The Oral History Project of the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) ended on
10 July 1998, after almost nine months' duration. Twenty-nine interviews are now
available on fifty-eight tapes and in transcript – not all, but nearly all of them on open
access for scholars. With this oral history project, the BSHS commemorates its fiftieth
anniversary. In particular it pays tribute to the field in the decades 1945–65, during which
the historical, philosophical and sociological study of science and technology expanded in
an unprecedented way, not least of all in higher education. Who were the individuals
involved in this expansion, what factors contributed to its coming about, what purposes
did the subject serve, what changes did it undergo, what audiences and functions had the
BSHS, how was the process of expansion situated within the larger cultural and political
context of the time and did it reflect that context? The project sought to explore these and
similar questions.
The project's purpose was to gather material which would otherwise go unrecorded, and
thus to create an archival resource for future research, consisting of the interviews (on tape
and in transcript), returned questionnaires and any material (biographical or other)
received in the course of this project.