INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY

Series One: The Boulton & Watt Archive and the Matthew Boulton Papers from

Birmingham Central Library

Part 2: Muirhead I - Notebooks and Papers of James Watt and Family

Part 3: Engineering Drawings - Sun and Planet Type, c.1775-1802

Technical Note

Our microform publications have been prepared and produced in accordance with recommended and established guide-lines for the production of microform of superior quality. These conform to the recommendations of the standard guides to good microforming and micropublishing practice.

Attention should be drawn to the nature of the original material. Part 2 contains a substantial number of notebooks, correspondence, drawings and plans, printed items and other material. Item numbers are marked on individual documents in pencil. A few documents are in rather fragile condition, a few are faintly legible or have been written on both horizontally and vertically with text merging in a cross-hatch pattern. A few manuscript documents consists of faintly legible records written with a variety of inks, pens or pencils and on paper which has become severely discoloured or stained, or which is so thin that there is show through that renders the original document difficult to read. A few notebooks have text running in reverse as well as in the normal manner. Certain items which have been written upon both in ink and in pencil have been filmed twice at different light densities to effectively capture all the pencil annotations. Items consisting of rolled up documents tied as bundles or as scrolls have been flattened prior to filming. Targets have been inserted to show where blank pages or folios of notebooks have not been filmed. Some items are especially fragile and have necessitated extreme care and attention. A few other items consist of photocopies of documents or transcripts. Where necessary fragile material has been mounted on sheets of plain white paper to reproduce the item more clearly. Occasionally volumes have been tightly bound an documents are partially obscured in the inner margin resulting in a small amount of text loss or distortion.

These original characteristics present problems of image and contrast which stringent tests and camera alterations cannot entirely overcome. Every effort has been made to minimise these difficulties. The outside covers of all files, folders and volumes have been filmed. Where the item number is difficult to read this has been filmed again on a sheet of plain white paper. A few very large oversize items, such as a small number of printed maps and newspapers, have been filmed in CINE mode or in sections.

The most responsible care has been exercised in the filming of this unique collection and every effort has been made to ensure that this microform publication meets the standards established by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and prevailing European standards

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