Earlier this week it was announced that the Mosman Library had been awarded a Library Development Grant for an innovative project that aims to document stories and artefacts relating to the First World War. I’m very excited to be part of it.…
Earlier this week it was announced that the Mosman Library had been awarded a Library Development Grant for an innovative project that aims to document stories and artefacts relating to the First World War. I’m very excited to be part of it.…
I’m currently working on a html version of this with added links and content, but in the meantime… Prologue Canberra was in the grip of a heatwave — the longest in its recorded history. After two weeks of hot weather,…
‘Modern man is a forest butcher’, warned the pioneering science journalist Hugh McKay in 1923. ‘He is also an oil-spendthrift and a coal waster’, McKay continued, ‘recklessly spending his capital of fuel… with never a thought of the tomorrow when…
The glow of his campfire framed a simple tableau of pioneer life. Across this ‘untenanted land’, Edwin Brady mused, ‘little companies’, such as his own, sat by their ‘solitary fires’. ‘They smoked pipes and talked, or watched the coals reflectively’.…
‘I say emphatically that the climate has changed’, Henry Hodgson told the Argus in 1928. The experience of seventy-eight years brooked no denial, summers were milder, and thunderstorms were fewer. ‘It is no use telling me that weather bureau statistics…
forecast: 1 January 1901 The day had been hot, the air hung ‘heavy and dead’; but as evening approached, ‘ominous-looking clouds’ swept over the city, and a thundery change seemed imminent. On this, the last day of the nineteenth century,…
the charleville rainmaker Cloudy skies at last! On 26 September 1902, the drought-wearied residents of Charleville looked to the heavens with new hope. They knew, of course, that clouds offered no certainty of rain; too often before they had watched…
HISTORY OF SCIENCE in Australia is a field intimidated by its subject. Historians have been too slow to examine the local context of knowledge production and use, deferring to scientists and their uncritical catalogues of the past. Historical analysis has…
CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and its forbears have undergone many transformations, reflecting twentieth century shifts in the relationship between science and government.
FLOREY, Howard Walter (1898-1968), was an outstandingly-effective medical researcher who pioneered the development and use of antibiotics. Although popular mythology credits Alexander Fleming, it was Florey and his team that gave the world the miracle drug, penicillin.
DAVID, Tannatt William Edgeworth (1858-1934), professor of geology at the University of Sydney, was ‘well-beloved’ by scientific colleagues and the wider public for his generosity, his vigour, and his restless passion for knowledge.
ATOMIC TESTING was undertaken in Australia between 1952 and 1963 as Britain sought to develop its own nuclear weapons. The Australian government readily supplied test sites and logistical support, mistakenly believing that greater access to nuclear technology would result.
[Contains many broken links – included for historical interest only!] what is there to know about archives? In this age of virtual wonders, it seems that our past is rushing towards us. New communication technologies promise greatly improved access to…
How do scientists document their research? As electronic means of communication become the norm, this question has taken on special urgency. If we don’t understand the process of record-keeping within the sciences, we are in danger of losing our scientific…
A tall, thin man in his early sixties was led into the recently remodelled Darlinghurst courtroom. Interest in the current proceedings was so great that extra seating had been provided to accommodate 200 members of the public, as well as…
Then there was a great flash that reached the far horizon. Even Dr Penney, who had witnessed the first historic cataclysm in the desert at Almagordo and later seen a bomb burst over Japan, described the scene as ‘terrifying’ as…
The radioactive dust had barely settled on the devastated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when, in November 1945, Winston Churchill proclaimed: ‘This I take is already agreed, we should make atomic bombs.’ It was, and they did – seven years…
