PK Cable Map 1880's
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Monday 19 December 2011
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) archive material
A great wealth of archive material relating to William Thomson is to be found in both the Cambridge University Library and Glasgow University Library. Much of it ( and there really is a lot) is hard going due to Thomson's very scratchy/scrawly handwriting.
Quite by accident I recently came across some additional material held in the National Archives at Kew.
1. Records referenced BJ refer to Records of the Meteorological Office and BJ1/33 cover a large selection of letters written by William Thomson between around 1860 and 1867
2. Records prefixed PRO/30 refer to a whole bag of domestic records of the Public Records Office and within PRO/30/69 we can find the 1835 files covering James Ramsey McDonald ( a period covering 1793 to 1937) and eventually at PRO/30/69/949 is a file "Lord Kelvin. Various letters . Cable Impulse tape - HMS Agamemnon"
Within that file was the bundled-up length of tape shown in the picture above with the note attached by a somewhat rusty paper clip. It was clearly in a delicate state and I pointed this out to an archivist who was not too concerned and only commented on what an awful lot of conservation work they had to do !!
Much more research is required on both items above and also the tape.
Where was HMS Agamemnon on the date shown ?
There we go .............research is fun and invariably leads on to just having to take a peep at totally unconnected material. If you go to PRO/30/69/1766 for example you will find a file entitled " Poem for H G Wells' Birthday "
Happy Christmas to anyone who reads this before Dec 25th 2011
Allan
Quite by accident I recently came across some additional material held in the National Archives at Kew.
1. Records referenced BJ refer to Records of the Meteorological Office and BJ1/33 cover a large selection of letters written by William Thomson between around 1860 and 1867
2. Records prefixed PRO/30 refer to a whole bag of domestic records of the Public Records Office and within PRO/30/69 we can find the 1835 files covering James Ramsey McDonald ( a period covering 1793 to 1937) and eventually at PRO/30/69/949 is a file "Lord Kelvin. Various letters . Cable Impulse tape - HMS Agamemnon"
Within that file was the bundled-up length of tape shown in the picture above with the note attached by a somewhat rusty paper clip. It was clearly in a delicate state and I pointed this out to an archivist who was not too concerned and only commented on what an awful lot of conservation work they had to do !!
Much more research is required on both items above and also the tape.
Where was HMS Agamemnon on the date shown ?
There we go .............research is fun and invariably leads on to just having to take a peep at totally unconnected material. If you go to PRO/30/69/1766 for example you will find a file entitled " Poem for H G Wells' Birthday "
Happy Christmas to anyone who reads this before Dec 25th 2011
Allan
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