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. As well as working with the local community in the creation of a new resource, the project offers an interesting opportunity to explore how we can link in with the ever-increasing volume of WWI material being published as linked data around the world.

But thinking about this new project has also made me reflect again on the creation of Mapping Our Anzacs — a project that still fills me with great pride and immense frustration. I thought I might as well finally post a couple of things I wrote about the project back in 2009. They’re a bit out of date, but I think there’s still a few useful lessons to be gleaned.

The first is a case-study that focuses on the crowdsourcing aspects of Mapping Our Anzacs. The second looks at the project as an example of a mashup. Thanks to Kate Theimer for initiating and publishing both pieces.

Bringing life to records

2009 preprint version of case-study originally published in Kate Theimer (ed), A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users, Society of American Archivists, Chicago, 2011. [Order here]

Overview of repository

The National Archives of Australia is responsible for preserving and making accessible the records of the Commonwealth of Australia. It employs more than 400 staff, with offices in Canberra and every state capital. Its holdings include more than 360 shelf km of records – around 69 million items. Through its digitisation program more than 1.6 million items have been fully digitised, making nearly 20 million digital images available online. The National Archives’ website now provides the main point of access for researchers, with more than 2 million images viewed through the online database RecordSearch in the year 2007–8.

Business drivers

Most people now experience the collections of the National Archives of Australia online. With an obligation to provide ‘an accessible, and interpreted, national archival collection’ the Archives is looking to new technologies to enhance access and improve efficiency.

The idea for Mapping our Anzacs arose during planning for a travelling exhibition on the impact of World War I, timed to coincide with the 90^th anniversary of the war’s end. Public interest in commemorating Australia’s war effort was as strong as ever, so a website that encouraged local participation seemed a useful way of extending the exhibition and its accompanying education program.

The major focus of both the exhibition and the website was to be the 376,000 service records documenting the experiences of Australian men and women during World War I held by the National Archives. These records had been fully digitised and described as part of a major project entitled ‘A Gift to the Nation’, but were still somewhat buried within our collection database.

Mapping our Anzacs was intended to highlight these records and open them up to local communities. First a map interface would allow service records to be discovered by place of birth or enlistment. Secondly, users would be able to add tributes – online versions of the war memorials that remain a feature of just about every town, large or small.

While the exhibition and the records themselves provided the main drivers for the project, there was also a growing desire within the institution to explore some of the possibilities of Web 2.0 technologies. This desire was tempered somewhat by a range of familiar concerns centred on issues of authority and control. Would user contributions detract from the reliability of the records? Who would take responsibility for any errors in user-created content? Would the potential for abuse demand vigilant moderation? Mapping our Anzacs gave us a chance to start working through such issues.

Setting the stage

We had an idea, a budget and a launch date, what we needed was a plan. While in theory we had around six months to play with, the project had to be fitted in around the ongoing work of our small web team. On the content side we had one person cleaning up the data. At the technical end we had someone connecting up the various components and making it all work within the Archives’ web environment. In the middle there were two of us trying to marry content and technology and create a usable resource. While we had a range of useful skills, none of us had tackled a project quite like this. We all had to learn on the job.

With few models or examples to work from, we began to experiment – researching available technologies, throwing around possibilities. Our first efforts were largely focused on the map interface and before long we had a working prototype using javascript and Google Maps. But what we also needed was a better understanding of how users might interact with the site.

World War I Honour Roll at the Chiltern Atheneum Museum

We started from the idea of the online memorial – a list of names compiled by users that would be linked through to service records. Our example was a local historical society creating a site to commemorate their community’s war effort. But what if they had more information – photographs or family histories – how could this sort of material be incorporated? Further inspiration came from a visit to the local historical museum in the small Victorian town of Chiltern. On one wall was a typical roll of honour, listing the names of those who had served in the war. But underneath were framed portraits of many of those listed. They were people, not just records. Could we create something like this online?

There were some exciting possibilities emerging, but concerns remained. Would anybody actually want to contribute? Strong interest in family history and a growing community desire to commemorate the experience of World War I offered anecdotal support. We just had to ensure that this interest could be translated into engagement – that the barriers of participation were low enough to encourage visitors to become collaborators.

But what of concerns that such material might detract from the authority of the records, or open our institution up to liability? We needed to make it clear where public contributions began and archival data ended.

Welcoming, but separate; open, but managed – a tricky balancing act was required. The answer, we decided was to create a separate ‘scrapbook’ using the blogging service Tumblr. The ‘scrapbook’ label was intended to be encouraging – this was not a database, or formal register, it was a place to leave your thoughts, comments, information or memorabilia. This was reinforced by our terms of service which simply required contributions to be relevant and respectful.

Scrapbook post

A ‘scrapbook’ was also something quite different to a finding aid. The informality helped to make the boundary clear between record and response. The separation was physical as well as intellectual. While the scrapbook shared many of the design elements of the main site, it was hosted by Tumblr not the National Archives. By using the Tumblr API, however, it was easy to pass information between the two sites. We could also use the API to provide a basic moderation facility.

But this meant that an important part of the site’s functionality would be dependent on an outside service. To make sure we considered fully all the implications of this, we developed a risk analysis and contacted Tumblr staff to inform them of our plans. Our major concern was simply the continuity of the service. While there could be no guarantees, we judged that this risk was manageable. Tumblr staff were interested in the project and offered their assistance if necessary.

Results

Images from scrapbook posts viewed via a media RSS feed in CoolIris.

On 25 April each year, Anzac Day, Australians remember the sacrifices made in war. Over the Anzac Day weekend in 2009, we were astonished to receive more than 200 scrapbook posts. Of course we had expected an increase in use, particularly after the site was featured on the Australian version of the Today Show, but this remarkable response certainly confirmed the site’s success. In the six months since its launch there had been almost 94,000 visitors to Mapping our Anzacs. More than 1,000 scrapbook posts had been contributed and 280 tributes created.

But the greatest success was in the type of posts being contributed rather than their sheer volume. Our ‘scrapbook’ had proved to be just that – as well as photographs of service people and their families, there were pictures of medals, headstones, letters, newspaper clippings, pay books, identity disks, diaries, postcards and certificates. Some people simply commented ‘my grandfather’, while others wrote detailed accounts of family history. Perhaps most moving were those who took the opportunity to leave a message for their loved one: ‘You were the best dad’.

Scrapbook post

Some have taken a systematic approach. Our most frequent contributor is gradually attaching photographs of headstones and memorial plaques that she has gathered from local cemeteries. Others are posting their own contact details in the hope of linking up with family. Perhaps most interesting are the notes that provide links to other people or documents – to family members, for example, or to a later service record. These are helping build a rich web of contextual data. Equally valuable are the corrections and additions that are being offered by eagle-eyed users, pointing out transcription errors or helping us track down elusive locations.

The success of the scrapbook has somewhat overshadowed the tributes, or online memorials, which really provided our starting point. Many tributes have been created and, as we had hoped, schools and other groups are using them to document the impact of war on their local communities. However, some compromises at the implementation stage have meant that it is not as easy to build them as we had hoped. There has also been some confusion by users between the tributes and the scrapbook. This is one area of the site we certainly hope to improve.

Even though the digitised service records had been available online for sometime though our collection database, it’s clear that many people are discovering them for the first time through Mapping our Anzacs. It was ‘a stunning find for me and my siblings’ wrote one grateful user. The scrapbook has aided discovery, providing another way into the records. Indeed, with the addition of a MediaRSS feed for CoolIris, the scrapbook provides two new entry points – one of them a 3D wall of faces and families. By embedding the records in these new contexts and making them easier to find, Mapping our Anzacs has successfully garnered extra value from an existing asset.

The site has also been recognised by others for its successful use of Web 2.0 technologies. We were pleased to be joint winners of the Best Archives on the Web Award, and surprised to be cited by the Federal Minister for Finance in a speech launching a Gov 2.0 taskforce. Recognition such as this has helped strengthen the case for future innovation in the Web 2.0 sphere.

Challenges

Success brings its own problems. One of the main challenges has been simply managing the sheer volume of posts and feedback. This was particularly acute of course after the Anzac Day deluge. As a result we have had to consider ways of streamlining our processes.

The Tumblr API allows us to set the status of a new post as ‘private’. We can then examine the post using the Tumblr dashboard before making it public. This works well enough as a basic form of moderation, however, the dashboard is not really designed for this purpose and it takes several clicks to release each post to the world.

But while moderation takes considerable time, it requires little intellectual effort. Despite concerns about abuse, our contributors have caused us few dilemmas. The only significant questions that have arisen concern the re-use of materials from other sources. This has made consider whether pre-emptive moderation is necessary or appropriate.

While the site includes detailed help information, it’s clear from the feedback that there are certain aspects that continue to cause difficulty. This provides useful data on how the site might be improved, but it has also made us think about how we communicate with our users. At the moment the content we provide is fairly static – there is no way of informing visitors of recent updates, or developing quick guides to common problems. If we took a more active approach to communication we might be able to decrease the number of help requests, while building a greater sense of community.

Similarly, while we have been excited by the number of corrections submitted by users, we can now see ways in which we might have structured the feedback process to capture their corrections more easily and efficiently. For example, a ‘submit a correction’ link on each individual’s page could automatically capture the person’s details, saving both us and our contributors from potential confusion.

We have suffered through the expected number of software glitches, and have a growing list of things we’d like to improve or develop, but overall the experience has been much more rewarding than painful.

Lessons Learned

Perhaps the most valuable lessons revolve around trust. Having entered into the project uncertain of what to expect from public participation, we have found ourselves in an evolving, creative partnership. Our users have defined what the scrapbook is and have taken an active role in improving and developing the resource. Our trust has been repaid many times over, helping us build something that in many ways has exceeded our expectations.

Trust is also necessary in the support of new ideas. Mapping our Anzacs was a very different type of project for the National Archives, challenging ideas both of access and user engagement. By taking the risk we have not only gained valuable publicity and user support, we have opened up the realm of possibilities for future development.

In terms of technology, the project demonstrated the power of the mashup and the efficiencies that can be gained by using existing web services. Tumblr, Google Maps and their associated APIs gave us a kickstart that enabled us to do a lot with a little.

Next Steps

There are so many exciting possibilities! Obviously our first priority is to improve those areas of the site that continue to cause our users grief. There are a number of navigation and usability tweaks that should improve the overall experience. Similarly, we can now see ways in which we might streamline moderation and management processes.

We hope to build on the success of the scrapbook and tributes by enhancing and extending their functionality. Improved editing and creation tools could assist contributors while also enriching the web of connections they build. We might, for example, provide widgets that make it easier to link the records of family members or friends. Over time this could develop into a complex network of relationships, providing new means of finding and visualising the records. Similarly, there are ways in which we might reuse the existing content of the scrapbook posts to develop new modes of discovery.

We could also do more to feature the labours and passions of our contributors. We could give them the option of exposing a public profile that lists all of their scrapbook posts. This would help foster a sense of community while providing yet another means of exploring connections between records.

Recent developments in geospatial technology and mobile devices perhaps offer the most exciting possibilities. Our original aim was to give the World War I service records back to local communities, to imbue the records with a greater sense of context, locality and belonging. Perhaps we will have succeeded when a tourist exploring a small country town can press a button on their mobile phone to retrieve a list of service people born near their current location.

Perhaps they will take a photo of a name on the local war memorial and use it to automatically retrieve that person’s service record or create an online tribute.

Perhaps they will come across a headstone in the local cemetery and immediately upload a geocoded photograph to the Mapping our Anzacs scrapbook.

Instead of merely being markers on a map, the records will start to overlay and inform the very spaces in which we move. The stories they contain will become part of our journeys, the people they document will have found their way home.

Creating a mashup

2009 preprint version of interview originally published in Kate Theimer, Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections, Neal-Schuman, New York, 2010. [Order here]

What made you interested in creating a mashup?

It really started with the records. We hold the records of more than 375,000 World War I service people, identified by their places of birth and enlistment. With war memorials in just about every town across Australia, the connection between local communities and the memory of war remains strong. So we wondered how we could we give the service people in our records back to their communities. Having played around with the Google Maps API the answer seemed obvious — find the places, put them on a map and let people explore the connections for themselves.

What information, tools and processes did you need to begin?

The main thing we needed was the confidence to experiment. The process seemed straightforward in principle: first we had to extract the data we needed from the file titles in our collection database, then we had to find the latitude and longitude of each of the place names we extracted, and finally we had to plot these coordinates on a map with links back to details of the service records themselves. Web services, such as those provided by Google Maps, had the potential to do much of the work for us, and we scoured online documentation, user forums and blog posts for hints. But there were many things we could not know until we actually started. How consistent was our data? How many of the places would we be able to find? How would we be able to display thousands of places at once?

Moving from file titles through to coordinates obviously required a lot of data manipulation and we used Perl for much of the grunt work. Because our data set was large and variations in spelling and formatting were often unpredictable (including 13 different spellings of ‘lieutenant’!), we often had to work by trial and error — seeing what results we obtained and then adjusting our processes accordingly.

Once we had a list of place names in a consistent format we could begin to find latitudes and longitudes through a process known as geocoding. Google’s geocoding service was an easy option: it was well documented, reasonably comprehensive and it worked! We fed it our place names through a Perl script and soon we had a list of coordinates. Of course, many places were not found or returned multiple results, but the basic principle was sound. Our places were no longer just names, but points in space — we could begin making maps.

How did you determine what to include?

What we were creating was an archival finding aid, but one which placed the people, their homes and their communities up front rather than the systems that control their records. By browsing from a map a user would be able to find the details of a loved one, read a digitised copy of their service record and then follow a link through to our collection database. These links provide crucial context about the records, but we realised that this project also gave us an opportunity to capture other contexts and meanings. Who were these people? What did they look like? What happened to them after the war? By adding an online ‘scrapbook’ we gave users the chance to enrich the resource by adding notes or photographs about individuals.

This meant we had to deal with three sets of interlinked data: geocoded places, details from our records, and scrapbook posts provided by the public. To bring these all together with limited resources we had to make clever use of what was already out there. Why create our own maps when all you needed to do was write a bit of Javascript to embed a Google Map? Why build our own scrapbook application when the blogging service Tumblr provides free accounts and a simple API to manipulate posts? While a substantial amount of custom scripting was required to glue everything together, much of the core functionality was provided by free web services, available to anyone.

What challenges did you face?

Perhaps the first challenge to overcome was that of imagination. It was difficult for people to understand what the project was until we had a prototype to show them.

The process of handling and cleaning the data at times threatened to overwhelm us. While the geocoding service got us to the point where we could make maps, it also left us with many place names that needed to be manually checked. Often this was the result of misspellings in the original data, or because places either no longer existed or had changed their names. This data cleanup consumed much effort and continues still, though now with the help of our users who regularly point out errors and inconsistencies.

Once we had our coordinates we had to display them on a map without killing anyone’s computer. Showing thousands of markers on a Google Map is a challenge to slower web browsers and can end up hindering navigation. By dividing up our maps, clustering markers and changing the way they were rendered, we managed to greatly improve performance while maintaining the browsing experience. Once again it was trial and error coupled with the advice of the online community that guided us through the roadblocks.

What kinds of positive results have you had? (And any negative ones?)

From the messages we receive it’s clear that Mapping our Anzacs allows people to find records they didn’t know existed. Some have met a great-great-uncle for the first time. Others have learned about the war experience of a much-loved grandparent. Local communities have embraced the project and the scrapbook has developed into a rich and often moving resource. We wanted to give users a new way to explore and interact with our collection, and it seems we have succeeded.

Our users have also become our collaborators, providing corrections and comments that help us improve our data. They have extended the idea of the scrapbook, using it, for example, as a noticeboard for family history research, or as a way of creating crosslinks between related resources.

Success brings problems of its own and the work of moderating the scrapbook and responding to feedback has proved considerable. Issues with performance remain for people on slow connections, and while many are familiar with the Google Maps interface, some find it difficult to navigate. We are planning a number of enhancements based on this feedback, and hope to take advantage of the technology as it evolves to improve and extend the interface.

About how much time did it take?

While the project as a whole stretched over about eight months, much of this time was taken up cleaning and processing the data. The development of the interface was completed in under two months.

What advice would you give an organization wanting to use something similar?

Start experimenting. The technology is developing so rapidly that if you spend 12 months planning a project it’s likely to be out-of-date even before you start. New web services and data sources are becoming available every day. Perhaps you could use Open Calais to extract people’s names from a collection description, or MetaCarta to find the places. You might use the Google Books API to harvest the details of publications that cite your records. Even if you’re not a coder you can use tools like Yahoo Pipes to see what happens when you start to link data and services. Experimentation brings new ideas and possibilities. It’s all about making connections.

Remembering Lawrence Hargrave – Hargrave's models on display, 1919.

In 1962 William Hudson Shaw, a Qantas executive, knocked at the door of a cottage in the seaside village of Walmer, Kent. Shaw was in the grip of an obsession – a ‘labour of love’ to document the ‘true story’ of Australian aeronautical pioneer Lawrence Hargrave. This quest had brought Shaw to the home of Helen Gray, Hargrave’s eldest daughter, his beloved ‘Nellie’. Now into her 80s, Helen Gray remained firmly protective of her father’s memory, yet strangely ambivalent about his achievements. Nonetheless, through Hudson Shaw’s visit and the correspondence that followed, the two became friends and collaborators. ‘I feel so grateful that you have such great interest in L.H. [and] his work’, the elderly woman wrote in 1963, ‘what a difference it has made to my life that you appeared at the right time’. The biographer gained insight into the personal life of his subject, and the daughter was relieved of the burden of defending her father against the ill-formed judgments of history.

Yesterday's Tomorrows

Helen Gray entrusted her new friend with a number of her father’s papers and artefacts. These Shaw transferred to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, which, under director J L Willis, was ‘endeavouring to collect under one roof, all the Hargrave relics’. Lawrence Hargrave had himself donated nine of his monoplane models to the museum in 1891. However, ten years later, his offer of a large collection of models, apparatus and photographs, constituting a ‘continuous record’ of his experimental activities, was carelessly let slip by the director Richard Baker. These models finally found a home at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where most were destroyed by bombing during World War II. The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences retrieved the remnants in 1960, followed shortly after by Hargrave’s journals and drawings from England, as well as Helen Gray’s mementos. ‘Mr Willis’ Hargrave collection … is now of some consequence’, Hudson Shaw wrote to Helen Gray in 1963.

With the return of the models to Sydney it seemed that Hargrave’s legacy had arrived home – a circle had been closed. ‘My thoughts turned back’, Helen Gray remarked, ‘to when L.H. first offered them to the T[echnological] M[useum] …very long ago’. The collected models and documents were finally arranged for public display in the Lawrence Hargrave Memorial Court, opened by the museum on 8 December 1967. Helen Gray did not live to see the completion of ‘Mr Willis’s new gallery’, but she was able to observe and enjoy the reawakening of public interest in her father’s achievements: in 1965, Lawrence Hargrave had been commemorated on a stamp, and the following year he joined Kingsford Smith as one of the faces on the new $20 note. ‘I am sure you will agree that this is the greatest compliment that has been paid to your Father to date’, Shaw wrote, ‘and if indeed you now need any endorsement of his place in Australian history his inclusion with such great historical figures as Macarthur, Farrer, Greenway, Lawson and Kingsford-Smith is endorsement enough’. Helen Gray died a few months later in April 1966. Her father’s memory at last seemed secure.

A want of patriotism

‘The further you delve into the records it seems to me the worse the Museum looks’, remarked J L Willis to Hudson Shaw in 1966. Shaw was trying to document the convoluted series of events that had allowed Hargrave’s models to be lost to Australia for almost 50 years. Although the museum ultimately prevailed in ‘the fight for the models’, the casualties were severe. More than 70 models left Australia in 1910; only 16 returned. ‘Wherever the blame lies’, Willis added, ‘the loss of so much precious material is heart-breaking’.

In 1901, the needs of a growing family forced Lawrence Hargrave ‘to curtail the lavish expenditure of time and labour’ that he had, for more than 17 years, ‘freely given for the advancement of the art of flying’. In the hope that others would continue his work, he proposed to donate his collection of models and apparatus to the Technological Museum. Included were engines of various sorts, ‘soaring machines’ and models demonstrating ‘the mechanics of animal locomotion’. ‘Any other man who takes the matter up would be saved a huge amount of useless labour if he could see my results in their consecutive order’, he explained. He offered the collection on the condition that it be given ‘suitable well-lighted accommodation’ in ‘strong carefully made glass cases’. Richard Baker, the museum’s director, replied that his institution had no more money for show cases, and suggested instead that Hargrave might wish to update the existing display of his earlier models. It was a half-hearted effort that even managed to misspell the inventor’s name. Instead of seeking to maintain his goodwill, Hargrave’s resentment was allowed to fester.

For the next eight years Hargrave searched for a home that would provide his creations with the care and attention they deserved. The University of Sydney baulked at the cost of cases; the University of Liverpool only wanted the ‘principal things’; the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain promised to keep his ‘generous offer in mind’; and while the Smithsonian was more enthusiastic, it could do nothing for two or three years until its new building was complete. ‘I once more lay myself open to be snubbed’, an exasperated Hargrave informed readers of the Daily Telegraph in September 1909. Offering the people of Sydney ‘no less than 13 tons measurement of models and apparatus’, he declared, ‘I cannot lay these models on the curbstone, neither can I build a hall to hold them’. As options dwindled, Hargrave repeated the offer to H W L Moedebeck, a respected German colleague. On the 13 January 1910 a cable arrived from Moedebeck: ‘Accepted’. Within a few weeks the models were on their way to the Deutsches Museum.

‘It is a regrettable thing’, noted the Sydney Morning Herald in 1915, and ‘indeed something of a disgrace’ that the government of NSW could find no room for Hargrave’s models. In the years following his death, the ‘indifference’ of museum authorities was taken as a sign of the ‘open ridicule’ with which the people of Sydney greeted Hargrave’s endeavours. He was treated as a ‘crackpot’, writers claimed, a ‘crazy kite flier’. When Hargrave had tried to donate his models to the museum, the Bulletin explained in 1940, he was ‘dismissed as a crank’. The fate of the models reflected Hargrave’s status as a neglected visionary.

But as Richard Baker was ever eager to point out, the models actually were accepted by the museum late in 1909. Even as Hargrave was putting his case before the Germans, the wheels of government were slowly turning in his favour. Did he receive the news too late, or had the embittered inventor simply given up any hope that the museum would ever meet his requirements? Hargrave believed that his first offer in 1901 had been ‘declined with scorn’, and in November 1909 wrote to a friend in England that the local authorities were ‘mean + ignorant and not at all likely to offer suitable accommodation’. Such niggardly nonsense seemed in contrast with the enthusiasm of the Germans, who had ‘nobly’ stepped in to solve ‘an old man’s dilemma’. In any case, wherever they were, the models would at last be accessible to all interested members of the public. ‘If there is anything in the world of universal interest, it is “Flying”‘, Hargrave explained to the editor of the British Aeronautical Journal, ‘and that art must not be checked in any way by keeping people in ignorance of what others have done, tried, or failed to do’.

Baker viewed the matter rather differently, and lost no opportunity to defend his museum and the people of Sydney against any accusation of prejudice. Inside the case displaying the earlier monoplane models, Baker arranged photographic copies of official correspondence which, he argued, ‘conclusively prove … that the New South Wales Government did accept Hargrave’s offer’. In spite of this, Baker maintained, Hargrave ‘was persuaded by the German Government to send his models to Germany’. Baker recounted these events a number of times, both in public and private. The details became more elaborate with time and the telling, and Hargrave’s actions appeared more questionable. As critics returned again and again to the museum’s supposed failure, Baker, like Hargrave, became mired in bitterness. In 1940, some 30 years after the event, Baker described his ‘personal and official connection’ with Hargrave as ‘the only and most unhappy incident of my scientific career’.

Baker portrayed Hargrave’s actions as a personal betrayal. He had no doubt that the inventor knew of the government’s intentions and claimed to have discussed developments with him personally. News that the models had instead been ‘dispatched to Germany’ thus caused him ‘great surprise, shock and indignation’. ‘I cut his friendship after that’, Baker explained to Mrs J Hamilton-Marshall, though there is little evidence that such a friendship ever existed. But the idea that Hargrave had been ‘persuaded’ by the Germans hinted at an even greater disloyalty. Mrs Hamilton-Marshall informed Baker that two Germans had visited Hargrave and convinced him that if the models were given to their government ‘they would be open to the world’. ‘How they must have gone round the corner to laugh’, Baker replied, ‘Germany was a closed book and a closed country and Lawrence Hargraves [sic] should have known it’. The two mysterious Germans featured in Baker’s later accounts, and in the 1940 version they were said to have paid for the dispatch of the models ‘in English gold’. According to Baker, Hargrave had given the Germans exactly what they were after, displaying ‘a want of patriotism almost unbelievable in an Australian’.

Even those who blamed the museum for the loss of the models were wary of Germany’s motives. Hargrave’s research, it was claimed, contributed to the country’s aerial power in the early years of World War I. What was perceived as the calculating nature of the Germans’ generosity encouraged a belief that the models remained Australia’s possessions by right. As World War II neared its end, J F Meehan wrote to Arthur Calwell suggesting that the models now be retrieved. ‘Other nations today are tearing from Germany every item looted from their particular country’, he argued, ‘if we have any national pride in the achievements of our own people, we should insist on this material being restored to Australia’. The Illawarra Historical Society similarly called for the models to be returned to their ‘rightful owners, the people of Australia’. The Commonwealth government pursued the matter, but American administrators quashed their hopes. The models were a gift, not loot – Australia had no claim. It was only through the generosity of the Deutsches Museum that the surviving models were finally returned in 1960.

Where did Hargrave’s loyalties lie? He was a free-trader, a New South Welshman, an Australian, a Briton, who accepted with pride a medal from Prince Luitpold of Bavaria and sought vice-regal permission to wear it in public. But he was also a pioneer, an inventor, a thinker and a dreamer, who was inspired in his work ‘by the thought of the great benefit artificial flight would be to our proud and scattered species by bringing about a knowledge of one another, and so dispelling the dark clouds of prejudice which keep us at enmity’.

Hudson Shaw observed the tension between Hargrave the idealist, who foresaw an end to national conflict, and Hargrave the realist, who volunteered for battery duty and farewelled his only son, Geoffrey, to war. Hargrave understood the irony only too well. Responding in 1915 to criticism of a plan to use the German Concordia Club as a hospital for wounded soldiers, Hargrave insisted ‘it shows a mean and petty spirit if we refuse a figurative drop of water from the foe’. His letter to the Daily Telegraph is pasted in his journal. Next to it he wrote: ‘Geoffrey Lewis Hargrave killed in action on the morning of May 24th – about the time I was prompted to write this letter’. Geoffrey, who shared his father’s passion for engineering, was killed at Gallipoli. Other than a received letter and an index of expenditure, Hargrave’s journal ends at this point. He died of peritonitis six weeks later on 6 July.

‘I have always regretted Lawrence Hargrave’s action in this matter’, Richard Baker wrote to the Royal Society of Arts, seeking to correct their account of the museum’s ‘indifference’ towards the models, ‘and I am afraid a writer at the time accounted for his death in the words “but I know that the German bullet that killed his only son, killed Lawrence Hargraves” [sic]‘.

A prophet without honour

D M Dow, a publicity officer in the Prime Minister’s Department, was inspired. In December 1923, an article in the Argus lauded Lawrence Hargrave as the man who made the ‘air age’ possible. What particularly impressed Dow was the claim that, in August 1884, one of Hargrave’s monoplane models had become ‘the first inanimate thing to fly with its own power’. Dow wrote excitedly to the controller of civil aviation, suggesting that the 40th anniversary of this ‘great event’ be commemorated by an aerial display, in which Australian aviators would pay ‘homage to the memory of the Australian who made aviation possible’. In Hargrave’s home town of Sydney, he thought, fliers might ‘drop wreaths from the air over his grave’. Sadly, such a colourful, if risky, tableau was never to be enacted-Dow’s scheme failed to ignite official interest. But this was not the only attempt to have the inventor admitted to the pantheon of Australian greats. In 1915, obituary writers proclaimed Hargrave to be a ‘prophet without honour’, an ‘unappreciated genius’. For the past century, familiar reminders of his ‘forgotten’ status have introduced efforts to memorialise Hargrave’s achievements.

The museum’s Lawrence Hargrave Memorial Court benefited from one of these earlier efforts, inheriting its commemorative function and more than £1200 from a fund established in 1920 by the NSW Section of the Australian Aero Club. Colonel Oswald Watt, a much-honoured aviator, argued that celebrations surrounding Ross Smith’s ‘epoch-making’ flight from England to Australia provided an opportune moment to recognise Hargrave, the ‘father of flying’. A suitable memorial would assist in ‘perpetuating the memory’ of this ‘pioneer of aviation’, who had persevered against ‘prejudice, disbelief and apathy’. Watt launched the fund with a donation of 50 guineas, but though a good number of worthy citizens followed his example, the proposed monument was never built. Watt drowned in 1921, and was duly honoured with his very own memorial. Ross Smith was killed the following year as he prepared for another airborne adventure. With so many dashing, young aviators risking their lives to push the limits of their art, the claims of the inventor, with his models and kites, might have seemed less pressing.

But it was Hargrave himself who had moved to stymie earlier plans to win him tribute. In 1909, when the newly formed Aerial League of Australia professed its aim ‘to secure best recognition for Australian efforts’, Hargrave understood that he was intended to be the major beneficiary. What was needed was not ‘recognition’, he argued fiercely, but dedication and ideas. ‘If my old work gives you a lead in any direction’, he declared, improve upon it’. Hargrave also remained wary of the ‘scorn and ridicule’ that he felt had greeted his early efforts. Public plaudits and self-congratulation would only open the way for further envy and derision. ‘You cannot read Australian sentiment as I can’, he warned the secretary of the Aerial League, ‘You cannot understand the bed-rock feelings of Sydney people to one who has lived among them for 42 years and yet is not of them’.

Perhaps the ageing inventor was also uncertain of his supposed success. For all his models and experiments, he had not built an aircraft capable of manned flight. Even as the Aerial League was looking to him for inspiration, Hargrave was wondering how ‘at the age of 59, with slow and crystallized methods ingrained in me, and somewhat maimed’ he could continue to contribute to the unfolding revolution. His ideas had won him praise, but little money, and he was increasingly unable to meet the financial needs of his family. In 1910 Hargrave drafted an advertisement for publication overseas, which offered the benefits of his ‘considerable technical constructive ability’. Lawrence Hargrave, the ad announced, ‘wants to know if his services are of value to anyone, and if so, what is their value’. Hargrave’s success was contained in the possibilities of flight, in the dreams and ambitions of others. What kind of success was this? ‘Mum has lost all faith in me as an engineer owing to my long list of failures’, he admitted in a letter to Nellie.

Hargrave’s feeling of isolation from the people of Sydney was mirrored within his own family. Only Nellie (Helen) and Geoff seemed to understand the significance of their father’s obsession. Hudson Shaw surmised that ‘family bitterness and division’ had left a shadow on Helen Gray’s memories. She was ‘inclined to have an inferiority complex with regard to her Father’, he wrote to Helen’s daughter Grizel Gray, ‘she has allowed the negative aspects of his life … to almost push out the picture of the real Lawrence Hargrave’. Until Shaw’s arrival at her doorstep, Helen Gray had refused to cooperate with biographers, and had sought to prevent publication by ‘various journalists who had never seen him’.

On 3 August 1940, local boy scouts flew box-kites in tribute to Hargrave as a memorial was unveiled on Bald Hill, overlooking the beach at Stanwell Park where the inventor had conducted many of his experiments. Hargrave had died during World War I, fearful that his legacy might be turned solely to destructive ends. By August 1940, with the Battle of Britain in its early stages, the horror of war in the air was becoming all too familiar. ‘We are here in respect to the memory of this man’, proclaimed the governor, Lord Wakehurst, dedicating the memorial, ‘and to show what Australia has given towards gaining mastery of the air and winning the war’.

But the memorial on Bald Hill was due less to the thanks of a grateful nation than to the enthusiasm of the Bulli Shire Council, which was keen to promote the local connections of the man ‘on whose models the modern aeroplane is patterned’. Although stung by the ‘indifference’ of the people of Sydney, Hargrave had been adopted by citizens to the south. The Wollongong region has proudly associated itself with the inventor’s memory and achievements, although, in 1963, the ‘tragic’ siting of a toilet block next to the Bald Hill memorial seemed to hint at a certain lack of respect – ‘It looks like a monument itself’, commented one observer. Local tourism authorities now boldly declare Stanwell Park to be ‘the birthplace of flight’, and kids with kites are a feature of an annual festival celebrating their neglected pioneer. A documentary pushing Hargrave’s claim to recognition opened Wollongong’s ‘Innovation Week 2004′. The director hoped the film would ‘help re-educate a nation’, while the general manager of the Wollongong Image Campaign claimed that Hargrave’s work ‘was historical validation that Wollongong had always been an innovative city’.

The Lawrence Hargrave Memorial Court was closed in the early 1980s as the museum prepared its move to the Powerhouse. Most of the models were placed in storage, much to the annoyance of Hudson Shaw, who accused the museum of ‘hiding the collection and denying the public an opportunity to view a significant part of Australia’s heritage’. In 1994, as enthusiasts planned a re-enactment to commemorate the centenary of Hargrave’s famous kite ascent, the $20 note was replaced – the inventor’s familiar grey-bearded visage disappeared from public view. Once more it seemed the prophet was to be stripped of his honour, once more to be ‘forgotten’, neglected and unrecognised. According to a recent ABC television program, Hargrave has been ‘left out of the history books’. For over a hundred years, Hargrave has been commemorated most powerfully by admissions of ignorance and neglect. For someone to whom the idea of ‘recognition’ was problematic, it is perhaps appropriate that Lawrence Hargrave is most often remembered as a man too often forgotten.

Knowledge without words

‘Come boys’, Hargrave exhorted in 1907, ‘make things that fly’. In person, Hargrave was a man of few words, well aware of his inadequacies as a teacher. Replying to a request to deliver a lecture before a group of engineers, Hargrave demurred, ‘I think I am a mechanic. You call me an authority. I know I am not a lecturer’. He was, as he explained to a journalist, ‘very slow at conveying information’. And yet he would happily invite the public to inspect his workshop, and spend a Saturday afternoon showing a group of school boys how to ‘make and fly cellular kites’. Information flowed more easily when he was surrounded by his models. Hargrave looked on his models, one colleague remarked, ‘as his very soul’s work’. Here were his ideas, here were his mistakes – visible to any young person who might learn and improve. Offering up his life’s work to the people of Sydney, Hargrave explained that the models conveyed ‘knowledge without words’.

Hargrave refused to patent his work, on grounds both of principle and practicality. ‘Even if I had patented’, he wrote to George Crossland Taylor, ‘there was no possibility of collecting revenue from the users of my invention’. The life of a patentee, he wrote elsewhere, was spent ‘in a ceaseless war with infringers’. Any ‘loot’ was merely ‘squandered’ – ‘broadcast among shoals of sharks’. More importantly, patents served to ‘block progress’ by taxing future development. ‘When man ceases to invent his doom is sealed’, Hargrave warned, ‘he must sink to brute level’.

Competition unhindered by artificial barriers offered the only true guarantee of progress. For Hargrave this was not merely an economic doctrine, but a law of nature. His opposition to patents and his support of free trade stemmed from his commitment to social darwinism. In 1903, Hargrave wrote to the newspapers criticising plans for old-age pensions as a ‘hopeless attempt to alter by legislation the eternal law of the survival of the fittest’. Individual misfortune, he argued, should be borne ‘English fashion in silence’, until by using ‘our inborn energy we push again and again to the front’. Hargrave’s belief in competition led him to oppose all attempts at ‘protection’, from the prohibition of drugs and alcohol to the White Australia policy. ‘Races’ were, after all, only the products of isolation and would ‘disappear as the facilities of travel increase’. Competition bred individual character and national strength. ‘Throw down our artificial barriers’, he proclaimed, ‘admit all and everything in free competition; if we have not the strength to hold our own and advance in civilization we are a superfluity’.

The models were Hargrave’s gift to competition, to the progress of civilisation. Whether they were in Munich, Washington or Sydney, as long as they were available to inquiring minds, they would spark further ideas and inventions. However, when the surviving models returned from Germany in 1960, they spoke not of the future but the past. Instead of inspiring young minds to ‘make things that fly’, the models were offered as a long-overdue memorial to ‘one of Australia’s great aeronautical pioneers’. This shift in meaning of course reflected dramatic developments in aeronautics itself – the days of timber and fabric were long gone. But the museum which welcomed them home had also changed. In 1891, Hargrave’s monoplane models were gratefully accepted by an institution with close ties to technical education. A decade later, Baker’s careless rejection came as he sought to develop the museum’s own research activities, while, in the 1960s, it was the collections that J L Willis was working to expand. The significance of the models varied according to the museum’s aims and emphases.

In 1966, Hudson Shaw was worried that Hargrave’s original intentions were being ignored. The inventor was concerned, Shaw explained to Willis, ‘that the models should be … visible for all to see that they might learn how they were constructed and operated’. Damage and deterioration had made this impossible, he claimed, so that ‘even an Engineer might be surprised that they worked at all’. This was an ‘old argument in Museums’, Willis replied, whether to preserve or restore. In this case technical clarity was deemed less important than maintaining the models ‘exactly as when Hargrave last touched them’. The models were a record of the man, rather than a repository of ideas.

The meaning of the models began to shift once again as they lay in storage in the late 1980s. The museum initiated a program to collect and document examples of Australian innovation – from the stump-jump plough to the Hills hoist and beyond. Successful innovators, according to the museum, were those able to protect their ideas, and to develop and market their product. Walter Hume, for example, Hargrave’s contemporary, used his idea for a new casting process for concrete pipes to create one of Australia’s largest manufacturing companies. By 1939 they held over 500 patents. Amidst this catalogue of Australian innovation, Hargrave seems an ill-fit – almost a case study of how not to succeed. He sought no patents, and was driven not by the needs of the market but his own standards of perfection and progress. In a world which seeks to harness innovation to economic growth, where ‘free-trade’ agreements reinforce protection of intellectual property, the lessons contained within the models remain difficult to discern.

The Powerhouse Museum marked the centenary of powered flight, in December 2003, with the opening of a new exhibition- ‘Lawrence Hargrave: Australia’s pioneer aviator’. A hundred years earlier Hargrave had learnt of the Wright brothers’ success while suffering from a bout of typhoid (his health never fully recovered). But whatever doubts there might be about the nature of Hargrave’s achievements can be resolved by focusing on his place in the lineage of aviation. Whatever his frustrations or disappointments, there is no doubt that he hastened the development of manned flight. For all the ‘scorn and ridicule’, he was right. And to make certain of the point, biographers and enthusiasts continue their quest to prove a connection with the Wright brothers’ design. In the models we can see the foundations of flight, the evidence of Hargrave’s place in history.

In May 1908, Hargrave eagerly awaited the visit of the United States’ ‘Great White Fleet’. He admired America’s inventive abilities and commitment to competition, and imagined the fleet to be well-endowed with budding engineers-bright, young men keen to pursue recent developments in aeronautics. Hargrave issued an invitation to the fleet, unpacked as many of his models as could be displayed within his workshop, and waited. No one came; ‘not even a boy’, he wrote to his American colleague, Octave Chanute.

How should we remember Lawrence Hargrave? Is he waiting still, surrounded by his models, for us to grant him fulfilment? Does his life gain meaning only through our attempts to win him widespread recognition? Perhaps it shows more respect to leave him waiting and anxious – his passions still burning, his conflicts unresolved. Surrounded by his models, ‘his very soul’s work’, Hargrave is more than a link in the chain of progress. The models may no longer educate young engineers, but they do speak of determination and creativity. Knowledge without words – the museum holds the evidence of a remarkable man and his hopes. Dreams, too, can fly.

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