Grants

1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Before 1900, Civil aviation, Grants, Periodicals, Pictures, Plots and tables, Tools and methods

Breaking the tyranny of distance revisited — I

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post about a software project Tim Sherratt and I were working on for Heritage of the Air called hota-time. Briefly, the idea was that hota-time would extract and then plot travel times between London and Sydney mentioned in Trove Newspaper headlines, as a quantitative way to gauge the […]

london sydney days, 1859-1952
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Australia, Before 1900, Civil aviation, Grants, Pictures, Plots and tables, Tools and methods

Breaking the tyranny of distance

[Cross-posted at Airplay.] Australia is a long way from anywhere, even from itself. It nearly always takes a long time to get to where you want to go. Historian Geoffrey Blainey famously popularised the idea that this remoteness has shaped Australian history and culture in the title of his 1966 book, The Tyranny of Distance.

New England Airways Ltd Avro 618 Ten
Academia, Australia, Civil aviation, Grants, Pictures

Heritage of the air

Some big news. Today the Australian Research Council (ARC) announced that it is funding Linkage Project LP160101232, ‘Heritage of the air: how aviation transformed Australia’ to the amount of $440,000 over three years, with financial and/or in-kind contributions from Airservices Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Civil Aviation Historical Society, and the SFO Museum.

1910s, Grants, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Publications, Rumours

On the utility of rumours in wartime

Rumours have a bad reputation, especially in wartime. They are at best unreliable, at worst flat-out lies. They are distractions from the war effort, if not actually undermining it. They can create unreasoning suspicion and fear or equally unjustified hope and optimism. In short, nothing good comes from them. Unless you’re a historian, of course.

1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Academia, Aerial theatre, After 1950, Books, Grants, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics

Course correction

With my book’s publication imminent and my return to the job market beginning to, if not loom, then at least creep up, it’s time to think about what’s next in terms of a research programme. I had been thinking of something to do with mystery aircraft, and indeed my next small research project, on scares

1910s, Academia, Archives, Civil defence, Grants, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours, Tools and methods, Travel 2014

More

I’ve been awarded a small grant by the University of New England to fund research into ‘Popular perceptions of the German threat in Britain, 1914-1918’. I’m very fortunate to have received this and very grateful. The basic idea is this: This project will investigate the British public’s reaction to the threat of German attack during

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