger brother and together they had their own engineering consulting business. Despite W E Highfield being the co-inventor of the transverter with John Calverley, several of the letters in this collection, relating to the commercial arrangements concerning the transverter, were between John Calverley and J S Highfield.




The John Calverley papers also give an insight into commercial arrangements in the early 20th century between inventors and their employers when inventions were patented whilst working for those employers. In this case John Calverley and W E Highfield were both working for the company Dick Kerr and Company Ltd (taken over by English Electric in 1919), when they invented the transverter.

Thomas Calverley, John's son, was honoured in 1983 by the Royal Academy of Engineering as one of the UK's 1000 most eminent engineers, and he was closely involved with the IEE. He won the IEE's Salmon Scholarship for 1939-40, was awarded a premium in 1945 for his South Midlands Students' Section paper, 'electrical technique in resistance welding', became Chairman of the North Staffordshire Sub-Centre of the IEE in 1961-62 and was Vice President of the IEE between 1980 and 1984.

The deposited papers of Thomas Calverley relate mainly to his biographical history including career summaries, important career dates, CV's, and career/award correspondence. The career correspondence covers his time with various employers including Cavendish Laboratory, English Electric and Preece Cardew & Rider and records tributes paid to Thomas when leaving a particular company or retiring. For example there is a glowing personal letter to Thomas written to him by the 2nd Baron Nelson of Stafford, Chairman of English Electric/GEC from 1962 to 1983, dating from when Thomas left the company in 1970. This material also includes articles written by Thomas, photographs, details of his Chairmanship of CIGRE Study Committee 14: DC Links, and correspondence regarding the award of the IEEE's prestigious Uno Lamm HVDC Award.

The John Calverley papers have been catalogued as collection SC MSS 248 and the Thomas Calverley papers have been catalogued as collection SC MSS 249 and can be consulted in the IET Archives once the new archive centre opens in early 2014.

Written by Jon Cable.

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Mike Dunne Anniversary of the Death of Gertrude Entwisle http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55378 2013-11-19T09:31:55 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55378#comments 0

Gertrude Lilian Entwisle, AMIEE, Hon. MWES, died on 18 November 1961 at the age of 69. She joined the Women's Engineering Society (WES) in 1919 on its formation and played a major part in its history. Gertrude was a member of the Council of WES from the outset until her retirement and she was President of WES from 1941 to 1943.

When Gertrude retired from Metropolitan-Vickers on 30 June 1954, a biography of her career printed in The Woman Engineer said that her retirement was, "the very first retirement in Great Britain of a woman who had a complete career in industry as an employed professional design engineer". The biography also told the story of how Gertrude came to work for Metropolitan-Vickers as;

"In 1915, the exigencies of the first World War caused Mr J S Peck, the Chief Engineer of British Westinghouse (as Metropolitan-Vickers then was) to write to the College of Technology in Manchester enquiring whether it knew of any lady engineers. After all, his firm had just successfully tried the tremendous experiment of employing an office girl so why should it not try to find some female technical staff? The Chief Engineer was an American and woman engineers already existed in the USA. The letter was handed by the Technical College to the Manchester High School for Girls who forwarded it to Gertrude Entwisle. Now Miss Entwisle had shaken the University of Manchester staff by attending the engineering lectures which were open to second year Physics undergraduates and so she decided to risk the British Westinghouse."

To read the full six page biography in The Woman Engineer the journal can be consulted in the IET Archives once the new archive centre opens in early 2014. The IET Archives holds the archives of WES (collection NAEST 92) which includes its journal. The 1954 biography contains several pictures of Gertrude and of motors designed by Gertrude. There is also a fascinating picture of Gertrude in 1914 (see below) as a member of the second year Honours Physics class at Manchester University which also shows the lecturers including Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford.



Gertrude is also an important figure in the history of the IET. In 1916 she became the first woman student member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and by 1920 she was the first woman Associate Member of the IEE.

Written by Jon Cable

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Mike Dunne WWI Material in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55224 2013-11-11T08:22:35 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55224#comments 0 On Armistice Day it is perhaps appropriate to mention the records relating to World War 1 that are held in the IET Archives. The archives of the IET would possibly not spring to mind as a source of World War I material. However, in addition to honour rolls, the archives does hold, for example, personal papers of engineers which include recollections and material related to their experiences during World War 1.

The Institution of Electrical Engineer's Roll of Honour is not actually a roll but a memorial book, published in 1924, commemorating those members of the Institution who died during the First World War. The volume contains an introduction titled, 'the causes and origin of The Great War, 1914-1919'. There then follows an alphabetical list of biographies for those IEE members who died during the war which includes some photographs.

As part of the 2013 project between the IET and Ancestry.co.uk which involved the digitisation of the pre-1930 IEE membership lists, the IEE honour rolls from World War I and World War II were also digitised. These digital copies will be made available in 2014 for IET members to view for free via the Ancestry.com website.

An example of relevant personal papers can be seen with the papers of Harry Stephenson Ellis MIEE MIMechE (1881-1967) which is collection NAEST 155.

A series within these papers, NAEST 155/3, covers Harry's service in World War I. Harry became the City of Bradford's Chief Assistant Electrical Engineer in 1907 and was promoted to Deputy City Electrical Engineer and Manager of the Electricity Department in 1910. In 1912 he moved to South Shields to become the Borough Electrical Engineer, and during the First World War he served with No.3 Signals Section of the Durham Royal Engineers Volunteer Home Force. The 14 items in NAEST 155/3 cover Harry's attempts to serve overseas and his service with the Signals Company. Items include a printed letter from Neville Chamberlain, Director-General of National Service and future Prime Minister, to Ellis, and a photograph of the Signals Company which includes Ellis (see below).

Additional World War 1 material, whose presence might not be expected in the IET Archives, includes some records relating to the London Electrical Engineers (Territorial Army) which includes a photograph album with regimental pictures from 1915 and 1916.


 

 

 

 

 

 

The IET Archives' collections are currently closed to visitors while new facilities are being built, but they will re-open to members and researchers in early 2014.


Written by Jon Cable

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Mike Dunne New Discovery - Pre-WWI German Railway Signalling Equipment Catalogues http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55091 2013-11-05T09:30:28 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=55091#comments 0
Whilst there have been several smaller refurbishments over the decades of the IET's involvement with Savoy Place, this was the first complete move out of the building since the Institution of Electrical Engineers moved into the building over 100 years earlier in 1910. Perhaps unsurprisingly several items were found as a result of these searches and this is the story of two large volumes found in a basement cupboard at the back of a low shelf. These were the last two items found, on Friday 2 August 2013, before contractors moved into the building to begin strip-out work the following week.

Both volumes, in mixed condition, were trade catalogues for railway signalling equipment produced by German engineering companies between 1908 and 1910. These two catalogues were acquired at some point, perhaps directly, by Products Corporation Limited, Buchanan Buildings, EC1 which can be seen by the company's blue handstamps inside the volumes. Later the volumes were acquired by the IEE library as evidenced by library accession handstamps.




The earlier volume from 1908 (archive reference NAEST 045/439) is an A3-sized catalogue for the German company Maschinenfabrik Bruschal which was formerly called Schnabel & Henning and was founded in 1868. The catalogue, written in French, is targeted at the Swiss railway equipment market. The company, after several mergers, became fully owned by Siemens and Halske in 1941.

The later volume from 1910 (archive reference NAEST 045/440) is an A3-sized product book for the German company C Stahmer of Georgsmarienhutte which was founded in 1862. The company made railway and mining equipment and this book covers signalling equipment. The catalogue is in German. The company merged with Maschinenfabrik Bruschal in the 1914-18 period.


You can search for catalogue descriptions from deposited collections and IET records, in the IET's Archive online catalogue

Written by Jon Cable

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Mike Dunne New Archive Acquisition - W S Thomson papers http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=54835 2013-10-18T09:27:04 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=54835#comments 0 IET Archives recently received a donation from the family of W S Thomson, of a small number of his papers.

W S Thomson, BEng, CEng, MIEE, became a Student member of the IEE in 1929 and a Graduate member in 1934, when he worked as a Research Assistant at GEC Witton, Birmingham. In 1938 he became a Member of the IEE and at the same time became an Applications Engineer for Alkaline Batteries Ltd of Redditch - he held this position and stayed as a Member of the IEE until 1972.

This brief biography helps to put the donation into context. Amongst the papers is W S Thomson's original typescript paper titled 'insulator testing and maintenance on live high tension lines' which he read before the South Midland Student Section of the Institution of Electrical Engineers at Birmingham, April 21 1936. This paper was awarded a Students Premium by the Council of the IEE but a copy was not held by either the IET Library or the IET Archives. The paper came with the original photographs and diagrams used in that paper, several of which relate to high tension lines in New Zealand from the early 1930's.

Another part of the donation was Thomson's unpublished typescript volume from 1977 titled, 'nickel-cadmium vented pocket-plate storage batteries'. The IET Archives holds a number of unpublished manuscripts from former members, which for one reason or another do not manage to reach the publication stage, but can be a valuable source of information for researchers.

If nickel-cadmium batteries hold a particular interest then the W S Thomson collection is now catalogued and can be found by searching the archives with the reference SC MSS 247.

Written by Jon Cable.]]>
Sarah Hale International Women's Day: Pioneering engineers and scientists in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=51311 2013-03-08T15:08:50 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=51311#comments 0 Hertha Ayrton

The twentieth century saw rapid change in the rights of women to vote, have equal rights with men and to work. It might surprise you that the first woman to become a Member of the IET (then the Institution of Electrical Engineers) was elected as early as 1899.

That woman was Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923). Born Phoebe Sarah Marks, when she was in her teens a friend renamed her Hertha from a Swinburne poem. Hertha attended Girton College and Finsbury Technical College, where she met Professor William Ayrton. They married in 1885. Hertha was able to carry out her own scientific research thanks to a legacy from her friend and mentor Barbara Bodichon, which allowed her to employ a housekeeper. Her husband encouraged her to research the electric arc lamp after one of his own research papers was lost. As soon as Hertha's independent research began, William stopped his own research into that area as he was worried he would be credited with his wife's work.

It was for her research on 'The Hissing of the Electric Arc' that Hertha Ayrton was elected an IEE Member in May 1899. She was later proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1902: this application was turned down on the grounds that she was a married woman, and therefore had no status under the terms of the Royal Society's original charter.

Another pioneering member and woman engineer was Dame Caroline Haslett (1895-1957). Caroline Haslett joined the Cochrane Boiler Company in 1914, first as a secretary and later training as an engineer in the company works. In 1919, she left to become the first Secretary of the Women's Engineering Society and served as President in 1939. In 1924, Caroline Haslett co-founded the Women's Electrical Association, later renamed the Electrical Association for Women (EAW). Its aim was to lessen women's domestic burden by encouraging the use of electricity in the home. She was awarded a DBE in 1957.

Both women played an active role in encouraging equality. In 1914, a young Caroline Haslett was caught chalking 'Votes for Women' slogans outside the House of Commons. The policeman told her she was too young to be sent to prison and to 'be a good girl and get along home'. Her subsequent career focused on the rights of women in business and politics.

Hertha Ayrton was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union and in 1910 marched on Downing Street, but like Caroline Haslett she failed to be arrested. When she was accosted by a policeman, her daughter Barbara shouted, 'You dare not hurt that lady, she's Mrs Ayrton!' The police had been instructed not to arrest her and she went free. Barbara was not exempt, and after the 1912 demonstrations Ayrton wrote to a friend, 'Barbie is in Holloway ... I am very proud of her.'

For more information on women in engineering and technology, have a look at the resources on the IET Archives website, including exhibitions and biographies.

By Anne Locker, IET Archivist]]>
Sarah Hale Unexpected tangents in the IET Archives http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=49441 2012-11-27T15:23:22 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=49441#comments 0
One such example is the collection of Professor John Flavell Coales, President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) from 1971 to 1972, whose papers are held in the manuscript special collections (Ref. SC MSS 168).

John Coales was Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and the fourth President of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), with which he was closely associated. His collection therefore contains papers and correspondence relating to control and automation, as well as material on the subject of engineering education and training, a subject dear to his heart. However, it came as a surprise to discover some miscellaneous files within this collection containing correspondence from the 1980s with the high profile media figure Robert Maxwell, and his wife Elizabeth.

The link between Maxwell and Coales is Pergamon Press, the scientific publisher founded by Maxwell, and which had a publishing agreement with IFAC which was negotiated by Coales. The friendly relationship that can be seen between Coales and Maxwell in these letters is a reminder of the unexpected historical references that are often unearthed in archival holdings.

To find out more about Coales, who left Government Service in 1946 to found the research laboratories of Elliot Brothers, an important contributor in the areas of military radar and the emerging field of digital computers and industrial instrumentation in post-war Britain, researchers can consult the J F Coales collection.
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Hazel Jones Recent UCL student placement http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=47099 2012-06-19T14:36:57 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=47099#comments 0 Faraday House chemistry studentsIET Archives hosts UCL student placement to develop skills in archival management.

 

In May 2012 a student on the Master's course at University College London completed a two week placement at the IET Archives. The aim was to further the students' cataloguing skills and experience within an archive repository. The IET Archives was fortunate enough to employ the skills of Paula Togher who took on the challenge of listing, sorting and cataloguing the personal papers of Frederick Skelland on to Adlib, our archival cataloguing software, and to make the catalogue description available online for future researchers.

 

Frederick Skelland was an electrical engineer and the papers had been donated to the archive in 2011 by a member of his family. The papers include details of his education and employment - in 1928, Skelland moved to England from India to further his career as an electrical engineer. He enrolled with The Technological Institute of Great Britain (a correspondence college) and undertook courses to prepare for the exam to become an Associate Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. The records themselves show the education system that Skelland went through in an attempt to secure membership to the Institution and how important it was to gain the required skills in electrical engineering. Skelland eventually settled on the Isle of Wight where he worked as an Installation Inspector with an electricity board and with a boat-builders' firm during World War II. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in Ryde at the age of 50, and was greatly missed by his family.

 

In addition to the cataloguing project Paula was given a tour of the archive strongrooms and Savoy Place. Highlights of the collections included seeing Michael Faraday's original notebooks and tea towels produced by the Electrical Association for Women informing women on the electrical consumption of their kitchen appliances. Paula successfully completed this project and reported back that she found her time at the IET Archives interesting and rewarding. She has furthered her knowledge of cataloguing practices and has observed how the IET Archives operates and the variety of services it offers.

 

From all of us at the IET Archives we would like to thank Paula for her help in this project and for making this collection available to researchers.

Written by Asha Gage, IET Archivist

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Hazel Jones Time Team v The X-Files http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=46440 2012-05-04T10:50:53 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=46440#comments 2 The Wash Research CommitteeEric Everatt, MIET, has been volunteering for the IET Archives since 2009. For the past 6 months he has been cataloguing the collection of Evershed & Vignoles (E&V), an electrical testing equipment manufacturer, and unveiling some mysterious records, as he writes below…

 

 ‘The year is 1216. The place is the Wash estuary in Lincolnshire. The lost treasure belongs to King John who was engaged in a running fight with the Barons. King John was heading North with his army and baggage train and was assembled in Kings Lynn. The baggage train with the treasure made their way separately across the Wash probably via a Causeway. However, they were overtaken by the tide and the baggage train and everyone with it were lost. Prior to this disaster King John was in the habit of depositing his treasures with various monasteries and the Abbots received receipts for the articles handed over.

 

Trolley used for locating position of the Causeway across the Wash estuary.Fast forward to the year 1956.  The Wash Research Committee, during the previous 50 years, had made an exhaustive study of all available evidence, historical and geographical, and decided that the evidence in favour of the disaster was very strong. At this point enter the firm of E&V who manufactured Earth Testers. E&V were tasked by the Wash Research Committee with trying to find the position of the Causeway across the Wash estuary. This was not as simple as it sounds because over the years the estuary had been gradually filled in as the Wash receded. In 1956 there was only arable land where the Causeway was thought to be. The research team put together by E&V was led by G. F. Tagg, BSc, PhD, MIEE, FInstP 

 

The research team provided a summary of their work in which they wrote: ‘When carrying out tests in a particular field, parallel lines of electrodes were laid out, and measurements made at successive stations along the line, the trolley being pulled from one station to the next. For some of the time a tractor was employed to do the pulling, particularly on ploughed fields, a van was used at other times when working on grass fields and the trolley was pulled by man power in awkward situations such as orchard farms.

 

Map showing 1216 coastline and 1950's coastline of the Causeway.The various farmers were very co-operative and a total of about 200 traverses were run, requiring about 6000 instrument readings. As a result of this work, there is definite evidence of the existence of a formation below the surface which might quite well be the pathway in question. This evidence is now in the hands of the Wash Research Committee, and the exact location cannot yet be made public.’

 

So why ‘X-Files’ in the title? The E&V records only say so much, and provoke more questions than answers: Who sat on the ‘shadowy’ Wash Research Committee and  was the treasure ever found? Was there a sudden move to remote tax havens? The records are silent however and so the mystery lives on.’

 

 

Written by Eric Everatt, MIET, Archives Volunteer

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Hazel Jones Alan Turing papers finally released. http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=46275 2012-04-24T14:42:13 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=46275#comments 0 Alan Turing enthusiasts will be pleased to read in the news recently that two 70 year old papers written by the mathematical genius whilst he was working at Bletchley Park, are now available to be viewed at the National Archives at Kew.

 

Both papers talk about mathematical approaches to code breaking and are titled: “The Applications of Probability to Crypt” and “Paper on the Statistics of Repetitions”.

 

They had previously been restricted by GCHQ, who have now completed all projects involving these papers and have released them to the general public as part of celebrations being held this year on the centenary of Turing’s birth. Further information on this can be found on the GCGQ Press Release web page.

 

You can find an interesting and informative biography on Alan Turing on the Archives website, written by our experienced Archivists. 

 

There is also information regarding the history of code breaking which covers Turing and the work he did whilst at Bletchley Park during WW2. 

 

The IET also holds an annual Prestige Lecture  in honour of Alan Turing and this year, because of his centenary, the IET got together with the BCS (British Computer Society) to celebrate his great work. A live webcast of the lecture which was held on the 21st February 2012 is available to view on this page with additional references available for further reading.

 

Did you attend this lecture? Let us know how you felt the event went via this blog.

 

Further information on Alan Turing celebrations ongoing this year are available on the 2012 Alan Turing year website.

 

Written by Hazel Jones, Senior Librarian, IET Library.

 


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Hazel Jones Sir Arthur C Clarke http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45780 2012-03-19T16:09:15 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45780#comments 0 Sir Arthur C. Clarke, died 4 years ago today on the 19th March 2008. 

 

As well as being a successful British Science Fiction writer, most famous for his novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” he was also a former IEE employee between the years of 1949 to 1950.

 

Read all about his time working for the IEE in our Archive biography on Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

 

Written by Hazel Jones, Senior Librarian, IET Library

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Hazel Jones Hello from the Archives! http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45319 2012-02-21T15:12:05 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45319#comments 0 This is the first official post from the Archives on the shiny new Library and Archives blog and so we thought we would take the opportunity to introduce ourselves.

 

Archives storage area

The IET Archives department is based at Savoy Place in London and are Anne, Asha and Sarah. We are all professionally trained archivists with a love of history and things from the past, and our job is to care for the historical record collections that are contained in the IET Archives.


The Archives contain records that date back to the 1300s , but the majority of our collections are from the 19th and 20th centuries. These contain information about a wide variety of people and subjects related to the history of the IET and the electrical engineering industry, including the history of the development of electrical telegraphy, the rise of electrical supply, and the role of women engineers.

Chaucer's Astrolabe 1391



An average day in the life of an IET archivist can vary hugely, but our main duties include answering enquiries, assisting researchers and that perennial archival activity, cataloguing! We also provide tours of the Library and Archives and the historic Savoy Place, create displays of archival material, and organise outreach activities such as family history events.


We also have a responsibility to look after the historic artefacts that are dotted around the building, such as portraits and busts of IET past-Presidents and other notable engineers, and we also sometimes get called upon to help with other, rather obscure, requests, such as providing information about Savoy Place’s resident ghost!


We will be using this blog to write about our varied activities and to let our followers know about the discoveries we sometimes make within the Archives, so please watch this space! If you would like to learn more about the Archives and the collections, please get in touch: archives@theiet.org

 

Written by Sarah Hale, Archives Assistant, IET Library

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Hazel Jones IET Archives - Valentines Day - Fascinating Fact http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45197 2012-02-14T13:17:49 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45197#comments 0 Valentine's Day heartIn keeping with the romantic mood of this month, did you know that the IET Archive has love letters stashed away in its collections? Correspondence written between a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and his wife reveal that engineers do have a romantic side.

 

On the morning of their wedding day he wrote:


"I may not, because it is so decreed, see you until 12.30 today, so I write to you on this the morning of our day to send you, in advance, all my love, my thoughts, my everything."

 

True to his mathematical background, however, this engineer signed off all his letters to his wife with kisses to the power of infinity.

 

Written by Sarah Hale, Archives Assistant, IET Library

 

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Hazel Jones Looking for information on past members? http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45174 2012-02-13T12:22:00 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=425&threadid=45174#comments 0

Are you interested in someone who used to be a member of the IET? Maybe you’ve been doing some family history research and found an MIEE in your family tree. We can help you find further information.


What do you have?We have records of past members of the IET and its constituent bodies, including:
The IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers)
The IERE (Institution of Radio Engineers)
The IProdE and IMfgE (Institution of Production Engineers, later the Institution of Manufacturing Engineers)
We also have a small amount of information on past members of the IIE (Institution of Incorported Engineers) and other institutions which merged with it (see IIE History for further details). Some information on members of the Women’s Engineering Society  can also be found in the WES collections.


What don’t you have?
We look after the records from 1871 to around 1997: modern records are held by the IET’s Membership Department. We do not have any original membership forms after 1901, but we do have lists. We do not have copies of certificates either: if you want a copy of a certificate you will need to contact City and Guilds.


What other useful information do you have?
If you are interested in how someone became a member, we have records relating to the changing membership requirements of the IET and the examinations held for Associate and Graduate Members. We also have obituaries of past Members: an index 
can be found on the Archives website, along with indexes to obituaries of IEE members who died in the First World War. We may also have records relating to the person you are researching in our Archive collections, especially if they were prominent in their field and/or a past President or Honorary Fellow. Try searching the Archives catalogue for more details.

What next?
Look at the information on members on the Archives website. If you have any questions, or would like to order copies of something you have found, please contact us 

 

Written by Sarah Hale, Archives Assistant, IET Library

 

 

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