BOOK REVIEWS
Researching your Family
History
by Pam Ross
The Crowood Press, 2010, 176pp, £14.99
Drawing on a wealth of experience gained
from tracing her own family history and as
a professional historian, Pam Ross sets
out to produce ‘the book I would have
wanted when I first started researching my
own family history’, a task in which she
has been eminently successful.
Writing in a clear and concise manner, she gives practical
information about the types of resources available and how to use
them. We are not only told what exists, why it exists, and where it is
likely to be found but also why it is important, what extra clues and
leads it might produce and where we should go to next.
Each chapter is well laid out, the short headed sections making
it easy to find relevant information. Illustrations of original
documents are included, enabling the researcher to judge how
valuable they will be, and inset panels give helpful facts and tips.
Basic, but important, information about recording references and
filing records is given along with details of new and useful websites
and the relevance of DNA.
This is a book which will give inspiration to both new and
experienced researchers and will be referred to again and again as
research progresses.
Janet Sullivan
From Pens to Particle
Physics: The Story of a
Birmingham Family
Business
by John Berkeley, OBE
Brandauer Holdings Limited, 2012, 36pp.
Available to download from:
brandauer.co.uk/timeline
Brandauer celebrated its 150th
anniversary in 2012. A long-established, family-run, precision
engineering business in Birmingham, the firm has made the
transition from manufacturing pens in the nineteenth century to
making vital components in the twenty-first century for the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear
Research.
Two men, Joseph Petit, a Jewellery Quarter craftsman of French
Huguenot origin, and the German Karl Brandauer, a merchant,
formed the Brandauer partnership in 1862. Since then, the business
has been in the forefront of communications technology. By 1890 it
had won several prizes at international exhibitions for its pens, the
company catalogue listed 424 individual designs and its products
were exported around the world. The advent of the ballpoint pen and
information technology effectively ended the Birmingham pen trade,
but Brandauer diversified, producing many products in the second
half of the twentieth century, including stylus arms for record
players, hubs and shutters for floppy disks, integrated circuit frames
and components for the telecommunications industries.
John Berkeley has written a fascinating, informative and wellillustrated account, which interweaves company history, technical
innovation and the experiences of the owners and workers. If one
message emerges, it is that adapting its products to rapidly changing
markets has ensured Brandauer’s success.
Malcolm Dick
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The Pen and the People:
English Letter Writers
1660-1800
by Susan E Whyman
Oxford University Press, 2011, 368pp,
£21.00
This book provides a fascinating
account of the intertwined relationship
between letter-writing, the postal
service and the growing literary culture
of the eighteenth century. By taking an
apparently mundane aspect of life,
such as writing letters, Whyman
provides a history of the early postal service, contextualising how it
was understood and developed in this period, as well as examining
how people acquired ‘epistolary literacy’ and the variety of ways in
which letters were used in everyday life.
One of the significant aspects of Whyman's work is the use of a
range of archival material from various regions, including
Derbyshire, and a range of individuals and family groups. Whyman
shifts the focus from London, too often seen as the only important
centre of print and literary culture in Britain at this time, and
considers the letters of a range of people from the middling and
lower ranks of society, not just the societal or cultural elites.
Whyman therefore offers a new way of considering the spread of
literacy, the importance of letters to families and cultural
networks and the impact of letter-writing for the emerging literary
form, the novel.
Kate Iles
Victoria County History of
Staffordshire: vol. XI
Audley, Keele and Trentham
edited by Nigel J Tringham
Boydell and Brewer, 2013, 320pp, £95
This volume covers five parishes in the
north west of Staffordshire: Audley,
Betley, Keele, Madeley and Trentham.
Two prominent townships - Talke and
Blurton - are dealt with separately, as
is Balterley, which lies in the county
though within a Cheshire parish.
Each parish history has the familiar thematic and chronological
format, yet current VCH publications have a broader content than
previously. Social history, for example, encompasses community
activities and medical practitioners alongside education and
workhouses. Likewise, the focus of the main post-Dissolution
estates is on development rather than manorial descent, leading
to a contrast between the current use of Trentham Hall Estate as a
tourist attraction and the Sneyd Estate as the campus of Keele
University. Prevailing issues are mentioned as the University
works towards improving its environmental credentials and,
elsewhere, there is reference to community internet access. Coal
mining and iron working both feature prominently yet here, as in
other sections, there are topics such as ‘a coal mistress’ that may
entice an inquisitive reader into further investigation.
This volume contains a high level of scholarship from a wide
range of sources and should be used both as an excellent
reference book and as a stepping stone to further research.
Catherine Cartwright
www.historywm.com
TIMELINE
The ways in which words are transmitted have evolved
dramatically over the centuries – from speech to
writing, the printing press and new technologies. The
change from verbal to written communication began
over 5,000 years ago.
3200-3000 BC: Writing systems developed in Egypt and later in India
(2200 BC), China (1200 BC) and Mexico (600 BC). The earliest form of
printing was the duplication of images by means of stamps or seals, for
example on clay tablets. In Europe and India, printing on cloth preceded
printing on paper or papyrus.
2000-1050 BC: The first true alphabetic writing, mapping single symbols
to single phonemes (speech sounds), was developed around 2000 BC in
the Sinai from Egyptian hieroglyphs. This Phoenician alphabet, written
from right to left, became one of the most widely used writing systems
across the Mediterranean world. It evolved into the Aramaic alphabet, the
ancestor of modern Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew scripts. The Greek alphabet
introduced for the first time explicit symbols for vowel sounds. Greek is
written from left to right, and was the forerunner of the Latin, Cyrillic,
Gothic and Coptic alphabets.
6th Century AD: Latin and its writing system were brought to Britain
by Augustine of Canterbury. Anglo-Saxon rulers, including Offa of
Mercia, adapted the script for their own language which eventually
evolved into English.
1300: Block printing on cloth for religious purposes was present in
Europe.
punched paper cards as a template. This programmable
aspect of the Jacquard Loom contributed to the eventual
development of computers.
1824: Josiah Mason (1795-1881), a pen manufacturer in
Birmingham, invented a method of making slit nibs cheaply.
He became the largest producer of pens in England and
established Mason College in 1880, the forerunner of the
University of Birmingham.
1837: Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was the first to
conceptualise and design a fully programmable mechanical
computer: his ‘analytical engine’.
1940-45: The first electronic digital computers were developed
in the United Kingdom and United States. Originally they were
the size of a large room and used for military applications.
By 1953, transistors were being used instead of vacuum tubes
and computers became progressively smaller, faster, more reliable,
cheaper to produce and used less electricity.
1960s: Research into communication via computer networks
started in the USA, UK and France. Electronic mail became a
crucial tool in creating the Internet. Xerox photocopying
machines were introduced.
1969-71: The laser printer, based on a modified xerographic
copier, was invented, using integrated circuit technology and
microprocessors. Standards for encoding email messages were
proposed as early as 1973.
1400: Paper became relatively easily available in Europe and block
printing with woodcuts was used to make religious images. These prints
were produced in quantity from about 1425 onwards.
1980s: Home computers and PCs were introduced, leading to
many individuals changing the way they wrote and presented the
written word. The academic Internet began, which developed
into a global system of interconnected computer networks.
1439: Johannes Gutenberg (1395-1468) developed European movable
type printing technology. Gutenberg has also been credited with the
introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than previously
used water-based inks.
1989-1990: The World Wide Web (abbreviated as www), a
system using text, images and film accessed via the Internet, was
developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (b 1955) from a system used at
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).
1450: Block-books, with both text and images, usually carved in the same
block, emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed
with movable type.
1993: On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide
Web was to be free to anyone. Electronic mail, most commonly
referred to as email or e-mail, became an increasingly common
way of exchanging messages.
1455: The Gutenberg Bible was produced. Its high quality and
relatively low price established the superiority of movable type. Printing
presses spread rapidly across Europe in the fifteenth century and later
around the world.
1476: William Caxton (c 1415/22-c 1492) set up his press at Westminster
and became the first printer in England. The Early and Fine Printing
Collection at the new Library of Birmingham contains three perfect copies
of a book printed by Caxton in 1479. It is a book of meditation on death
entitled Cordiale or the Four last thinges.
1750: John Baskerville (1705/6-1775) set up as a printer and type
designer in Birmingham. His press was not very different from that of
William Caxton. The New Library of Birmingham and the Cadbury
Research Library have extensive collections of his books including his first
printed book by Virgil, which ‘went forth’, according to Macaulay ‘to
astonish all the librarians of Europe’.
1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) developed a loom
which could weave intricate patterns automatically using a series of
www.historywm.com
1995: Amazon started to sell physical books via the Internet.
2004: Google announced plans to digitise the holdings of several
major libraries, as part of the Google Books Library Project.
2007: Amazon launched Kindle, a way of reading books,
newspapers and magazines via a hand-held computer.
2010: Amazon.com reported that its e-book sales outnumbered
sales of hardcover books for the first time during the second
quarter of 2010.
2010: Apple Inc launched a multi-function device called the iPad
and announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers
to distribute e-books.
2013: More than 2.4 billion people – over one third of the
world’s population – used the Internet, to access the ‘word’ via
email, as well as information held on millions of private, public,
academic, business, and government websites.
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