Published Resources Details
Book Section
- Title
- Sources relating to survey, mineral exploration and research on substitute fuels in the Australian Archives
- In
- Some sources for the history of Australian science: six papers presented at a workshop on the history of Australian science organized by the Australian academy of Science. 24-25 August 1982
- Imprint
- History Project Incorporated, Kensington (N.S.W.), 1984, pp. 47-71
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0949776181
- Abstract
I began this paper with the intention of listing all the Commonwealth government bodies from 1901 to around 1950 which had scientific functions, then documenting their inter-relationships and indicating those scientific records which have survived. It was soon apparent that this was an impossibly ambitious plan to carry out in my spare time : the further I searched, the narrower I made my field.
What I am presenting is accordingly lists of Commonwealth agencies and selected records (not exclusively scientific) for that period which relate to three linked areas of Commonwealth scientific activity: the encouragement given to oil and mineral search; the concurrent interest in the development of alternative liquid fuels; and the development of a Federal Survey.
I should make it clear that I have appraoched these areas as an archivist, not as an historian or a scientist. I have chosen Commonwealth records because I work with them, but hasten to stress that the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the Australian Archives. My principal aim is to draw attention to the fact that Commonwealth records in Australian Archives form a little-used primary source for the history of Australian science in the twentieth century, and also to indicate in a general way how the sources can be approached.
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Corporate Bodies
Related Published resources
isPartOf
- Borchardt, D. H. ed., Some sources for the history of Australian science: six papers presented at a workshop on the history of Australian science organized by the Australian academy of Science. 24-25 August 1982 (Kensington, N.S.W.: History Project Incorporated, 1984), 81 pp. Details