Output progress chart from CK Shaw, Industrial Publicity, London: C&J Temple, 1944, probably copyright by the estate of CK Shaw. — Output progress chart from CK Shaw, *Industrial Publicity,* London: C&J Temple, 1944, probably copyright by the estate of CK Shaw.

Upcoming:

The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, 19 September 2023

Recent:

Computer Conservation Society North West, Manchester, 23 May 2023.

Or you can maybe hear me still at

BBC podcast Alan Turing’s Life in Manchester, part of the Gaychester series, now on BBC Sounds. I doubt if this can be heard outside the UK.
British Computer Society, 2020. Warning for those seeking detailed hardware history: this is the talk that caused a senior historian of British computing to send me a long list of corrections, along with the entirely correct comment that I was more interested in the people than the machines.
My talk, mentioning Manchester, Turing and The Pineapple in Cambridge on 21 Feb 2020, on the CRASSH website. (If you see ‘disallowed characters’ that doesn’t mean you, but does mean you should clear your briowser cookies and retry).

Some of my mathematical biology lectures intended for mathematics undergraduates are available online; please get in touch to find out more.

If you are interested in a talk for your organisation, please get in touch. Audience feedback suggests I am a funny and passionate performer who leaves them fascinated by new perspectives, even on stories they thought they knew, and that the screen should have been bigger: all I know is I love talking about this stuff. It’s mainly history: there’s a little bit of adding up, but no actual maths, though there are existence proofs of maths jokes.

St Peter's Square, 1961

Still from Technological Education in Britain, a film produced by UMIST and probably copyright by the University of Manchester. A copy of the film is held by the North West Film Archive and it can be viewed online at BFI.

Reflections of modernity

Taken by an unknown photographer in 1951 /2 and at the time copyright by Ferranti Ltd.

This photograph was used in Ferranti’s 1952 brochure for the Ferranti Mark I. There are copies of this in both the Museum of Science and Industry, and the University of Manchester. The University has in the past published this photograph with a claim that it owns the copyright.

Abacus Screen, by Edward Mills, Festival of Britain, London, 1951

ICI publicity image from the 1951 Festival of Britain brochure

Artist and copyright holder unknown.

War Memorial, by James Chettle, 1941

This painting is held by Manchester Art Gallery. It is out of copyright.

ArtUK assert that Manchester Art Gallery has licensed this image of it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Manchester Art Gallery believe that, because in the past they commissioned a faithful photograph of this work, some additional copyright arises in the resulting image. This view has not been upheld in UK courts in the twenty-first century, and modern textbooks on intellectual property law suggests it would not be. In any case Manchester Art Gallery have said they do not assert any copyright over the image they have uploaded to ArtUK, and that they would only assert copyright over a higher-resolution image which they have not uploaded there. I’m grateful to Manchester Art Gallery staff for patiently explaining their position to me.

Patrick Blackett by Emmanuel Levy

Held in the National Portrait Gallery. (c) The estate of Emmanuel Levy, probably, although the circumstances of the commission are not known. Neither I, the Manchester Art Gallery, The Jewish Museum, Manchester, or National Portrait Gallery know who control the Levy estate.

Douglas Hartree's differential analyser, around 1945

Douglas Hartree and Phyllis Nicolson are on the right.

The British Council assert copyright over this image and have granted permission to use it. Multiple versions of it can be found online, including this one. No physical copy is known.

Supposed marine life forms drawn by Ernst Haeckel, about 1884

Plate 1 of Haeckel, 1904, Art forms of Nature. The Circogonia icosohedra is redrawn from the type report in Haeckel’s 1887 Challenger survey.

The original is out of copyright, and scans are widely available, for example here.

Special Number on Homosexuality

The cover of The British Journal of Delinquency, Volume 9, Number 1, 1955. The content of the journal is (c) Oxford University Press.

Population centres around Manchester

Unknown artist, 1947.

From the South Lancashire and North Cheshire Adrisory Planning Committee’s Advisory Plan.

How did this happen

From Alan Turing’s notes 1953/1954. Copyright King’s College Cambridge.

St Peter's Square

A copy of this postcard appears in Erik Krieger’s Manchester: The Postcard Collection. The photographer and copyright holder are both unknown. The image dates from after 1958 as the uncropped version shows the Peter House office block which was built in that year.

Map of Industrial Towns around Manchester

From the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Handbook, 1931-1932.

The upper left corner says ‘Norah Simcock fecit 1931’ so it is possible that this image is still in copyright, although the ownership is not definite. The companion street map from the same book is known to have been drawn in at least two versions, one of which is credited to a different artist.

Cities of Manchester and Salford

From the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Handbook, 1931-1932.

No artist details are given. If this is an anonymous work then it is out of copyright. While there are considerable stylistic similarities to the regional map in the same volume which carries a credit to Norah Simcock, it is also more closely related to another street map (reprinted in the wonderful recent Manchester: Mapping The City by Wyke, Robson & Dodge) published in the Manchester Guardian in 1926, bearing the initials WM.

Banana Split

Joan Marks, 1952, Cafe & Milk Bar Catering, London: Heywood & Co. This image is by an unknown artist, and the copyright holder is unknown. I have tried and failed to trace who holds any surviving copyright owned by Heywood & Co.

Festival of Britain staff outside Lower Campsfield Market

The National Archives, WORK 25/207.

I believe this anonymous photograph commissioned for the Festival of Britain was once Crown Copyright and is now out of copyright.

The Skill of the British People

Photograph from the National Archives WORK 25/210/D1/FOB4034; copyright as WORK 25/207.

Manchester United Festival of Britain match against Red Star Yugoslavia