A subscriber since the 1960s, Robert Gibson has been painstakingly scanning physical back copies of Public Lighting and Lighting Journal to ensure they are preserved for posterity. However, some editions are missing from the archives. Can ILP members come to the rescue?
This month [September], 100 years will have elapsed since the meeting up, in Birmingham, of a small number of men involved in the lighting of the cities and towns of Great Britain.
That meeting, as Simon Cornwell explained in the January edition of Lighting Journal (‘The demise of “the foreman scavenger”, vol 89, no 1), was held in September 1923, when these pioneers realised the potential of forming an association of like-minded individuals directly involved in public lighting.
The following year, on 15 February 1924, the Association of Public Lighting Engineers (APLE) came into being. It is from these small acorns that has evolved the ILP of today.
In 1979, the APLE decided to invest in its own premises and moved from its rented London office to Rugby – not the present-day premises at Regent Place, but at Lennox House, Lawford Road – appropriately named after Eddie Lennox, who had the honour of twice being elected as President of APLE in both 1936 and 1961.
At the time of the move, it was decided to set up a technical library in Lennox House and the Honorary Librarian, Nigel Pollard, realised that the preserved material was missing certain copies of the APLE’s journal Public Lighting.
Nigel placed an advertisement in the March 1979 of Public Lighting appealing for any member to assist in either loaning to, or giving to, the library: Public Lighting Volume 14 Number 54 (of January-March 1949), and Volume 16 Number 68 (of October-December 1951). The appeal was clearly successful, as these issues are present today at ILP headquarters.
Regular readers of Lighting Journal will be familiar with the regular ‘light on the past’ articles written by Simon and, indeed, his ongoing review this year, decade by decade, of the 100 years since inception as APLE.
What you may be less aware of is that Simon has analysed, and preserved for posterity, all the copies of Public Lighting from the very first issue in March 1936, through to December 1949 – where they were available.
LONGSTANDING SUBSCRIBER
In 1966, I came across the Outdoor Exhibition of the APLE Conference in October of that year. It was at that event that I learned of the Journal, and started subscribing to Public Lighting – it was the princely sum of three shillings quarterly in those days!
It must be getting on for 10 years ago that I decided to read again my copies of Public Lighting from 1966 onwards through to the late 1980s.
This reading again of material that is around 30 to 50 years old was a catalyst to wanting to read those issues prior to my being a subscriber.
I therefore made enquiries to see whether I would be able to borrow copies of the Journal from the early 1960s from the ILP library in Rugby.
I eventually secured permission to do so, duly went to Rugby and borrowed the editions from 1958 to 1966. Because I felt that I might wish to read the fascinating content again, before returning them to the library, I scanned the content so that I could do just that.
Upon returning those editions that I had borrowed, I therefore asked whether I could borrow those from the inception of Public Lighting in 1936 through to 1949.
I was then advised that the ILP had decided there was a need to ensure the preservation of the historical content, and that the journals were all about to be sent away for scanning.
I suggested that, as I had already scanned the editions from 1958 to 1966, it would be mutually beneficial for me to continue the process. I was therefore able to continue the scanning process started by Simon.
It is a slow process and, over the last few years, I have now been able to preserve all the available content from the library from 1950 through to 2010.
CALL FOR MISSING COPIES
However, whilst the appeal in 1979 by Nigel Pollard was successful in locating lost issues, after this appeal, it is apparent certain issues are now missing from the library.
So – and this is the appeal to readers mentioned at the beginning of this article – can any member help in either loaning to, or giving to, the library the following back issues of Public Lighting?
- Volume 13 – Number 52, Conference Issue 1948 (full edition)
- Volume 13 – Number 53, October-December 1948 (full edition)
- Volume 24 – Number 104, March 1959 (some pages are missing in the library copy)
- Volume 27 – Number 116, March 1962 (some pages are missing in the library copy)
Of course, the issues above are between 60 and 75 years old. So, finding copies may well be akin to finding those treasured lost episodes from series two of Dad’s Army. Whilst three of those episodes were remade due to the scripts being available, sadly the same cannot be said of the copies of Public Lighting!
Sadly too, while those four are the earliest missing editions, or part editions, they are not the only back copies that have gone astray. More recently, from the 1990s, two editions are also missing from the archive. However, I am hopeful there is a much better chance of some readers having a copy of the following editions:
- Volume 57 – Number 3, September 1992 (pages missing in the library copy)
- Volume 62 – Number 6, December1997/January 1998 (full edition)
Finally, there is one edition from this millennium missing. So, again, I am putting a call out in the hope that a reader will be able to oblige with a copy of:
- Volume 69 – Number 2, March/April 2004
It goes without saying of course that any copies provided will be returned to the provider!
Let us hope, in this ILP centenary year, that even more of the Institution’s historical content can be located and preserved for posterity. Over to you Lighting Journal readers!
Robert Gibson BSc is a street lighting contractor, having previously worked as the lighting engineer for a local authority with 12,000 units
- Readers wanting to get in touch about the missing editions should in the first instance contact editor Nic Paton, on nic.cormorantmedia@outlook.com
- This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the September edition of Lighting Journal. Click on the link to the edition to read the full article.
