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Personally, I'm mainly interested in the Archive's Alpine and Tiger related holdings. The vast majority of these which have been located are contained on the Aperture Cards (microfiche).
In 2012 I was part of a team from the STOA and CAT that spent a week working at the Archive in Banbury. We located perhaps a hundred Tiger related drawings on velum that had previously been misfiled, but very few others. Those were about the extent of our success finding "paper". However thousands of Alpine and Tiger drawings have been located on the Aperture Cards. And those seem to just be the tip of the iceberg.
It's impossible to learn much about a drawing just by looking at those IBM punch cards. However once a drawing is scanned and digitized it can be emailed and inspected anywhere in the world. Before serious research can be done, we have to scan the cards. Nearly 16,000 have been scanned so far with probably another ten-thousand still to go. Once those are done, we think we'll have digitized most all of the Alpine and Tiger drawings in the Archive collection.
Graham Vickery in the UK has analyzed and cataloged about a thousand of the scanned drawings. Between scanning and cataloging there remains a lot of preliminary work awaiting any volunteers who want to pitch in.
In the meantime, Tom Hall in the SF bay area has started working with what has been cataloged by Graham and has already come to many significant conclusions. Tom has been able to find documentation in the drawings confirming many deductions and assumptions about the building process.
Other Rootes models have already used Archive drawings to replicate parts that were no longer available. The Alpine club in the UK has built and is selling rear leaf springs made from factory drawings. Tiger rear fender Rootes badges have been reproduced from an Archive drawing.
Below are some random Alpine and Tiger related drawings. (Forum size limitations require that they are displayed at less than a tenth their actual resolution, but they still give a general idea of the scope of the collection.)
bt
In 2012 I was part of a team from the STOA and CAT that spent a week working at the Archive in Banbury. We located perhaps a hundred Tiger related drawings on velum that had previously been misfiled, but very few others. Those were about the extent of our success finding "paper". However thousands of Alpine and Tiger drawings have been located on the Aperture Cards. And those seem to just be the tip of the iceberg.
It's impossible to learn much about a drawing just by looking at those IBM punch cards. However once a drawing is scanned and digitized it can be emailed and inspected anywhere in the world. Before serious research can be done, we have to scan the cards. Nearly 16,000 have been scanned so far with probably another ten-thousand still to go. Once those are done, we think we'll have digitized most all of the Alpine and Tiger drawings in the Archive collection.
Graham Vickery in the UK has analyzed and cataloged about a thousand of the scanned drawings. Between scanning and cataloging there remains a lot of preliminary work awaiting any volunteers who want to pitch in.
In the meantime, Tom Hall in the SF bay area has started working with what has been cataloged by Graham and has already come to many significant conclusions. Tom has been able to find documentation in the drawings confirming many deductions and assumptions about the building process.
Other Rootes models have already used Archive drawings to replicate parts that were no longer available. The Alpine club in the UK has built and is selling rear leaf springs made from factory drawings. Tiger rear fender Rootes badges have been reproduced from an Archive drawing.
Below are some random Alpine and Tiger related drawings. (Forum size limitations require that they are displayed at less than a tenth their actual resolution, but they still give a general idea of the scope of the collection.)
bt
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