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Title
Papers of John William Dunne
Reference
DUNNE
Production date
1875 - 1949

Creator

Dunne, John William Biography Biography
(1875-1949), aeroplane designer, writer on philosophy Dunne was born (1875), and brought up in South Africa, at the age of six he had a serious accident which confined him to bed for three years. At seventeen he became a pupil on a farm. After serving with the imperial yeomanry in the South African War he became an aeronautical engineer, using his observation of seabirds in flight to design a revolutionary type of monoplane with swept-back wings. The War Office was sufficiently impressed to employ him, with a view to the production of a prototype, in 1906, but the model was not accepted. Dunne is a fascinating figure who was one of the first two aeroplane designers employed at the Army Balloon Factory Farnborough (subsequently the Royal Aircraft Factory. (The other was the American S F Cody). His swept-wing tail-less automatically stable designs were original and were seen as an important defence innovation in the years before WW1. Like Dunne’s aerodynamics, his philosophy was also unconventional and tried to reconcile psychic phenomena as well as pre-cognition, dreams and ‘deja-vu’ with emerging contemporary science, including relativity but also studies of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. In this, he was part of an interwar ‘para-scientific’ movement which tried to make sense of the new science in personal and psychological terms. In 1927 Dunne published his book - 'An Experiment With Time' - it described a succession of his dreams over a thirty year period which seemed to show glimpses of the future and provided a theory of time to account for them. H. G. Wells found the book 'fantastically interesting' and it was praised in 'Nature' which might have been sceptical. ‘Dunne dreams’ became common colloquial usage for dreams foreshadowing future experiences. His ‘serialism’, however, the theory he provided to account for them, failed to convince scientists that it fused with the new physics. The book was revised and expanded in 1934 and remained in print for over half a century. In 1928 Dunne married Cicely Marion Violet Joan they had one son and one daughter. Dunne died on 24th August 1949 in Tracey House Nursing Home, Banbury

Scope and Content
The papers document the entire professional life of John William Dunne, pioneer designer of tailless aircraft, writer on parapsychology, fly-fisherman, and children's author. They document his experiments and developments in aviation, with diagrams and calculations, drawings, paper models, papers about the experiments at Blair Atholl, correspondence including letters about patents, photographs, and more. There are also papers relating to his work for the military on bacterial warfare, and the manuscript of 'The Millennium', a play that he wrote on the subject. The second strand of Dunne’s work, that of a writer, arose from his interest in dreams and precognition. He published An Experiment with Time in 1927, a book that attracted great general interest and influenced many contemporary writers and thinkers, including H. G. Wells, J. B. Priestley, C. S. Lewis, Walter de la Mare, and Kipling. The archive includes the manuscript of this book as well as Dunne's later publications and extensive correspondence with other writers and the general public. Letters from many of Dunne’s readers offer details of their own dreams and psychic experiences. The archive also holds a selection of Dunne's fly-fishing equipment. Dunne was a noted fly-fisherman, fly-tyer, and fly-designer, and he wrote on the subject. This element comprises mainly tins and envelopes of coloured silk, fabric and feathers for fly-fishing, and miscellaneous hardware.
Language
English
Archival history
It appears that Dunne did not set out to archive his papers for posterity, but was nevertheless inclined to preserve anything that might be useful for his future work. During World War II, for example, he returned to the design of aircraft, and no doubt used the material he had preserved from his early engineering days before World War I. It is also clear from the notes he attached to his drafts and calculations that he made use of old material when composing new articles or books. Following his death, his wife Cecily continued his work, most notably arranging publication of his posthumous work 'Intrusions?' (1955). She also gathered together and organised his papers, which appear to have been scattered throughout various items of furniture in their Banbury home. Even though this organisation has not always survived, wherever possible the original arrangement has been retained.
Level of description
TOP
Repository name
Science Museum, London
Conditions governing access
Open Access
Conditions governing Reproduction
Copies may be supplied in accordance with current copyright legislation and Science Museum Group terms and conditions
System of arrangement
The papers have been divided into three main categories: aviation papers, papers relating to Dunne's publications, and papers relating to fly-fishing. As the original arrangement has been retained as far as possible, there is occasional crossover of subjects within the categories.