Encompassing more than 300 000 images relating to all aspects of Victoria’s history, and more than 1000 artefacts relating to photography and image production generally, this is the largest collection in History and Technology.
The collection focuses on heritage images relating to the history of Victoria, and the history of image making in Victoria, from European settlement onwards. Images within the collection reflect all curatorial areas including engineering, transport, sustainability, information and communication, domestic and community life, immigration, working lives, public and institutional life, design, cultural diversity, clothing and textiles, medicine in society, and sciences.
Significant collections and items
- McKay Archive: 25 000 images, 600 negatives and 19 films relating the history of the H.V. McKay company and its successors.
- Melbourne Observatory: astronomical and operations photographs.
- Biggest Family Album in Australia: collection featuring family photographs of everyday life in Victoria from the 1850s to the 1940s.
- International Harvester: more than 900 negatives featuring agriculture, manufacturing and industry.
- Vickers Ruwolt: over 1000 glass plate negatives documenting one of Australia's major heavy engineering firms, 1920s–1960s.
- A.J. Campbell: more than 2500 photographs and negatives by the noted Australian ornithologist and field naturalist.
- Laurie Richards: 85 000 negatives and log books documenting corporate and retail life, 1950s 1970s.
- State Electricity Commission of Victoria: over 3500 negatives and 1000 photographs documenting the power industry, 1870s–1980s.
- Science Museum of Victoria: over 10 000 negatives depicting collection objects, events, exhibitions, visitors and staff.
- Spotswood Pumping Station: archival records and 1000 photographs.
- Francis: internationally significant pre-cinema and cinema images and technologies, from the 18th and 19th centuries.
- Esso Australia: 60 000 images documenting the Australian petroleum industry, and oil and gas projects in Bass Strait and Northwest Shelf.
- WS Anderson: over 1000 images of Lorne and Great Ocean Road (1898–1940)
- Kodak No. 1 camera (1888) and artefacts reflecting the evolution of Kodak camera innovation.
- Sutton panoramic camera and wet plate curved glass negatives.
- Stereoscopic cameras and viewers.
- Lantern slide projectors.
- Bond 35mm motion picture projector, Melbourne 1902.
- Megalethoscopes.