Gearing off Todd’s very public approach to his work, much of his activities were recorded by the press of the day. Thus, the primary online source of text records is the National Library’s TROVE newspaper collection. As a result, the group has been searching for and downloading/correcting relevant newspaper articles. This will be added to other material including images and videos available from our close cooperation with Todd family descendants and other Todd researchers. To date, the group has combed TROVE for the years 1856-1872 resulting in approximately 2000 downloaded, corrected and annotated documents. As years progress beyond 1872, Todd’s increasing profile in the Colony results in more and more dense news coverage. The continued growth of the collection is guaranteed for as long as the Team continues working on it. The Team believes it is taking a unique approach to history. Since Todd’s contributions to Colonial science were so eclectic, we are not attempting to write history. Rather, we are gathering salient online resources into a comprehensive database that can be flexibly interrogated to illuminate any one of hundreds of views of Todd’s activities in early Australian science that researchers may want to take.
Sir Charles Todd
