Cody Archive

In January of 1996, the Drachen Foundation stepped to international attention by purchasing 80 percent of the Samuel Franklin Cody kite archives from the Cody family sale at Sotheby’s in London.

In order to keep the collection of kite material in one, the Foundation undertook the financial and professional role of stewardship: to stabilize, analyze and collaborate with international Cody researchers the archive into a format, which would be internationally accessible.

After months of packaging and shipping the archive from London to the United States, a new home in Seattle, Washington was established.

The first years were to professionally number and list each item and to professionally photograph each item for study use. The color slides (digital photography was at its infancy) were then numbered and filed to give researchers immediate access.

With the development of good museum software, we were able to begin the process of digitizing each color slide of the archival items, and enter them with their photo into a database. This process took 2 years, and employed three people.

Once the Foundation had all of the items in the museum software database, it was easy to allow our teams of researchers, those who know the Cody materials, to look carefully over what we have in our collection.

Of all the many wonderful and qualified Cody researchers, there were two who volunteered to assist us in looking at the photos. (The photos are the most requested access of all Cody material.) Please enjoy the following report submitted to us by Jean Roberts and Paul Chapman and the unbelievable work they did in a very short time.

All our work came to a very interesting and timely end, corresponding with the 100 anniversary of Cody’s first flight in England! What a terrific birthday present to offer the world, our collection with online access.

Happy Anniversary Samuel Franklin Cody.

Ali Fujino, Drachen.

The Drachen Foundation Cody Collection
Index of Photographs and Postcards

The Drachen Collection of Photographs and Postcards has been reviewed by Jean Roberts and Paul Chapman with the aim of identifying all the images in respect of what they describe, where the image was taken and at what date. This work could not have been undertaken without reference to Jean’s husband, John Roberts, whose specialist naval knowledge was invaluable, as well as a number of local social historians in the Farnborough area. Jean and Paul drew heavily on the various written documents already in the Drachen Foundation collection as well as documents from the The National Archive, contemporary books, newspaper and magazine accounts as well as other supporting images in their private collections that are not held by the Drachen Foundation.

There are approximately 800 images catalogued in the Cody Photograph collection. However some of these actually form groups of several images. Accounting for these extra images has made the task of identification complex.

It was decided early in the identification task that it would be helpful to researchers to create thematic groups. For example all the images of the Cody six-wing kite can be identified as a single group. However the reality of Cody’s work means that images can fall into a number of logical groups. The catalogue descriptions attempt to take this into account and this explains the detailed cross-referencing and identification of duplicates and ‘best’ images.

The time given for this project was determined by a wish to mount the collection on the Internet by the date of Cody’s first flight, October 16th 2008. The work was done over an elapsed period of one month but took upwards of 240 hours of hard labor, mostly in S F Cody’s old residence in Mytchett. It should be seen as a first cut at the task. Hopefully it will provoke questions and answers. Local historians can provide knowledge of the area – such as the Church Circle images. Military historians may be able to provide better dating by identifying the uniforms worn by the soldiers. Kite specialists can identify individual kites.

Jean and Paul recognize that the catalogue is not complete and would welcome your opinions and suggestions, particularly where this is backed up by contemporary evidence.

Jean Roberts and Paul Chapman
Mytchett
26th September 2008