World Wide Web goes World Wide August 23rd 1991

Today is the day that the World Wide Web was first introduced to the world. I was working as a freelancer at the Freud Museum, in London. The Freud Museum was funded by an American organisation who wanted to support the history of Freud and Psychoanalysis. They were early adopters of email, and one of the staff, Tony Clayton, I think, introduced me to this new thing called the World Wide Web. How soon it changed our lives!

So, this post was to be the first in an occasional series on my role in digital heritage.  But it spiralled out of control as if I were writing a multi-volume history of the early use of Computers in Archaeology and Museums. 

I’m not, but this is the first of an occasional series that digs into the past of digital.

My use of computers began in 1975/6 when I worked in the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Keble College, Oxford University. I was a Research Assistant working with Mike Barbetti who was a Research Fellow from Australia and an expert on the science of the earth’s magnetic field and a pioneer in archaeomagnetism.

So what was it all about? In short, the Magnetic Pole does not always point due north. From time to time,  it wanders around and sometimes reverses completely. Also, the intensity of the magnetic field changes with time. Mike was interested in the science behind these reversals but also interested in the archaeological by-products of the findings.

We were using archaeology to get well dated samples to plot accurately magnetic fluctuations through time. it was hoped the changes in direction or intensity of the magnetic field would allow archaeological sites to be dated. Secondly, we could use the readings to determine if clay deposits had been heated or not.  The iron particles in clay would, when heated, align to the contemporary magnetic field.  Mike had collected samples from Africa including Olduvai Gorge and we contributed to the discussions on the first use of fire by the genus homo.

It turned out that dating applications were, however severally limited, as it proved impossible to create an effective reference curve. But from time to time, a use for archaeomagnetism crops up in the literature.

Mike was kind enough  to include me as joint author on 3 papers which were accepted by Nature and which remain my most cited papers.

When I thanked him saying how kind it was for him to include me.  He made a point of telling me I had every right to have my name on the papers as I not only did a lot of the work but I contributed ideas to the study.

He taught me a lesson that you should always be generous acknowledging contributions.

The specimens were encased in plaster of Paris, I went to a shed in the garden of the terrace house that was the Research Lab, and cut them up up with a  saw.  We then measured the intensity and direction of the magnetic field in the samples.  The results were processed by a computer program written by Mike. I prepared the experimental results on magnetic cards and uploaded them for a data run on the main frame computer at the Oxford University Computer Centre. The Computers were the size of a house, but there was a Unix minicomputer in the basement of our lab. There was always mistakes on the first run and then you reran the programme with edit cards at the front which were coded to do things like: ‘change 127 on the first card to 172’.  The corrected results were rerun the next day.

Seems very primitive and slow now but then it was cutting edge technology!

After a couple of years I began my career as a field archaeologist. Having seen how powerful computers could be I decided, in the late 1970’s, that Archaeology needed computers. So I set out to find out how to use them for myself and where they might come in useful.  This took me on an exciting  journey of exploration which began with signing up for a Part-time PhD at Birkbeck College in Computer Applications in Archaeology, while I continued working at the Museum of London as an archaeologist.

To be continued.