The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has recently acquired the Electricity Council archives, a body of material of national scope and a major resource for researchers into the electricity industry. The Electricity Council had previously transferred its collection of electrical artefacts to the Museum to be used in the development of the National Electricity Gallery, opened in March 1986, which it co-funded with Greater Manchester Council. In order to illustrate the content and value of these archives, this paper focuses on the promotion of the domestic use of electricity during the inter-war period, a choice of subject which relates to a strong area of the Museum's object collections. The first section outlines the acquisition and scope of the archives and describes the records therein of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) and the British Electrical Development Association (EDA); the second section uses the relevant records of the EAW and the EDA to investigate the chosen theme, with particular reference to women's involvement and perceptions of women.

This paper looks at a genre of meetings that, while neither purely ‘scientific’ nor ‘diplomatic’, drew on elements from both professional spheres and gained prominence in the interwar decades and during the Second World War. It proposes to make sense of ‘technical conferences’ as a phenomenon that was made by and through scientific experts and politicians championing the organizing power of rationality, science and liberal internationalism. Against the background of swelling ranks of state-employed scientists, this paper documents the emergence of technical conferences as the forums where they got down to work. To make this case the paper traces the influence of a new way of thinking about the function and organization of conferences, originating in the time around the First World War, on one international organization in particular: the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), as a new hub of scientists and technicians.

In two conferences, separated by the space of only a few months, in September 1966 and March 1967, Giovanni Polvani—at the time president of the Domus Galilaeana—and the council of the Domus, attempted a series of operations, all ambitious and difficult. The first, and to some extent the simplest, was to gather round the Domus all those who were working in a professional role or as amateurs on the history of science. Also invited were scholars who had become involved in the discipline through the territorial or thematic nature of their particular interests (as was the case with Luigi Firpo, Cesare Vasoli and others), or who had some special relation to the history of science of a more, so to speak, extrinsic kind, people such as archivists, librarians, and so on. Secondly, the organizers wished—and here was where the difficulties began—to start up a discussion (not limited to mere theory) on what people understood the history of science to be, what its relationship was with the history of technology, of philosophy, and with cultural history in general. As hinted above, the discussion was not meant to be on abstract theoretical terms, since it was designed to serve as a premise for an even more complex project, that is to set up a centre for the training of future historians of science. As often happens, in the heat of discussing the concrete problems which were the subject of the first meeting at Pisa (the sources of the history of science, limited to Italy, and only to the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries), there emerged difficulties, various orientations, evaluations and declarations, which were both meaningful and enlightening.

This paper is a study of the intersection between aviation and diplomacy in the semi-autonomous Indian state of Jodhpur in the final decades of British colonial rule in India. Jodhpur's Maharaja Umaid Singh established a major international aerodrome, patronized one of India's first flying clubs and collaborated with British authorities to make aviation laws for the Indian states. He would also serve in the Royal Air Force during the war and placed Jodhpur state's aviation resources at the disposal of the king-emperor. This paper argues that Jodhpur was able to leverage its aviation resources to wield substantial influence both within and beyond the British Empire through both war and peace. An analysis of Jodhpur's engagement with aviation diplomacy is also revealing of some of the limitations as well as possibilities for the deployment of science diplomacy frameworks, especially in non-Western contexts.

A great deal has been written concerning the impact of new technology on traditional publishing processes, leading to new forms of electronic publishing. Much less thought has been given to the effects of computerization on archival material. Yet, increasingly, records previously held in hard-copy form are being stored and handled electronically; this is particularly true of information in the scientific/technological/industrial area. In coming years, this will affect the work both of the archivist and of the historian seeking to use these records. It makes sense to try and anticipate the problems that computerization may create.