Going… going… gone!
From the climactic set-piece at the 1927 RAF Display at Hendon, the destruction of an ‘Eastern village’ by Fairey Foxes — in GIF form:
1920s, Aerial theatre, Conferences and talks, Tools and methods, Videos
Tools and methods
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Aerial theatre, After 1950, Archives, Australia, Civil aviation, Ephemera, International air force, Pictures, Tools and methods
AIR in the AJCP
This is the cover of a leaflet produced in 1916 by the Australian Air Squadrons Fund, the Australian arm of the Imperial Air Flotilla which raised funds around the British Empire for presentation ‘battle-planes’ for the Royal Flying Corps. My interest in it is not so much for its own sake, though I am struck
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.
Australia, Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Tools and methods
Introducing @TroveAirBot
@TroveAirBot is a Twitter bot which tweets links to random articles about aviation from Trove Newspapers. In its first day or so of operation, it has tweeted about…
1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plots and tables, Tools and methods
The airship panic of 1915 — VI
So I half-promised a final post in this series about the airship panic of 1915. There are a couple of methodological points I’d like to make. The first point is that this is an unusually well-attested panic. There are panics with more sources, but not with so many different kinds of sources. Here, there are
1910s, 1920s, Air control, Australia, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Tools and methods
Airships against the Mad Mullah; or, #fundTrove
The following article appeared on p. 4 of the 15 June 1914 issue of the Broken Hill (NSW), newspaper, the Barrier Miner: AIRSHIPS AGAINST THE MAD MULLAH Aden, Saturday. Naval Lieutenants Boothby and Richard B. Davies are at Berbera, investigating the feasibility of utilising airships for the purpose of an expedition to subdue the Mad
1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Rumours, Tools and methods
The airship panic of 1915 — III
In my previous post on the possible airship panic of 1915, I used n-grams for ‘Zeppelin’ and ‘rumour’ derived from the British Newspaper Archive to try to work out when exactly it was. The answer was that it began in late December 1914 and finished in early February 1915. But is the answer right? Is
1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plots and tables, Rumours, Tools and methods
The airship panic of 1915 — II
In order to start characterising the possible airship panic of 1915, let’s generate some n-grams and do some distant reading to get a basic overview of press interest in Zeppelins during the early part of the war. Here are the number of articles per month in the British Newspaper Archive for 1914 and 1915 mentioning
1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Archives, Periodicals, Tools and methods
British newspapers online update, July 2014
An update of my list of early 20th century British newspapers online is well overdue. As such, there are a large number of new titles available (some only for a limited range of years), along with the usual additional ranges of years for existing titles. But it’s clear that the imminent First World War centenary
1910s, Maps, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Plots and tables, Rumours, Tools and methods
Throwing numbers at a map
Since I’ll be undertaking a research trip to the UK this November or so, I need to think about exactly what I’m going to do there. Giving a paper at the AHA is part of that process. That will hopefully help me formulate my approach or at least identify potential approaches to comparing airship, spy