Collection: FAST Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The collections consist of museum objects and archives in all formats and media.  The Archive Collection includes records of the Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough and its sister establishments from the  origins of the Balloon School, The Balloon Factory through the Army Aircraft Factory, the Royal Aircraft Factory to the formation of RAE in 1918 through to its demise in 1992. The archives trace the RAE’s contribution to aviation science & technology, education, science, industry and its internal society within the UK and its world wide influences in design and aircraft evolution. In more detail:

  Photographic archive

  This is nominally divided initially into two main categories, still and moving images and the collection comprises:

  1. Glass plate negatives from 1912
  2. 35 mm negatives
  3. Larger size ‘wet film’ negatives
  4. 35mm colour and monochrome slides
  5. Larger glass slides used for presentations & lectures.
  6. Existing photographic prints of all sizes.

     In total there are estimated to be in excess of 150,000 items in categories a to f combining the photographic images of RAE Farnborough & Bedford

  7. FAST hold the registers which contain the details of every photograph taken at Farnborough from 1912 and NGTE Pyestock & Bedford from their formation
  8. Cine film – both 35mm and 16mm film is held, both of trials film and edited films highlighting the work at Farnborough – including early film from the 1920s and some original 1911/1912 Cody film. Some 4500 reels of film are held. Also the film collections from RAE Bedford (2500 reels) and AAEE Boscombe Down (6500 rells) are stored
  9. Later video film of trials and edited highlights are held in all formats (U-Matic, Super VHS etc etc)  from all Establishments
  10. The equipment needed to view all types of moving images is kept serviceable, including transfer to electronic form.
  11. The FAST associate at ex-RAE Bedford has transferred all of its historic collection to the care o f theFarnborough archive.

  Library and ‘paper’ records

  On the closure of RAE in 1992 much of the considerable RAE Library collection, including its unique historical section, were transferred to FAST for safekeeping. Since that time many more records and RAE reports and Technical memoranda – as well as the wider international research that RAE had with the Commonwealth, NATO, USA and Europe – have been donated to the Museum.

  The Library is split into three sections,

  1. that dealing with the technical and social history of Farnborough : this includes the reports on 35mm film of the many departments at RAE from 1916/18 and has some 30,000 reports of the research carried out up to the 1950s and an additional collection of paper reports of the period from the 50s to the late 1990s ( a further 20,000 copies).

     Other paper copies cover research papers from the Aeronautical Research Council, NATO/AGARD, TTCP, RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine, Flying Personnel Research Committee and many others from the 1940s to the 90s. This section also includes the Social Notices from the Royal Aircraft Factory up to 1922 and later notes from the RAE. Also there is a full set of the RAE House magazine – The RAE News – which, over its 45 year life, contained reports on the many clubs and the appointments and retirements.

  2. that dealing with international research & development and contained in the bound volumes of eleven major aviation countries from 1920s onward. This includes bound proceedings from the Learned Societies and from Flight and Aeroplane, whilst the earliest ‘Aeronautics’ volume dates back to 1897. Aviation history is essentially available from that date.
  3. a more general (popular) collection that includes aircraft histories, scientist, engineers and test pilot biographies and a wide range of associated aviation history.

  Engineering drawings

  The collection holds RAE engineering drawings from 1910 and  includes many of the iconic scientific buildings built prior to, and during WW2 – the 24ft Wind-tunnel (1935)and High Speed/Transonic wind-tunnels (1938), the Seaplane Tank (1934) etc –  and a number of early aircraft drawings. A selection of the most important of the National Gas Turbine Establishment, Pyestock paper drawings are held covering the infrastructure, main test cells and power houses as well as the operating manuals of the primary engine test cells – which carry an inordinate amount of detail. A complete set of NGTE drawings are held in microfiche form (some 100,000 fiches)

  Among the highlights of the collection are ;

  Some 160,000 glass plate negatives and wet film negatives

  A total of some 50,000 scientific and technical reports from 1916 through to 1994

  Records of every photograph taken at RAE from 1912

  The Object Collection

  This comprises material relating to the history of the RAE and to people and activities associated with it. Much of the collection has been acquired by accumulation from the Establishment itself during the closure of the Farnborough site. Examples include laboratory equipment and scientific instruments and .such ex RAE and Factory equipments as aviation and laboratory instrumentation & measuring systems, Radio & Navigation, Aerodynamic wind tunnel models, guided weapons and missiles, Cockpit systems equipments (Head Up Displays, head down displays, experimental control systems etc), Royal Aircraft Factory artefacts (pre 1918), gas turbine research and production engines, composite and non-composite materials (including the very first carbon fibres), flying clothing and flying helmets (including a wide range of experimental helmets), aviation medicine research artefacts (RAE & Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine), space department prototypes etc.  In general, artefacts from all RAE Technical & Scientific Departments are held including both prototype and early productionised form. The total number of objects currently exceeds 4100.

  Among the highlights of the object collection are ;

  A collection of some 400 wind tunnel models and instrumentation (all unique)

  A Whittle WU/700 jet engine and its experimental reheat system (one of only two reheat turbines believed to be in existence)

  A number of RAE aircraft complete

  A collection of RAE specialist flying clothing and helmets covering experimental design & construction and the Cold War development of life support systems

  The image based summary of the Collection is contained in the FAST website under the Archive Section

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2024

  Licence: CC BY-NC