Prosopography is a research approach usually used by historians to study the lives of groups of people. It involves the creation of a collective biography or the gathering of data relating to the common aspects of the lives of individuals who are part of a particular population. It can take the form of a database of all of the people within the chosen population along with information about the biographical phenomena that transcend their individual lives.

How can I apply prosopography to my project?

I am studying the life cycle of analogue tide prediction machines built in the United Kingdom: the methods used to predict tides before the construction of the first machine, the motivation for creating this machine, the manufacturers, users and uses of the machines, maintenance and repair of the machines, the decommissioning of the machines, subsequent methods of predicting tides and finally the state of the machines today in terms of conservation and scientific mediation.

The notion that objects have biographies despite not being living things is not new, but only recently has the idea of conducting prosopographical studies of collections of related objects began to be explored. This is a concept that I would like to develop and utilise in my project about the history of analogue tide prediction machines.

In my case the population of individuals becomes a group of artefacts, more specifically the 23 analogue tide prediction machines built in the UK between 1873 and 1964 (not including prototypes or portable machines). Complete biographical material for any one individual machine no longer exists, and with such a situation the beauty of prosopographical studies becomes visible. Prosopography overcomes the problem of the scarcity of historical data by collecting together all available fragments, which can then be compared, synthesised and analysed, thus compensating for any gaps in the data. Instead of looking at the exceptional and unique, prosopography focusses on the general and average. It is in this way that prosopography makes visible the particular characteristics representative of the chosen population.

The next step is to create a questionnaire to which I will subject every member of my “population” of analogue tide prediction machines. I do not expect to find an answer to each question for each machine but, as we have already discussed, that will not pose a problem in this prosopographical study; the aim is to find the common features in the lives of analogue tide prediction machines. This will give an appreciation of the importance of these machines, the extent of their use and usefulness, and an impression of the shape of their lives.

Bibliography
Bray, Peter. Biography, prosopography and the density of scientific data: Some arguments from the metallurgy of Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland, in: X. Armada, M. Murillo-Barroso & M. Charlton (ed.), Metals, Minds and Mobility: Integrating Scientific Data with Archeological Theory. Oxford: Oxbow books, 2019, p. 123-133.
Kopytoff, Igor. The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process, in: A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 64-91.
S. Tarte, P. Willcox, H. Glaser & D. De Roure. Archetypal Narratives in Social Machines: Approaching Sociality through Prosopography. Proceedings of the SCM Web Science Conference, article no. 24. Oxford, 2015.
K. Verboven, M. Carlier & J. Dumolyn. A short manual to the art of prosopography, in: K. Keats-Rohan (ed.), Prosopography Approaches and Applications. A Handbook. Oxford: Unit for Prosopographical Research (Linacre College), 2007, p. 35-69.

The 11th of February every year has become a day to recognise the crucial role played by women and girls in science and technology communities, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

I spent the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2019 in the company of Valerie Doodson and Sylvia Asquith, who played a vital part in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) industry during their working lives at Bidston Observatory on the Wirral Peninsula in north west England, from 1952 to 1962 and from 1947 to 1990 respectively. We discussed at length the evolution of their work, workplace and colleagues during the years they worked there.

Bidston Observatory had national and international responsibilities during its many years of operation from 1866 to 2004 including telling the exact time with the One O’Clock Gun, carrying out oceanographic research for Liverpool Tidal Institute, predicting the tides for the British Admiralty using analogue tide prediction machines and making meteorological observations for the UK Met Office.

Valerie and Sylvia both joined the observatory as part of a team of young women known as “computers” who were employed to operate the tide prediction machines, prepare the outputted data for publication in the British Admiralty Tide Tables, and perform meteorological observations. They explained to me the process of predicting the tides for a given port, which could be anywhere in the world. It began with setting up a tide prediction machine with the correct constituents for the port and then running the machine, reading off the numbers it displayed for each high and low tide over the desired period of time. These numbers would be plotted as a curve graph, which would be checked for “smoothness”; a non-smooth graph suggested the presence of an error. These errors were corrected and the newly-smooth predictions would be typed up ready to be published in the British Admiralty Tide Tables. They recall that the machines were very noisy during operation, although the sound was not unpleasant but rather bell-like.

A reminder of the global importance of the accuracy of the work of the female “computers” at Bidston Observatory was often given, as the lives of people at sea and the efficient running of global maritime transport depended upon it.

It was a delight to see the fondness with which Valerie and Sylvia spoke about their years at Bidston Observatory and I am very grateful to them both for their time and the patience with which they answered all my questions relating to the tide prediction machines with which they are so familiar.

Bibliography
International Day of Women and Girls in Science. “From Dream to Reality.” Accessed February 15, 2019. https://womeninscienceday.org/WISID_WP/about.
United Nations. “International Day of Women and Girls in Science: Background.” Accessed February 15, 2019. http://www.un.org/en/events/women-and-girls-in-science-day/background.shtml.