From Infinity to Beyond

Earlier in the year archivist Mark Pitchforth was invited to be a speaker, representing the History of Advertising Trust, at the From Infinity to Beyond conference, exploring civil aviation history and archives, organised by The Aviation and Aerospace Archives Initiative (AAAI), and hosted by BA at the British Airways Heritage Centre, Heathrow. It was a delightful event in inspiring surroundings which gave Mark the opportunity to meet a wide range of interesting people from various walks of life.

Inspired by an old BOAC advertising slogan he had come across during his research, Mark entitled his talk A dream of effortless flight: UK airline archives at the History of Advertising Trust. HAT of course holds the largest collection of UK advertising archives in the world so inevitably this includes many relating to British airlines and in some ways the challenge was deciding what not to use and whittling down the list of sources to something appropriate. In the end using examples including print advertising dating from the 1930s onwards and early UK television commercials through to the modern day, the talk hopefully was able to illustrate how the marketing of commercial flights has changed and evolved over the decades. Material used related to a range of airlines from big names such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic to smaller companies such as Dan-Air and Britannia and some now defunct including Imperial and Monarch.

The response to the lecture was incredibly positive with a great deal of interest both during and afterwards. Many in attendance had not been previously aware of HAT’s existence and certainly not the depth of our collections and subsequently we have had several enquiries and suggestions of possible visits in the future. The old clips of commercials went down particularly well and provoked a great deal of humour and nostalgia amongst the audience.

  A bonus for Mark alongside being able to promote HAT and contribute to the day, was a first time visit to BA’s impressive headquarters and a fascinating tour of their Heritage Centre led by one of their volunteers. Jam-packed full of archives and artifacts it is a goldmine for anyone with an interest in civil aviation history. He also had the great pleasure of listening to the other speakers at the Conference including amongst others, keynote speaker Allan Winn, Chair of AHUK on The challenge of keeping archives safe and accessible; Dr Lewis Smith, Lecturer in Marketing at Brunel University on BOAC and the Promotion of the British World and Alice Millard, Archivist from West Sussex Record Office describing her project to catalogue Sir Freddie Laker's Archive. The Conference was brought to a close by organisers Lucy Bonner and Alison Turton, who introduced the Survey of UK Airline Operators, a resource which HAT has contributed information to. It is intended to provide a comprehensive guide to the location and content of UK airline archives across the country, complementing the existing survey into archives of aircraft manufacturers. Go to www.aviationarchives.uk for more information.

Mark Pitchforth, Assistant Archivist

« All News Articles