The Science Museum, like all other museums, holds objects and archives which have the potential to be explored and shared for their local, community meanings. One such object is a manual three-operator telephone exchange installed in the centre of Enfield Town in 1925 and in operation there until 1960. The intention of the project is to explore how returning this object to its geographical roots can empower various community groups to access and explore their heritage and their connections to an object and a place. These interested 'community' groups are either geographically located - local to Enfield as local historians and inhabitants - or intellectually or culturally located - as telephonists (usually women) and as telecommunications specialists, enthusiasts and (often) ex BT or Post Office employees. The Museum's researchers form another (academic) community. These diverse groups can bring varying perspectives to the exploration of the meaning - cultural, community heritage - and links - technological and personal - of such an object. This project brings together these various communities, enabling encounters between them, so as to provide fruitful ways of exploring the value and meaning of this particular object and, at the same time trialling generic approaches to using material culture to link researchers and local communities. We will display the exchange equipment in Enfield Museum, close to its original location, to inspire and provoke local involvement and excitement in the objects and its meanings for the community. This piece of telephone exchange equipment has been selected for the project for several reasons. In part, it stands as a symbol of changing meanings of telecommunications in modern societies. Virtually everyone now carries a mobile phone, but that revolution is only a little over a decade old. The manual exchange equipment we will be displaying in Enfield stands for a pre-prehistory of telephony. The penetration of telephones into people's homes was slow; they did not become ubiquitous until the 1960s, the time at which this particular exchange equipment was 'retired' to the Science Museum. It can therefore be used as a focus object for local people to reminisce and recollect how new technologies impact on everyday life. Second, telephone exchange buildings are to be found in every community, generally somewhat mysterious buildings to the majority of local populations, apart from those who worked there. In this project, different communities can share their experiences; different local meanings of the same thing. With the introduction of digital switching technologies over the last decades, many of these buildings have had to find new uses. So, although this project is focussed on the particularity of the Enfield experience, it also exemplifies general stories that apply to the whole of the UK. For the Science Museum, this application sits squarely on the agenda of our Public History of Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (PHoSTEM) Project. This has been established to develop newly engaging kinds of display and event using the Museum's collections. Seizing the agenda of museum participation (see Simon 2010), it seeks to use collaborative approaches, including co-creation of displays, to gain insights into how lay people think about the past, and especially the past of science and technology. We have already worked with enthusiasts in our exhibition 'Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music' and with family historians in a series of articles for 'Family Tree' magazine. This current proposal represents our first engagement with local historians. Associated outputs will aim to disseminate the findings of this new way of working via blogging, conference papers, Enfield local history societies, local Enfield magazines, peer-reviewed publication, dedicated space on the Science Museum's 'Public History' web pages and other social media.

The shift in young people's use of telephones from one-to-one voice communication to written and visual communication through texting and engagement with social media represents a pivotal cultural development. While the potentially harmful effects on young people of excessive mobile phone use continue to be studied, the COVID-19 emergency is emphasising further the importance of telephone technologies as tools for young people's social connection, education and skills development. These developments in young people's distanced communication have a vital, yet largely unstudied, history. My research is the first study of young people's telephone use in modern Britain, covering the period c.1984-1999. Through combining archival research, oral history research and research with community participants and in contemporary youth contexts, I investigate young people's access (and restrictions) to using telephones in this era, incorporating the landline, public telephone and mobile phone. I examine the significance of telephones in diverse facets of young people's lives, including in play cultures; leisure; the construction of home; mediation of family life and friendships; the assertion of fashionable identities; as an educational tool; in the workplace; and for locating advice and help. In doing so, I trace how young people's telephone use has been historically at the heart of debates over the meanings of privacy, protection, dependency, and social inequality. Young people's current-day phone use is analysed typically as an expression of individualisation. I ask what this illuminates and overlooks about the historical connection between telephony and children and young people's empowerment; their negotiation of family and community surveillance; their socialisation; and construction of selfhood. These connections evolved particularly rapidly in the years between 1984 and 1999, linked to changes in the marketization of the UK telecommunications sector; the rise of mobile phone ownership; and new ethical formulations of children's and young people's rights. Potentially unmediated by adults, telephone use was mobilised by the media, state and market in this era as a tool for young people's self-expression and social participation. This research centres children's own experiences and feelings in its analysis, moving between examples as varied as five-year-olds learning how to dial '999' and telephone providers' advertisements encouraging teenage boys to talk to their girlfriends. Tracing contestations between corporately-prescribed messages; those constructed in the media and popular culture; and informal ('everyday') education, I examine young people's telephone use in the 1980s/90s as both an activity in itself and its contribution to identity formation. The value of this research extends beyond historical scholarship. The Fellowship enables deeper understandings of the affective, cultural, and social impact of young people's telephone use upon modern debates about the relationship between telephones and young people's wellbeing and safety. I am collaborating with BT Heritage & Archives and the John Hansard Gallery, and the project combines historical research and co-research with community groups and young people in three strands: i) archival research in local and national collections, and research in cultural and media sources, to recover historical voices of children in relation to telephone use across diverse settings; ii) oral history research, collecting adults' childhood memories about their experiences using telephones; and iii) co-research using arts practice in contemporary youth settings, and crowd-sourced research using digital humanities methods to create an interactive online map of young people's 'phone spaces' in Southampton since the 1980s. The map is a pilot-study for a planned UK-wide project mapping where, when and how young people have used telephones, to be conducted after the Fellowship.

As the centenary of the First World War approaches we can no longer draw upon the testimony of first-hand witnesses. Historians now more than ever need to scrutinise anew primary sources to develop fresh interpretations. This project considers in unprecedented depth the crucial role of innovative telecommunications in battlefront strategy, a topic previously devolved solely to signals historians. Hitherto, little scholarly attention has been paid to the (open or secret) patenting of such new communications devices, their strategic value in combat, or the sometimes enormous profits they generated. The capacity of military units to communicate securely, i.e. without interception, has underpinned successful combat strategy for centuries, and the First World War was no exception. The vulnerability of telecommunications was well illustrated by the British interception of the Zimmerman telegram from Germany in 1917. Yet in contrast to the popular Second World War stories of Bletchley Park's interception and breaking of Enigma codes, these issues have not been systematically explored in any public or academic history of First World War Britain. While recent historians (such as Gary Sheffield) have certainly reasserted the inventiveness and adaptability of the British forces during the First World War, such revisionist accounts have not extended to the inventive production and use of telecommunications, nor to the issues of intellectual property that they involved. A fortiori these issues are not covered in any military or civilian museum exhibits, nor in extant online teaching resources. Inroads have recently been made, however, by Gooday's AHRC project (2007-10) 'Owning and Disowning Invention' in understanding how intellectual property systems operated in the First World War. This Follow-On project will work in collaboration with the Oxford Museum of History of Science, and three project partners (Institution of Engineering and Technology, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum and BT Archives) to create public-facing resources on four specific themes: i) battle strategy in the First World War at times depended in important ways both on innovative (if risky) use of civilian-originated telecommunications (telegraph, telephone, radio) and on new combat-inspired technologies such as the Fullerphone, developed in 1915-16, in order accomplish secure communications in the face of innovative enemy techniques of interception. ii) patterns of innovation in First World War telecommunications need to be understood within the patent system for managing intellectual property rights. These extend both to the rights of the state over those of civilian and military patentees, and the pressure put on the management of that system by the priorities of war. Only by this means can we understand how the Fullerphone was produced for the British and other armies as the subject of a secret patent in 1916. iii) there was a subtly differentiated range of rewards available for militarily useful innovations in telecommunications: patent royalties, government purchase, promotion, medals or post hoc awards from the Royal Commission etc. The Fullerphone acts once again as an ideal case study, since most of such rewards were accrued by its inventor, Algernon Clement Fuller. iv) after the Great War difficult questions arose regarding the legitimate profit from wartime manufacture. The project resources focus on an important yet little studied case: the Marconi company's long legal dispute with the State over mass wartime 'infringement' of its wireless telegraphy patent rights, the large settlement from which funded the creation of the Cable and Wireless Co. This proposal is modelled on the PI's recent AHRC-funded Knowledge Transfer Project partnered with the Thackray Museum in Leeds, "Patently Innovative: Re-interpreting the history of industrial medicine" AH/I027339/1, also drawing on 'Owning and Disowning Invention'.

Today communications technology impacts on every aspect of everyday life. Within the UK, 84% of the population own a mobile phone and these are being used for sending and accessing information as well as making normal voice calls. The internet and digitial television is providing an increasing range of access to information and the concept of working 'on-line' is now commonplace with many technical terms now in common usage. However, the general awareness of the potential of today's communications technologies and their basic operation is much less well understood or appreciated. The story of communications and its impact on society is therefore a fascinating and exciting one that now forms the heart of a new gallery to be opened at the MSIM. Given the clear significance and impact of communications technology it is essential that the young are educated to understand such technology and how to exploit it and that the older generation too are reassured about the influence and operation of the technology. Our project addresses this challenge using a range of activities. On the one hand traditional engagement events such as lectures and schools events, where children gain hands on experience of how communications systems work by constructing small scale projects, are used to raise awareness and generate enthusiasm. However, on the other hand it is our intention to create an innovative application of communications systems within the Museum's Communications Gallery. Here visitors will be provided with portable devices onto which information will be sent that is automatically determined depending on where the visitor is presently located, where they have been and who they are. In this way it is possible to ensure that the information delivered is not only highly relevant to what the visitor is viewing but also what they have seen previously and where they are about to go. This unique environment will prove an extremely powerful educational tool that not only allows for improved multimedia demonstrations and explanations of how communications technology functions but also allows us to demonstrate the true potential of such technology and how EPSRC sponsored research is impacting the future.Using communications technology within the context of a communications gallery, to raise the awareness and understanding of communications technology itself will uniquely reinforce the public engagement messages being delivered.

From earliest times, mankind has exploited the technology of the day to acquire, record and transmit information. Now in the 21st century our reliance on telecommunications technology has never been greater. Whether it is keeping in touch with family and friends using a mobile, browsing the Web or watching digital television, telecommunications drives society. Much of what is taken for granted today would not be possible without the scientists and engineers who exploited technology to transmit information ever further and ever faster. The rate of development has been tremendous. Two hundred years ago information was transmitted optically using mechanical devices. One hundred years ago those same messages could be transmitted much more quickly using the electrical telegraph and the telephone had just been invented. Fifty years ago the ability to transmit messages without wires using radio was well established, the telephone had overtaken the telegraph as the dominate communications system and computers were just emerging. Thirty years ago the Internet existed only in a few research and university laboratories. Twenty years ago the telephone went mobile and today it is the fastest growing telecommunications technology with well over one third of the world's population owning and using a mobile phone.We intend to raise public awareness of the exciting story of how telecommunications has transformed society. Here we want to explain how the technology works, how today's research is driving tomorrow's technology and to debate the impact of technology on society. We will do this as follows.First, we will extend the work we have already done with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester where a new visitor information system, called mi-Guide, has been introduced to their Communications Gallery. This system allows Museum visitors to receive additional information about exhibits, delivered to a hand-held computer using telecommunications technology. Our system will now move out of the Gallery and into the classroom to help support key national curriculum subjects. New mi-Guide multimedia content will be developed in association with schools and educational centres. Teachers will then be able to plan lessons that bring added levels of interest, excitement and engagement to the subject and provide access to information at the Museum. If the lesson precedes a visit to the Gallery then the hand-held version of mi-Guide will automatically guide the teacher and group around the Gallery, pointing out exhibits of interest that were used during the lesson and provide a facility to record aspects of the visit for use on return to school.Second, we will run a series of Family Telecommunications Days and Lectures. The family days provide a mini-exhibition of artefacts and demonstrations that allow visitors to interact with telecommunications technology to learn how it works and to appreciate how it has developed over time. The lectures are designed to appeal to a general interest audience and involve members of the audience taking part in demonstrations. Lectures will be linked to relevant 'hot topics', celebrate relevant anniversaries and show how research is key to the future of telecommunications.Finally, there will be a series of events for schools that range from small scale projects and debate days to interactive learning sessions. Our telecommunications artefacts and demonstrations will be used to explain the underlying science and engineering and debate days will allow students to discuss an important aspect of telecommunications and its impact on their lives, for example the issues surrounding information security. In total, this project offers a broad range of engagement activities that build upon our proven track record and extend our work to provide specific projects and directly support the national curriculum in schools and provide opportunities for increased awareness amongst the general public.