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‘As snug as a bug in a rug’: post-war housing, homes and coal fires
This article examines the image of the open coal fire in redefining the home in post-war Britain. Rather than a timeless source of reverie and comfort, the post-war fire articulated values that were central to the nation in this period of reconstruction.
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Engineering and the family in business: Blanche Coules Thornycroft, naval architecture and engineering design
The article describes the role of Blanche Thornycroft as a naval architect in the family business of John I. Thornycroft. It explores her role in the family business and examines some of the products she was involved in building.
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‘A Chamber of Noise Horrors’: sound, technology and the museum
This article analyses the 1935 Science Museum Noise Abatement exhibition in order to draw wider conclusions about technological sound and the museum and to make an argument in favour of hearing museum sound historically.
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From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s Home? Experiencing ‘Tropical Africa’ at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition
This article analyses the exhibition and reception of Tropical Africa at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition, drawing attention to affect, the senses, and spatiality. It emphasises the need to look beyond curatorial intent and consider the multiplicity of potential experiences within World’s Fairs.
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‘Not one voice speaking to many’: E C Large, wireless, and science fiction fans in the mid-twentieth century
This article analyses E C Large’s novel Dawn in Andromeda (1956), using it to explore the cultural history of the wireless. In the 1930s, the wireless figured as an instrument of fannish participation alongside participatory writing practices. By the 1950s it had become a disappointment.
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Pilgrimages to the museums of the new age: appropriating European industrial museums in New York City (1927–1937)
This article analyses the changing perceptions of European industrial museums as expressed in the reports written by the curators, directors and trustees of the New York Museum of Science and Industry between 1927 and 1937.
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Rather unspectacular: design choices in National Health Service glasses
This article discusses the provision of spectacles under the NHS scheme in Britain from 1946-86. It reveals there was no explicit consideration of consumer choice or fashion and argues that this limited design across the British optical industry.
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The Hugh Davies Collection: live electronic music and self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments, 1967–1975
The author describes and contextualises the Hugh Davies Collection (HDC) – a collection of self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments and other electronic sound apparatus formerly owned by the English experimental musician, instrument inventor, and live electronic music pioneer Hugh Davies (1943–2005).
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The life and material culture of Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923): suffragette, physicist, mathematician and inventor
Suffragette, physicist, mathematician, and inventor: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when few women had access to opportunities in STEM, Englishwoman Hertha Marks Ayrton held all these roles and advocated for social justice, including suffrage for women.
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Uncovering the secrets of Canadian Pacific
This article discusses the changing roles of women on the railway from 1850 to the end of the Second World War. It focuses on the Southern Railway and how women’s roles on the railway changed to the extent that many were involved in the construction of Canadian Pacific.