Connecting Cornwall: Telecommunications, Locality and Work in West Britain 1870-1918

Project start date: 2009-02 Project end date: 2010-08
Cornwall has a number of significant historical communications sites starting with Porthcurno and ranging over early radio sites at Poldhu and the Lizard to Land’s End and Bodmin Radio and the Satellite station at Goonhilly. The ‘Connecting Cornwall’ project will be using the Cable and Wireless historic archive to develop new research into the communications industry in Cornwall with an emphasis on the Eastern Telegraph Company in the first instance. The intended outcomes will include a fully searchable website that will function as a resource for academic research and provide downloadable podcasts for educational use and for other visitors to the Cornish communications sites.
Era(s): 
Methods usedCategory
General website developmentData publishing and dissemination
Manual input and transcriptionData capture
Funding sources: 
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created: 
3D object, Dataset/structured data, Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used: 
Javascript
Source material used:  
Material has been taken from the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum Archive and includes: images, letters, diaries, the staff index for the Eastern Telegraph Company, the index to the weekly board meetings of the Eastern Telegraph Company, misc documents. Material has also been used from other archives including BT Archives, Imperial War Museum (all archives), Cornwall Country Records Office, the National Archives, The Huntley Archive, Cornish Studies Library, The Courtney Library, The Archive of Modern Conflict, The Guildhall London, The Marconi Collection (The Bodleian Library, Oxford), The Wellcome Library, the Institute for Engineering and Technology Archive, and the British Postal Museum and Archive.
Digital resource created:  
Material covers the period 1870-1918 Staff Records Index: access to the names of staff from the Eastern Telegraph Company. George Spratt Diaries: access to the Assistant Superintendent of Porthcurno telegraph stations diary. Index to Board Minutes: access to the index of the Eastern Telegraph Company's weekly board meetings. Images: access to over 1000 images related to submarine telegraphy(business and personal) Documents: access to documents that represent the lives of telegraphers and the submarine telegraphy business.
Access to digital resource:  
Open Access
Data Formats created: 
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), JPEG File Interchange Format (JPG)
Metadata standards employed: 
Dublin Core, simple (DC), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

Institutions affiliated with this project: 

UK HE institutions involved:
University of Exeter
UK HE institutions involved:
Porthcurno Telegraph Museum

Project staff and expertise: 

Principal staff member:Dr Richard Noakes, Prof Alan Booth, Prof Jo Melling, Dr Wendy Gagen, David Dawson, Robert Chester, Alan Renton, Fiona Chester, Dee Cleary, Charlotte Dando, Libby Buckley
Other staff:
External expertise:


Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record
Author(s) of recordRichard Noakes
TitleConnecting Cornwall: Telecommunications, Locality and Work in West Britain 1870-1918
Record created2010-09-01
Record updated2010-09-01 14:24
URL of recordhttp://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3705
Citation of recordRichard Noakes: Connecting Cornwall: Telecommunications, Locality and Work in West Britain 1870-1918.
<http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/3705>
created: 2010-09-01, last updated 2010-09-01 14:24