Interesting Conference

Connecting the Colonies: Empires and Networks in the History of the Book

Followers of this blog, and supporters of the Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, will be interested in this conference to be held in Hobart later this year;

"Empires of all kinds – commercial, geo-political, bureaucratic – are defined by their peripheries as well as their centres, by the flows of information that maintain or destabilise their structures of authority and control.

BSANZ, in collaboration with the Society for the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing (SHARP), invites scholars and researchers to consider the printed word, the book, and texts of all kinds, as both mechanism and matter of transmission."

The Conference will take place from 22-24 November, 2017, and registrations close on 6 November.

A Provisional List of Speakers is currently available on Eventbrite

As an ancillary event to the conference the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) and the Friends of Launceston Mechanics' Institute (FOLMI) are offering attendees a tour of their respective library collections on the Saturday afternoon following the conference, 25 November.

QVMAG has been active in preserving and recreating early Tasmanian library collections - notably the Evandale Subscription Library, whose founding members included the artist John Glover, and the collections of the Deloraine Public Library and The Longford Library and Reading Room.

Considered in tandem with our nationally significant Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection, and the remarkable collection of the Bothwell Literary Society, this is a great opportunity for scholars and researchers to reflect on the central theme of the conference as they inspect and consider these collections of books established in a frontier colony at the furthest extremity of the British Empire.

A Gallery of Inventions

Our previous post made mention of the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal and Gazette (1823-55).  Carrying the motto "knowledge is power" the Mechanics' Magazine was the first of many low cost, weekly publications aimed at a new readership – the largely self educated artisans who were charged with the operation, maintenance and especially improvement of the machines on which the industrial revolution relied. These magazines became a clearing house for patents, ideas, speculations and enquiries, and were to a considerable extent written by their readers.

Most issues featured illustrations, labelled diagrams or sketches produced from simple woodcuts, usually on the title page. Inside the issue the "inventor" contributed a detailed description of their machine, prototype or idea.

Below is a small selection of illustrations from the 1820s and '30s, taken from the covers of the Mechanics' Magazine and other similar pioneering journals in our collection. As with all of our posts, you can view a larger version simply by clicking on the image.

  A New Musical Instrument, from The Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, No XXXI, New Edition, [1824], p 17.

Pedomotive Carriage, from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 34, April 17, 1824, p 31.

Dredging Machine on the River Clyde, from the Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, No XXXIX, 25^th September, 1824, p 145

Locomotive Engine on the Cog-Wheel Principle, from the London Mechanics' Register, No 15, February 12, 1825, p 225. 

Description of a Water-Horse, from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 96, June 25, 1825, p 177

New Patent Steam Coach, from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 112, October 15, 1825, p 433.

Hebert's Patent Domestic Flour-maker, from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 665, May 7, 1836, p 65.

Hebert's Flour-Maker , from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 678, August 6, 1836, p 305.

Hancock's New Steam-Carriage "Automaton", from the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. No. 685, September 24, 1836, p 433