NAS Archive - an international resource
As well as local visitors to our archive, we currently have researchers from further afield who have come to learn of our resource through various internet connections and our website.
Professor James Moore is a Cambridge research scholar and a member of the teaching staff at the Open University on the subject of the history of Science. An author of several biographies of Charles Darwin, he is spending two weeks in Neath consulting our archive in connection with Alfred Russel Wallace. In this regard he is interested in discovering what influences shaped Wallace’s early years. The result of his investigations will be included in a short series of books on Welsh scientists that is to be published by the University of Wales Press.
Herr Dietmar Höse who lives in the Saxony town of Dessau, which has the distinction of being the place that had the first ever gas driven trams. Through our website he enquired if there was any information or photographs relating to the gas trams that operated in Neath from 1897 until 1920. Unlike Dessau that suffered badly and lost most of its records as a result of World War 2, we at Neath were fortunate. Indeed, thanks to previous members of this Society, we even have a restored example housed at Cefn Coed which is the last gas tram existing in the world. He has been amazed that the Society has been able to provide him with much previously unknown material some of which is totally unique. The information will form part of a publication that will be the first attempt to comprehensively chronicle the subject of gas trams in the global sense. What prior to contacting the NAS would have been a brief chapter, will now form a substantial chapter in the book.
A local husband and wife team are keen to record the operations of the rolling mill at Rheola that was operated by British Aluminium. Sadly, there is scant information in our archive at present since previous studies have been more concerned with the historic Rheola House. If members have anything that they might use, or knowledge that may help them in their quest, then please get in touch.
