History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | space race

fawkes-flook resized

Charting the major milestones of the Space Race: Wally Fawkes and the satirical cartoon

On 1 March 2023 the renowned jazz musician and cartoonist Wally Fawkes passed away aged 98. In his long career, Fawkes illustrated satirical cartoons for The Daily Mail under the pseudonym ‘Trog’. His most famous creation was the comic-strip ‘Flook’, but his illustrative work increasingly focused on British politics. In this blog, alumnus student Daniel Millard discusses Fawkes’ role in familiarising the British public with the country’s role in the ‘Space Race’ during the Cold War years. Daniel interviewed Fawkes as part of his research for his undergraduate dissertation, ‘Exploring together: how curators, correspondents and cartoonists presented the Space Race to the British public, 1957-1975‘. Daniel graduated with a first-class BA […]

Continue Reading 0
1024px-Katherine_johnson_john_glenn cropped

International Women’s Day 2021: Katherine Johnson: Mathematician at NASA

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are delighted that UoP history graduate Ian Atkins has written this profile of pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson. For International Women’s Day I have chosen to write about Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, most famous for her work in calculation of the trajectory for manned space orbits, and subsequent lunar expeditions.[1] Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on the 26th August 1918. She was the youngest of four children, her mother a teacher and her father an all-purpose odd job man.[2] Katherine had always excelled at maths and was ahead of her class from an early age. Margot Lee Shetterly indicates that […]

Continue Reading 0
Skylark launch

Using Oral Sources: Recovering the history of the Skylark rocket

Daniel Millard, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on how historians can use oral history testimony to reflect on Britain’s attempts to enter the ‘space race’ in the late-1950s for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit.  The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. In 1957 Britain entered the space race with the launch of the Skylark sounding rocket. Conceived at a time when the nation was seeking to develop ballistic missile capabilities Skylark quickly positioned itself as a valuable research tool with which to help scientists unlock secrets from above the Earth’s upper atmosphere. […]

Continue Reading 0