PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications has put its archive online.
The PK Online Collection (PKOC) covers the history of international communications, from the laying of the first undersea telegraph cables in the late 1800s to the modern-day fibre-optics and high-speed Internet that we know today, spanning some 33,500 records and 11,000 photographs.
The project began in 2019 when PK Porthcurno was awarded funding from Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund. The pandemic slowed early plans, but eventually the project was up and running and what followed was 14 months of preparing the collection to make it easily accessible as a searchable online platform.
As well as searching the collection for any word, PKOC also provides the facility to search the names of people employed by some of the early telegraph companies.
PKOC also includes an interactive map that allows users to select locations from around the world and easily view the records associated with that place.
It is also possible to browse through digitised photographs which have been scanned by a dedicated team of archive volunteers over the last six years, from views of Africa in the late 1800s to the bombing of Electra House in London during World War Two (pictured below).
