%0 Journal Article
%T ‘½ vol. not relevant’: The scrapbook of Winifred Penn-Gaskell
%A Caitlin Doherty
%D 2014
%V 
%N Autumn 2014
%K aviation
%K collections
%K material culture
%K physical culture
%K scrapbooks
%X The scrapbook of Winifred Penn-Gaskell – celebrated aerophilatelist and collector of aeronautica –reveals a great deal about its maker and the social and political context of early flight history in Britain. It is argued here that a ‘reading’ of the book as a non-textual object offers a predictive argument for the aesthetic and cultural representation of heavier-than-air craft and pilots in the years immediately prior to the First World War. By viewing each section of the scrapbook as parts of a contingent whole, the early-twentieth century interest in performative masculinity (physical culture and boxing) becomes a part of the technological narrative of aviation development. In this paper I question the implications of branding an object such as this ‘irrelevant’ to the broader themes of the Penn-Gaskell collection, and offer some views of my own on how the notion of failure affects museological practices.
%Z Zaniello, T A, 1981, ‘The spectacular English sunsets of the 1880s’, in Paradis, J and Postlewait, T (eds), Victorian Science and Victorian Values: Literary Perspectives (New York, NY: The New York Academy of the Sciences), pp 247–68

%Z A description of 'physical culture' is given in the following section. 

%Z The case of Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis is perhaps the finest example of this human-machine hybrid, though the nature of the relationship between pilot and plan was often referred to in the language of medieval chivalry in reports of First World War dogfights (for further on this see Fritzsche, P 1992).

%Z Examples of this predictive evolution can be found throughout the science fiction writing of the period. For an early example see Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race. 

%Z 'The Beginning of Air Mail'; handwritten speech circa 1933, part of the Penn-Gaskell Collection of Aeronautica. 

%Z It is also an indication of Penn-Gaskell's lack of awareness, or approval, of Futurist and Vorticist movements which drew heavily on the use of new powered technology and pioneered the modernist aerial view. 

%Z See the existing scholarship on scrapbooks and their makers, particularly the introductory essay to The Scrapbook in American Life, Tucker et al., 2006.

%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/winifred-penn-gaskell/
%J Science Museum Group Journal