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FAQ....Table of Contents
What is the Ashby Archive?The Ashby Archive is the material previously held by Ashby's daughters, that
was donated to The British Library in January 2003. It is comprised of his
unpublished notebooks, written between 1928 and 1972. An unpublished
160 page summary of his work written in about 1940, and an autobiographical
notebook written in the early 1950's entitled "Passing Though
Nature...", "notes upon which any true biography of W. R. A. should be
based" [ref. image wrapt001.png, inside front cover], and specifically
"These notes are not for publication in my lifetime so I have no motive to
falsify them." [ref wrapt008.png Passing through Nature, page 13]. Back to TopHow do you have a digital copy of his unpublished work?In 1999 concerned that there was no backup copy of all this unpublished work three A3 scanners, and two computers were purchased on Christmas eve (don't try this your self, the shop was just closing and the staff wanted to go home for Christmas).. By working 18 hours non-stop for the next 6 days running all 3 scanners simultaneously the full archive was scanned, but much of it was only at 75 or 100dpi due to speed constraints of the equipment and hard disk storage capacity. The maximum size disk I could buy was 34Gb. Each image took 60-90 seconds. We realised this was far from acceptable quality, but it was the best we could do at the time. Moving forward to early 2002 with the availability of 100Gb disks, and the identification of a SCSI A3 size scanner that could take image in about 20 seconds I drove to the only supplier with stocks in the North of England that I could find (not charging a silly price). Working again non-stop 18 hour days for 6 days the archive was scanned at 24 bit colour 300 dpi. Image sizes range between 10-60Mb each and the full archive contains about 7,800 images taking up about 100Gb of raw disk space. Just before I identified the high speed scanner we had written to The British Library asking for advice on copying large quantities of archive material. I don't think they ever answered our question. Despite being quite vague about what we had, they immediately replied asking that we consider donating the material to the national archives. After some additional scanning of some extra material we were able to hand the complete collection over at the end of January 2003. Back to TopWhat other information do you plan to publish?I'm still sorting out the images! Having carefully scanned all the material I've not bothered too much about processing the data. That can be done over time. My main concern was the vulnerability of such a historic collection. The data is backed up across 4 copies, with one of these copies in a data media fire safe. I have rotated all the images up the correct way, and applied tiff compression to save disk space. That is about 50Gb of rotation, and 100Gb compressed to about 85Gb. You just leave the computer running for weeks on end. All three of Ashby's daughters are looking forward to getting an electronic copy, and a further copy has been promised to the British Library, so they are top of the list of actions. I know nothing about Cybernetics myself, so I don't really expect to study the material much myself, as there are many people who understand it much better than I ever will. Back to TopJust what are the Notebooks?Ross started his notebooks on the 7th May 1928. 7,189 pages, and 25 volumes later on the 8th March 1972 he made his last entry. That works our at an average of half a page a day for 44 years. Ross's students claim that he was planning another book, and this may be reflected in the fact that his output during the last 6-9 months went up substantially. There are also 18 sections of notes in a card index that may relate to planned subject headings for a future book. Ross kept an index of the notebooks and this has about 860 entries on index cards. These are currently being typed into computer form to allow easy reference. How much did he write in the autobiographical notes?64 pages between 1951 and 1955. The middle part is in short hand (something he tried, but concluded would not help his work patterns). Interestingly 35 years later I came to the same conclusion myself when I tried learning shorthand. Back to TopWhat is the unpublished 1940's book about?In this medium size notebook he summarises all his thoughts and ideas up to the point of writing the book. It is about 190 pages, and forms the basis of all his subsequent work Back to Top
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