Allan Green has sent me a CD with Viguer's "Histoire . . ." This comprises about 20 pages of text in English, maps of lines in China and cables from China. He also included a single page in Chinese (traditional script) and there is an indication that there is a lot more. I have asked him to get me an indication of how much more. A translation of this and a comparison with the English text would be very useful. I am convinced that Jorma Ahvenainen in his "Far Eastern Telegraphs" has 'cleaned-up' the subject in so far as it is viewed from the West. Anything new has to be from a Chinese perspective.

Remembering what General Costello said to me when I interviewed him in 1987 "of course Britain had a wonderful spy in the person of Elizabeth Bowen, but they did not believe her. We were reading all of her messages, which were incredibly accurate. She even managed to report the only two U-boat incursions into Free State waters". Several years later I enquired when I visited Irish Military Archives. I was told that there was no information available on these intercepts. Whether this meant that there was indeed nothing in the Archive, or whether such material was closed to inspection was not made clear. Anyway, in a recent Google search I came across a book entitled "Elizabeth Bowen Notes on Eire: Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill 1940 - 42, with a Review of Irish Neutrality in World War 2". It is published by Aubane Historical Society and it turned out that UEA Library has a copy which I have now borrowed. A quick inspection caused my blood to boil somewhat, so that there may be something written down about this book, maybe a 'Review' before too long.

1. Anne now has the web site up. This comprises a front page and a page full of downloadable files. For each file there is now a brief abstract.
2. Future additions include several papers that will need to be scanned in full or at least have their images scanned. A rough summary is

* Cable Landings in and around Newfoundland (text scaned + OCR, drawing scanned)
* Commercial Cable Co and their Waterville station (text scaned + OCR, drawing scanned)
* The Bewleys and their contribution (text scaned + OCR, drawing scanned)
* Eric Clayton's History of BT Marine Services (text scaned + OCR, drawings/pictures scanned)
* Ivan Coggeshall's History of Western Union (drawings/pictures scanned)
* My translation of "Os Cabos dos Acores" (text scanned+OCR with maps added)
* Dominic's "Copper Trojan Horse" (e-ready)
* Papers 1, 2 and Presentation 1 from the Manchester meeting (e-ready)

1. The biography of Edward Graves has been transformed into e-readable format. Most of the material had to be scanned in.
2. Am thinking about finding a publisher for the autobiographies of James Graves, but have not come up with any firm ideas yet.
3. My History of Meteorology now had three chapters drafted and work on the fourth (a biography of Robert FitzRoy) is ongoing.

Have just finished editing James Graves technical autobiography. While working on it I discovered that Graves intended to write it up to end of May 1909 (when he retired). In fact he did not complete it and wound it up pre the arrival of the Commercial Cable Co. So I must assume that his title page "36 years in the telegraphic service" was created late on. Even this is not quite accurate as details beyond about 1884/5 are a bit sparse. So, anyway, I have added an Afterword which brings the story right up to end May 1909. I think that it is now in very good shape and it might be worth seeing if the IET might publish it.

Am giving a talk to the students in Computing Science tomorrow and have prepared a PowerPoint presentation "The miracle of the bits: how we got from 10^-3 to 10^9bps in 150 years".

While collecting material I have come across my "Chronological history of Edward Graves" and realise that I do not have it in electronic format. This will be rectified in the near future.

This is the first few lines of what hopefully will be a repository for much of the historical material that I hold in my collection. It is my plan to give titles and summaries here with copies of the original documents or edited transcription held elsewhere and available for download. As a first step I will list as much as I believe I have available at this point and will later give an abstract for each.

Telegraph cable papers which are ready or near ready
BlancheMackeyNotes
CableEconomics
Charge lmbalance on Atlantic Cables
Copper Trojan Horse
ltalian Cable History
James Graves Early Autobiographies
James Graves Technical Autobiography (editing in progress)
Prato Paper
Sceal-na-SceiIige
VaTechnology
The ballistic bridge model
Ocean telegraph cable model

Related to the second world war which are ready or near ready
Foynes
Fort Shannon
Hampden bomber
Italian Cable Intercept
Engineer's view of history of Meteorology (in preparation)

In future entries I will give outlines of the content of each of the above documents