Professor Peter Isaac was Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle. He had a passion for the history of printing and the book trade in England and after he retired as Head of Department in 1983, he devoted himself to studying aspects of the book: writing books and articles, and stimulating others to do the same.

In Newcastle, Professor Isaac co-founded the Newcastle Imprint Club in 1963, a meeting point for anyone interested in print, design, and books. The Club’s first meeting took place in Newcastle University’s Barras Bridge Refectory, with an informal dinner and a talk, entitled ‘Briefing the Print Designer’. The Club welcomed nationally- and internationally-respected figures to speak at its quarterly talks, latterly in the Philip Robinson Library at Newcastle University, and Durham University’s Palace Green Library. These could include managers of large commercial print firms, printers from private presses, illustrators, authors, poets, and lecturers with an interest in the print and book trades.

When Professor Isaac died in 2002, his wife Marjorie donated 19 boxes of her husband’s correspondence, working papers, printing keepsakes, type specimens, and books, to Special Collections. The Peter Isaac Collection is, as yet, uncatalogued but there is strong emphasis on private presses and print. There are notes and typescripts relating to Professor Isaac’s book on Alnwick printer William Davison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), and his ongoing research into Newcastle printer and typographer William Bulmer (1757-1830).

Among the Imprint Club memorabilia in the Isaac Collection is this flyer. It was produced almost exactly twenty years ago to advertise the 25 October 1994 talk, ‘Impressions of Bewick’, in the Robinson Library.

Thomas Bewick, born in Cherryburn, Northumberland, in 1753, had a hug influence on the history of wood engraving. The Imprint Club organised many talks by wood engravers over its thirty-odd-year existence, including a talk by world-renowned Bewick expert Iain Bain in 1972. Bewick’s work was much-copied, resulting in the proliferation of ‘Bewickish’ prints during the nineteenth century.

The ‘Bewickish work’ was printed by artist Alex McLaren on his 1852 Albion hand press in the basement of his home. The woodblocks – most certainly not only the work of Bewick – came from the collections of Peter Isaac and Ron Beresford, a member of the Imprint Club. A portfolio of the prints, with notes on the printing and provenance, was assembled and, in the manner of private press keepsakes, given gratis to Imprint Club members after the talk. Our 20th Century Collection has one of these portfolios. In his essay, Ron Beresford writes that he obtained his blocks – which possibly came from William Davison’s print shop – from a Mr Meyer of Alnwick, who had rescued them from a bonfire.

27 May 2014 marked the centenary of the death of Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914), Sunderland-born scientist, pioneer, and inventor of early electric light bulbs, photographic processes, and synthetic fibres.

Swan was very much a local man working on Grey Street Newcastle for a firm of manufacturing chemists Mawson, Swan and Morgan, and going on to live at Low Fell in Gateshead. It was here, in a large conservatory, that Swan conducted many of the experiments that led to his creation of the first partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent light bulb in 1850.

Unsatisfied with the lamps short lifespan and inefficiency, Swan continued to work on his invention until he finally presented it to the public on 3 February 1879 when over seven hundred people viewed it in action at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle. This time, the lamp used a carbonized thread and a better vacuum, but Swan improved on it again with ‘parchmentised thread’ before he began to install his invention in homes across England. His own house was the world’s first to have electric lighting installed.

By 1881, the Savoy Theatre in London (the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electric light) and both the House of Commons and the British Museum were illuminated using Swan bulbs. In 1883, Swan went into business with Thomas Edison, famed for similar but independent developments in electric lighting, to form Edison and Swan United Electric, producing lights commercially.

Having exhibited the electric light bulb in Paris in 1881, Swan was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, the highest decoration in France. In 1904, he became only the third person to receive the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal. He was also honoured locally with the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, only a few months before his death in 1914.

These original honours (pictured above), donated by his descendants, are now on permanent display in the Special Collections Reading Room on level 1 of the Philip Robinson Library.

An archive recently gifted to Special Collections from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology offers a unique insight into this pioneering, sub polar expedition through transcripts of the radio communications between the ground team and the US Air Force. Among its participants was Hal Lister; a Geography lecturer at Newcastle University who served as a Glaciologist here and later on the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1955 – 1958), led by Vivian Fuch and supported by Sir Edmund Hilary.

The archive is nationally significant and documents the first large-scale British expedition and scientific exploration of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The archive captures significant events, achievements (e.g. the crossing of the ice sheet), and logistical challenges of undertaking such a large-scale expedition at a time when polar logistics were inherently difficult and dangerous. It represents a unique day-to-day’ record of a large-scale, but little-documented, Cold-War era British scientific exploration.

The purpose of this expedition, led by Commander James Simpson, was primarily scientific studies in glaciology, meteorology, geology and physiology, but also so the armed services could gain experience working in polar conditions.

In his second spell as Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill was very proud to be Vice-Patron of the expedition and offered his best wishes to the team before their departure in July 1952 from Deptford (right). Among the pencil-written messages conveying both scientific messages, details on supplies, and jokes between the expedition and support team, is this particular message from Simpson. In it, he offers congratulations to Churchill on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, where he beat writers such as Ernest Hemingway for his numerous historical accounts of both World Wars.

Greenland was a successful venture and amongst the team’s achievements included two pioneering ascents in the Barth Mountains and Dronning Louise Land. Sadly, there was one fatality, in 1953 when Captain H. A Jensen of the Danish Army fell to his death. The entire team were awarded the Polar Medal in November 1954.

Conservation at work

The documents arrived at Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives and a bundle of papers.

We then sent this archive off to Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums to work their conservation magic, to flatten and preserve the papers. Here’s the conservation in progress…