The collection is principally one created by James Glaisher and slightly augmented by his son, James Whitbread Lee Glaisher. It consists of a series of scrapbooks containing newspaper cuttings on eighteenth and nineteenth century balloon ascents, loose newspaper cuttings on ballooning, nineteenth century journals and periodicals featuring articles on ballooning and aeronautical flights, scientific papers principally concerned with James Glaisher's experiments for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, nineteenth century posters featuring balloons, and hand-drawn illustrations of balloons.