Aston University Archives

The Aston University Archives house materials related to the history of Aston University and its forerunner institutions, the Birmingham Municipal Technical School and the Birmingham Central Technical College. The records start from 1893 and trace the evolution of the University up until today.

The collection includes institutional records, documents, and objects which shed light on education, politics, economics, society and culture in Birmingham and the Midlands. It also chronicles a variety of trades and professions, reflecting both local and global developments.

Additional materials include newspapers, brochures and records of the popular music acts which performed in the Great Hall, together with videos and slides of the campus as it has been built up - and knocked down - as well as campus maps through the decades.

The archives contain works of art as well as notable objects, such as the Parker 51 fountain pen used by HM Queen Elizabeth II when she visited the recently-completed Main Building in 1955.

Some of the artifacts and other materials reflect changing cultural and societal norms over the decades: for example, a silver platter presented to the Senior Common Room by the Academic Wives’ Club in 1967.

For more information about Aston University’s history and archives, you can watch the video above or listen to this Aston Originals podcast.

If you would like to consult any of these holdings, or if you have items that you think may be of interest to the Aston University Archives, please email archives@aston.ac.uk

The archives are closely linked to the History programme at Aston.

Ongoing Research Projects

The Aston University Archives are closely linked to the History programme at Aston and its ongoing research projects.

Professor Stefan Manz

• Behind the Wire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire, 1914-1919
• World War I in South Africa: Digital and Virtual Experiences (with Dr Joseph Yannielli)

Dr Volker Prott

• Children of the Railway: The Partition of India 75 Years on

Dr Ilaria Scaglia (with Dr Brian Sudlow)

• Hidden Voices: Black Healthcare Workers in the Midlands

Dr Joseph Yannielli

• Birmingham’s Industrial Heritage (with Dr Brian Sudlow)
• The Fugitive Digital

Dr Brian Sudlow

• Birmingham’s Industrial Heritage (with Dr Joseph Yannielli)
• Insights from History on the New Industrial Revolution (with Dr Ahmad Beltagui)

Preserving the Histories of a Community of Makers Exhibition (2022-23)

Thanks to funding from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, it has been possible to conserve a number of important historical documents in the archives. In November 2022, Aston Archives Committee unveiled an exhibition in the University's Main Building foyer, showcasing a selection of of these volumes along with contextual information about Aston University's predecessor institutions. In addition to a ribbon-cutting by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Aleks Subic, talks were given by Dr Ilaria Scaglia and Professor Helen Higson, OBE, while Dr Brian Sudlow presented a film about the archives.

View some of the exhibition findings on the Birmingham Municipal Technical School: General Register for Session 1893-94 and Birmingham Municipal Technical School: General Register for Session 1920-21 pages.

Making History with Queen Elizabeth's Pen

On 26 June, 2024, the Aston University community and its friends in the fields of archives, heritage, and culture, gathered at John Cadbury House to celebrate a new exhibition of a remarkable item preserved at the Aston University Archives: the pen that the late Queen Elizabeth II used and gifted when she visited Birmingham to inaugurate the Main Building of what is today Aston University.

Dr Ilaria Scaglia, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Aston University, researched the history of this object and of the day in which it was used and shared her findings at the event.

The Parker 51 pen

As the Birmingham Pen Museum testifies, there are countless histories that one could write starting from a pen. The first that comes to mind is related to technology, Aston University’s soul. Aston University officially started in 1895 as the Birmingham Municipal Technical School on Suffolk Street. The institution changed name a few times but it stayed true to its origins. It was and still is a place for crafting new things to help people face a fast-changing world. The Parker 51 pen was an object of the kind Aston’s predecessors tried to devise. It was a marvel of craft, meant to provide emancipation from the quill in order to write a new future. As detailed in David and Mark Shepherd’s Parker 51 (2004), Quink, or fast drying ink, had been invented by a Filipino chemist and then introduced by the Parker company in 1931 to free all from the hassle of blotting. Yet Quink corroded the materials fountain pens were previously manufactured from, and new ones needed to be created as a result. Lucite (or PMMA) was patented in 1932 and later applied to anything from aircraft parts to train car windows. Eight different patents were filed to design what one might mistakenly think as ‘just a pen’. 23 components, 238 different operations to manufacture it, 43 of which by hand. There is indeed a story about design and craft to be told, one that is right up Aston’s alley.

There is also a business story, another Aston mark of distinction. The Parker 51 is still regarded as one of the most successful consumer products ever conceived. More than a quarter of a million dollars was invested in its development in 1939. More were made because of its ground-breaking marketing, starting from the number 51 – as 1939 was the 51st year of Parker’s existence. But neither of these histories would make sense without taking into account other external factors. No discipline can ignore the broader historical context in which it operates, and this is especially true for technology. The Parker 51 pen originated from the Great Depression, a time when few could afford luxury items. In hard times, many clung to the look and feel of precious, durable things while also daring to aspire to a more positive, modern future. The breakthrough came through an emotional appeal to their hopes and aspirations: an object designed to evoke fighter plane wings, ‘a pen from another planet’ as it was advertised then, to make the dreams of people on this earth seem within reach. It was a product of globalisation, produced by an American company, tested for all weather conditions in South America, later produced in Canada to be sold throughout the British Empire one of the main reasons for its unprecedented success.

This pen was a war child too. By the time it was premiered in 1941, materials such as brass, copper, and aluminium had become crucial to the war effort. Parker’s London premises at Bush House in Aldwych, were moved out to the west end of the city, to make room for defence activities in the centre. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the same machines designed to produce this artefact’s many parts were now used to make ammunitions. For this reason, the production of this pen was rationed. Marketing was shifted to non-selling in order to make a broader patriotic point ‘shell fuzes come first!’ At the same time, pens such as this became central to the war narrative: writing and receiving letters were essential for morale; people were encouraged to gift pens and to engage in written correspondence with soldiers.

After the German surrender was signed, indeed, with a Parker 51 pen, the end of the war led to resuming manufacturing, the multiplication of many parts and designs, and an overall transformation of the symbolic value of giving and receiving a pen. Once a token of affection for a son or a lover fighting far away, pens now turned into markers of economic rebirth, accessories for people of various classes and genders claiming a new place in society, and also as corporate gifts for growing industries in an increasingly industrialised world.

Ironically, 1955, the year when this particular pen was used, actually marked the Parker 51’s decline. The first Parker ballpoint pen was introduced in England that year, following other brands that had gradually entered the market since the 1940s. By the 1970s, the production of the legendary Parker 51 pen was interrupted though later replicas were introduced later and a niche fountain pen market remains.

Part of that aura derived from the fact that famous people ostensibly used them, most notably the Royal family. The Queen Mother wielded a Parker 51, as did young Princess Elizabeth. Queen Elisabeth would later give a Royal Warrant to Parker in 1962, and the then Prince Charles would do the same in 1992. Neither the late Queen nor the current King were ever exclusive users, but clearly they contributed to give Parker 51 its mystique. They often chose it as a token of their feelings, a symbol of their presence, and as a means to communicate something more.

Queen Elizabeth’s Parker 51 pen and her 1955 visit for the inauguration of the Main Building

The Court Circular for the 1955 visit details the royal itinerary for that day: first Bourneville, then King Edward’s School, the College of Technology what would later become Aston University) and, in the afternoon, All Saints Church in Shard End. This was the first visit of the young Queen to Birmingham since her coronation, the first engagement of the young couple there, one of the reasons why 10,000 people crowded Victoria Square to see them go by, and more lined the streets.

‘For one day the city did not seem as drab’, many would remark in retrospect. And drab it was indeed. Many parts had yet to be rebuilt after wartime bombings, rationing had just ended, and a broad spectrum of ongoing economic and social problems surrounded this piece of news. But there were also progress, machines, devices, and training for building a workforce capable of using them promised a better future.

A newsreel from British Pathé conveys the excitement of that day.

To be sure, one might dismiss this whole episode as a few minutes of royal glitz, a distraction that deflected light away from reality for a day, way back in 1955. Yet, it is significant that in grim times people reached for something that was at once practical, tangible, and concrete, but also well-made, evocative, and optimistic. They did not fall into mere functionalism; instead, they combined practicality with symbolism to say something new, innovative, and ambitious. They understood that the Queen could elevate a pen, or a new building, into something higher, not for sale. They changed the meaning of what it meant to be ‘fit for a Queen’, seeing her as a young, global icon who might unite people in a fast-changing world and institution. It was a deliberate and defined strategic decision to grow by leveraging tradition, the past, what had been, to be forward looking.

Of course, many of those visions and promises never came to fruition quite in the way in which people had envisioned, no more than a pen or a letter alone ever sufficed to make a real difference in any person’s life. But symbols matter, as the ideals they represent often moved and still move people to action. Their being unnecessary, made the necessary possible. Their presence high up, made the direction clear. And for the College the direction was clear.

The following year, in 1956, the same institution would become a College of Advanced Technology. In 1963, the Robbins Report would establish that education ‘should be available to all qualified by ability and attainment’. Its purpose should be not only to impart skills but also to create ‘cultivated men and women’, and to promote ‘balance in research and teaching’ in order ‘to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship’. As a consequence of this report, Queen Elizabeth would give its charter to Aston University in 1966. This pen embodies the trajectory that led to that point and charted the course of the institution’s development to this day.

Queen Elizabeth’s pen, History, and the Aston University Archives

Queen Elizabeth’s Parker 51 pen was long cared for by Chief Executive of Aston University and Professor of Higher Education Learning and Management and Associate Dean of Aston Business School, Helen Higson. With the establishment of the History Programme in 2018 and its development into a full-fledged degree that emphasizes archival skills, new attention has been devoted to the history of the institution and to the archival materials and objects that document it. The History section also established and cares for the Aston University Archives and continuously organises events and displays related to the history of the institution, city, and region often placing them in a global context.

Collection Conversations

A Tale of Register and Programme

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Collection Conversations #2: Alternative Futures: A 1964 Newspaper Article, College and Senate Minutes, and Decades, worth of Press Cuttings.

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Collection Conversations #3 of 1980s glossy magazines and brochures

Stories from Aston University Archives

Inventing the Future: An Aston Archive Story

In Memoriam

Dr Gloria Lee

Dr Lee was a ground-breaking academic at Aston and in the UK, not least because she was in those times very often the only senior woman in the room.

Gloria was an important part of what became known as The Aston Approach,and helped to make “The Aston Studies” (a programme of research which looked at the structures of organisations within their context (e.g. technology, size, dependence), significant on the international map. Indeed, she led what came to be regarded as the fourth generation of this work.

Dr Lee’s work was strongly in the Aston University tradition, looking at innovation, technology, and management. Her studies included one from 1977 which revealed that immigrants are no more accident prone than other workers, and her contribution to an Aston-authored 1991 book on Achieving a competitive edge through Technology and People was entitled Technology and the Drive for Quality: A study of survival in the foundry industry. Gloria’s work on Technology Transfer, helped create a platform to an area in which Aston University is still a leader.

She has a passionate advocate of both research and executive education, and as a member of the Business School Executive led from the front both research and education initiatives, including introducing one of the first distance-learning MBAs. She became a renowned authority on this kind of education, publishing her article on Distance Learning MBAs: Issues and Opportunities in 1988. Dr Lee was an important member of the Business School senior leadership team.

Gloria had a rich and rewarding family life and many Aston colleagues during her time here benefitted from her hospitality, including on the family narrowboat.

Aston Archive images, reflecting Queen Elizabeth's pen, History and the Aston University Archives.