Media Museum teams up with Google to digitise Daily Herald photos

The archive - comprising more than three million items, including prints from press agencies and freelance photographers alongside work by Daily Herald staff photographers - provides a rich visual history of the first half of the 20th century.

A group of steeplejacks working overhead, 1934. Mirrorpix (Image: submitted)

Now the Museum has unveiled newly digitised, never seen before images from the archive.

The Museum has worked in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture to digitise nearly 50,000 front and back, bringing the vast Daily Herald Archive to life through new online stories and a visual interactive experiment, allowing visitors to discover photographs from the archive as never before.

Two women building radios, 1933. Pic: Rights holder (Image: Submitted)

The newly digitised images, along with 25 new online stories from the photographic archive, can be seen for the first time on the platform. In collaboration with the Google Arts & Culture Lab, users can explore the archive and find hidden gems of the collection. And, powered by AI and OCR technology, they can create their own edition of the Daily Herald.

Reading the Daily Herald on a bus, 1933. Mirrorpix (Image: Submitted)

The project adds 100,000 new images and 35,000 new records to the Science Museum Group’s online collection.

The new online stories shed light on historic events like the campaign for a universal pension and the rent strikes in the

1930s, while others share quirky moments like a prize-winning giant cabbage, the world’s largest tyre and a 16ft beanstalk. The stories also uncover ones that have often been left untold, including the long history of the Romani community in southeast England.

Testing condenser for radio sets, 1932. Mirrorpix (Image: Submitted)

Jo Quinton-Tulloch, Director of the National Science and Media Museum said: “The Daily Herald Archive is one of the gems of our collection, with over three million items from the newspaper that provide an incredible visual history of the first half of the 20th century. The digitisation project marks a major milestone for our museum by adding 100,000 new images to our collection and 35,000 new online records, providing wider access to the Science Museum Group’s largest public collection.

Women picking mushrooms, 1966. Mirrorpix (Image: Submitted)

“Thanks to our collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, we can share this remarkable archive more widely and truly bring the collection to life through fascinating stories and the interactive visualisation.”

Amit Sood, Director of Google Arts & Culture added: “Our collaboration with the National Science and Media Museum is a fantastic opportunity to explore one of their core collections in new, creative ways.

“The advancements in digitisation, coupled with algorithmic extraction and cutting edge AI allows users to explore a vast photo archive that captures a unique and captivating snapshot of British life.”

Three steel workers studying a building plan, 1935. Topfoto (Image: submitted)

The Museum’s Daily Herald archive collection contains millions of images taken between 1911 and the closure of the newspaper in the late 1960s. It captures major social and political events of the 20th century, including the Spanish Civil War, unemployment and hunger marches, the abdication crisis of King Edward VIII and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Sun signs replaces Daily Herald, 1964. Mirrorpix (Image: submitted)

The Daily Herald started out as a strike sheet for the London printing unions, and went on to become the world’s top-selling newspaper in 1933. It documented local, regional, national and international news for over half the 20th century.

Woman with giant cabbage, 1933. Edward George Malindne. Mirrorpix (Image: Submitted)

The images are of significant politicians, royals and celebrities, as well as local news stories, sporting events, science, industry and entertainment.

The entire archive, which includes 100,000 glass plate negatives, is stored and cared for here in Bradford, divided into three sections - places, events and people.

Not only does the archive preserve the images, it also includes the original storage cabinets and box files used at the Herald, as well as handwritten photo cropping notes and Day Books detailing the assignments allocated to the staff photographers.

Other images in the collection cover poverty in Britain in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when staff photographers were dispatched to photograph charity in action - at mobile cafes, soup kitchens and early versions of food banks.

There are images of milestones in women’s political activism, including workers’ strikes led by women, campaigns for equal pay and new waves of feminism in the 1960s.

Quirky images include a man walking a haggis, on the end of a piece of string, in Glasgow in 1967, and canine movie stars. Among the photos of dogs working in films are Joan Collins giving Johnny the terrier a chin rub between takes of Turn the Key Softly in 1953; Snooks, who played Bill Sikes’ dog in David Lean’s 1948 film of Oliver Twist; and a 1949 portrait of Lassie in a Lucky Dog Medallion and Chain of Office.

The digitisation of the photo archive comes at a time when the Science Museum Group, which includes the National Science and Media Museum, continues to improve online access to its collections. Online audiences can explore more than 300,000 objects and archives through the Group’s popular online collection, which receives more than 110,000 visits each month and more than five million visits since its launch in December 2016.

* The Daily Herald Archive project and experiment can be viewed on the Google Arts & Culture platform at goo.gle/dailyheraldarchive