Marvin the Mobot and Shell: robotics history and oil exploration

Ary Hermawan

One of the most fascinating historical documents in the Shell Historical Collection stored at the University of Melbourne Archives is a press cutting of an advertisement placed in the Sun newspaper on Monday, August 19th, 1963. The ad features a photograph of a group of workers lowering the company’s Mobot — an underwater maintenance robot that can see with its “television eyes” and uses “its mechanical nose to turn screws and operate valves and grip pipes as it moves around under water.” Being lowered to the sea from a ship, the Mobot appears to be made to show the company’s technological prowess, with the robot being portrayed as “one of the many inventions that keep Shell ahead of the times.”

2008.0045.0379
Press cuttings of Shell Products, 19 August 1963. Shell Historical Archive, 2008.0045.0379

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Australia Discovered with Australian Wildflowers

Nasim Koohkesh

Australia has a significant diversity of wild plants and nature, so I used the title of ‘wildflowers’ to search the Shell Historical Archive for evidence of the presence of Australian wildlife in its mid-twentieth century pictures.

In a series called ‘Australia Discovered with Australian Wildflowers’, I found 12 pictures representing Australian vegetation in each state of Australia, including text and a list of the wildflowers represented. Sketched for Shell Australia in 1959 by the artist R. Malcolm Warner (1902-1966), The regions depicted in this series are listed below:

No Reference Code Geological Location
1 2008.0045.00297 Queensland.
2 2008.0045.00297 Lamington National Park
3 2008.0045.00297 Northern Rivers; is the North-easterly region of Australia in the state of New South Wales.
4 2008.0045.00297 Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the Northern Territory
5 2008.0045.00297 Western Australia
6 2008.0045.00297 Tasmania
7 2008.0045.00297 The Snowy Mountains, in southern New South Wales, Australia, and is the tallest mountain range in mainland Australia
8 2008.0045.00297 Victorian Coast
9 2008.0045.00297 Grampians National Park in Victoria West
10 2008.0045.00297 South Australia
11 2008.0045.00297 Narrabeen lagoon in New South Wales
12 2008.0045.00297 The Victorian Alps, also known locally as the High Country, is an extensive mountain in the south-eastern Australian state of Victoria

Each painting presents a landscape with a wild bouquet at the front of the image, and in addition, it provides brief description of the area’s geographical information and natural attractions. In images number 1, 5, 6 and 10, the painter has however had an entire state to depict and not introduced an exact geographical location. Furthermore, an index helps name the flowers in the image at the bottom of the page.

Queensland wildflowers
Queensland… Australia’s Tropical Paradise by R. Malcolm Warner, 1959. Shell Historical Collection, 2008.0045.00297

In total, the pictures illustrate 151 types of flowers, with only two species shared between three regions: the Native Convolvulus appears in the Lamington Gold Coast, Ayer’s Rock for the Northern Territory, and on the Victorian coast. Moreover, Correas appear on pictures of the Victoria Coast, Grampians National Park in Western Victoria, and the Victorian Alps. According to these digitised images, a common genus in Australia would be the Daisy and Orchid in different regions with various weather and soil conditions, showing in total eight separate species of Orchid, three reported in Queensland, and five species spread across Western and South Australia. Among the eight species of Daisy, three species grow in the Snowy Mountains and others are spread in other coastal and mountainous areas.

The genus Heath has five species, the Boronia, and Rose four species each, and they are spread in various regions from west to east and south. Finally, Bottle Brushes, Everlasting, Wattle, and Berry with three varieties in different colours seem to be the third most common flowers in the 1950s in Australia. Bottlebrush varieties are found in the southern regions such as South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. Everlasting can be found from mountains to the coastal regions of Victoria. Wattle, however, is spread from West to East, while the Berry is only reported in Tasmania.  Kangaroo Paws have two different colours, black and red, and occur naturally only in Western Australia.

Shell has chosen to represent unique flowers in each region, and perhaps to draw attention to flower species known in the 1950s due to their spread in each area. If placed alongside information from botanical databases and webpages , these pictures may help compare mainland Australia’s plant diversity during the mid-twentieth century with the present. The extent to which Shell’s posters also drew attention to the beauty of Australia’s plant diversity in the mid-1950s also helped to support a growing sense of pride in the uniqueness of Australia.

Nasim Koohkesh is a PhD student in Conservation of Cultural Materials at the University of Melbourne. Their research investigates the influencing factors in changing ultramarine blue colour in historical illuminated Persian manuscripts, through a focused case-based study of the Melbourne University Middle-Eastern Manuscript Collection.

Archiving HIV/AIDS in Melbourne

Adapted from an article by Michael Graf and Russell Walsh Michael in UMA Bulletin : News from the University of Melbourne Archives : Issue 35, December 2014. The full article is available here. 

Collections held at the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) offer insight into the partnerships between government, health professionals and Melbourne’s gay community, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Australia. 

1979 saw increased visibility and social acceptance for gay men and lesbians, evidenced by the fifth National Homosexuality Conference taking place in Fitzroy. But that same year, Terry Stokes, a University of Melbourne student, was arrested in Collins Street for kissing another man. Stokes’ subsequent eviction from Graduate House prompted Julian Phillips, then Senior Lecturer in Law, to act as his legal counsel. Primary documents from the Julian Phillips Collection outline the controversial details of the Stokes case and its repercussions within the University and across Melbourne. 

 Professor David Penington, a clinical haematologist and the University’s Dean of Medicine, held key national positions during the early years of the epidemic, including Chair of the AIDS Task Force. His collection not only offers candid insights into decision making at senior levels during the crisis, but also indicates in its vastness the scale of the tasks facing government, health professionals and affected communities at the time. 

Colour photograph of John Foster and Juan Cespedes sitting side by side with their arms around each other.
John Foster and Juan Cespedes, c.1980, John Harvey Foster Collection 1997.0085 unit 5.

The John Foster Collection provides an intimate perspective of the gay community in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Foster, a Lecturer in History at the University, wrote the widely acclaimed Take Me to Paris, Johnny, a sober account of his relationship with dancer Juan Cespedes, a Cuban refugee whom he met in New York in the early 1980s. Cespedes came to Australia to live with Foster before dying of AIDS in 1987. Foster also died of AIDS in 1994, a year after his account of Cespedes’ life and death was published. UMA holds a large body of Foster’s and Cespedes’ papers, many of which describe the complications of Cespedes’ illness and eventual death. The Foster Collection also includes several drafts of the book and copious notes.  

Ephemera from the John Foster collection, including Juan Cespedes’ ballet shoes, 1997.0085

Michael Graf is a Melbourne based visual artist. 
Russell Walsh trained in art history at the University of Melbourne. His doctoral research in Performance Studies was undertaken at Victoria University. 

Further reading: 

Transmissions: Archiving HIV/AIDS, Melbourne 1979-2014 https://www.afao.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/TRANSMISSIONS-and-Vital-Signs-A-glimpse-of-two-exhibitions-staged-during-AIDS-2014.pdf 

“When kissing was a crime” by Andrew Trounson, University of Melbourne, 2017 https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/when-kissing-was-a-crime 

“There has been us”: John Foster and Juan Cespedes
https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/librarycollections/2021/06/28/there-has-been-us-john-foster-and-juan-cespedes/ 

Homosexuality and the University of Melbourne, Graham Willett and Kathy Sport 
https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/resources/subject_guides/homosexuality-and-the-university-of-melbourne  

Conducting historical research through digital archives, courtesy of the ‘Scan & Send’ service

Noreen Minogue, early 1980s, Photographic series, (Control: AX36 PO4822), Australian Red Cross – National Office, University of Melbourne Archives

 

I recently completed my research thesis as part of the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree at the University of Melbourne. My thesis title, “The Inspiration Given To It By Women”: Noreen Minogue, Australian Red Cross, and the Development of International Humanitarian Law”, gives an indication of the nature of my historical inquiry. Considering the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the academic community, particularly for those whose research depends on physical access to archives and university spaces, I was fortunate to be able to complete my thesis at all. Countless students and researchers owe a great debt of gratitude to the Archives team and the ‘Scan & Send’ service at the University of Melbourne, who made our research and contributions to the academic literature possible.

The ‘Scan & Send’ service is a wonderful example of innovation in education and archive collection management. From 2020, a skilled and dedicated team of archivists and technical experts digitally scanned and sent materials to the University community. Though this process certainly posed different resourcing requirements and labour disciplines for the team, the service revolutionised access to historical materials for students at the University. In this blog post, I hope to share a few reflections on my experiences completing a research thesis relying entirely on digital records.

Adjusting to digital research and the importance of building strong relationships:

For those used to poring over papers, photographs, documents, and materials from physical record collections, the transition to working with digital archives via ‘Scan & Send’ poses a challenge. I certainly missed the sensory experiences of examining dusty parchments, the thrill of physically discovering and holding important documents which shed new light on the past, and the camaraderie of working within an academic community in person.  The Archival team were incredibly helpful (and patient) with me on my learning curve, as I wasn’t particularly adept at navigating archives in the first place. Email, phone calls, and infographic explainers were helpful to generate a deeper understanding about the system and processes to successfully conduct archival research through solely digital means.

Requesting materials:

Finding, requesting, and accessing digital records proved to be a more challenging process than when we were able to physically attend archives or reading rooms, where issues that arose could be trouble-shooted or worked through in person. Given the time-critical nature of the research and the significant workload on the Archives team, I found it particularly effective to triage materials by prioritising tranches of materials for the archivists, using the highlighter function on Excel. Having identified the priority boxes and materials, it was then a matter of requesting them via the request management system Aeon, where after the relevant records were scanned by the digital team and sent via CloudStor (a cloud-based file management system for researchers).

 

File Management:

The Archives team sent me large quantities of material. As such, it was crucially important to download and store these big and extensive files in an accessible and secure way. I used Google Drive to back up my files and sync them to my desktop, which allowed me to make digital notes, highlights, and comments on the archival materials as I progressed through them. File management is incredibly important. My advice: ensure you keep a master list of all documents you have on file, and correspondingly name the document files so that that they are easy to find and reference in future against the master list. I kept a ‘research log’ in Google Sheets, which included all critical information and high-level notes about the item numbers and materials I processed for easy reference.

Wellbeing, Reading and Writing:

Reading and taking notes on such large quantities of digitised archival records can be intimidating at first. It’s important to look after yourself while doing so, by ensuring as far as possible that you have access to an ergonomic chair, desktop monitors, and that you take regular breaks from the screen to preserve your eyesight and concentration. I found it helpful not to read the digital archival documents like a novel – i.e. end to end – unless I absolutely knew it was something that would be useful to my avenue of inquiry, which I discerned through headings and scanning paragraphs. Using the ‘control+f’ function to find key words worked on certain PDF formats, and saved a lot of reading time. Given the large quantities of digitised archival records, I found my research was ultimately a lot broader and deeper than it might have been from in-person research, and that I was able to process materials more quickly than usual. The most critical aspect of reading and research is taking well-referenced notes so that you can trace your materials back to the original source. Take down the file number, item title, and page number at a minimum to ensure you have everything to hand when it comes time to writing your thesis, referencing, and developing your bibliography.

Although moving to digital-first archival research is certainly a significant adjustment initially, I eventually came to enjoy the economy and flexibility of the process, which enabled me to tell a unique story using archival records that had not been previously utilised. There are certainly challenges to the digital-only approach, but these were outweighed by the goodwill and cooperation of the digitisation team, researchers, and supervisors.

Nick Fabbri

Nick Fabbri works and volunteers at Australian Red Cross in Emergency Services and is a part-time law student at the University of Sydney. He writes and podcasts at www.nickfabbri.com

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