Electrical engineers’ notebooks
The notebooks and findings of the Society of Electrical Engineers, scanned so researchers can go back to the original working, in the engineers’ own hands.
- Book and register scanning
- Online hosting
- And findings, scanned page by page
- Notebooks
- Back within reach of researchers
- Originals
- Fragile volumes scanned without contact
- Untouched
The collection
The Society of Electrical Engineers keeps its members’ notebooks and findings: the working behind discoveries, set down in the engineers’ own hands, with their sketches, circuit drawings and calculations.
Notebooks like these were written to be used, not kept. Pencil fades and smudges, ink bleeds through thin paper, and pages are tipped in, folded out or pinned in place.
What we did
We scanned the notebooks page by page, open in a cradle under overhead scanners, so the bindings were never forced flat. Fold-outs were opened and captured whole, and loose and pinned-in pages were kept in their place in the sequence.
Every image was checked for focus, colour and missed pages before each notebook went back, and the scans were prepared for the Society to put online.
What it made possible
Researchers can go back to the originals, seeing exactly what was written and drawn, in what order and with what second thoughts, without handling fragile volumes.
