Correspondence with C. Brooke, F. Beaufort, E. Sabine and F. Ronalds concerning magnetic instruments and photographic registration. There are two circulars advertising Gray and Keen's floating compasses; specimens of photographic secondaries and tertiaries; papers regarding tests on various emulsions; and notes on the Greenwich magnetic instruments for 1853 and 1854.

Correspondence, reports and invitations to speak from various photographic societies, including the Hammersmith Hampshire House Photographic Society, 1954; the 'Journal of Photographic Science', 1953; the Royal Photographic Society, 1951 and 1953; the South Suburban and Catford Photographic Society, 1952; the Central Association of Photographic Societies, 1952; and the Institute of British Photographers, 1950, with a programme of its meetings, 1949-1950.

The prints span an eleven year period ostensibly to record a whole solar or sunspot cycle. That the purpose of the exercise may have been to investigate the supposed effect of planetary configuration on the abundance of solar spots is indicated by the presence of charts of planetary positions pasted on the verso of the mount boards and corresponding in date precisely to the prints.

RGO 67 largely consists of a good run of contact prints from glass plate negatives of the sun produced between January 1862 and January 1872. The most significant breaks are December 1862-May 1863 and August-September 1872. Additionally there are a handful of glass plate negatives and contact prints produced in 1858-9, and one further negative dated 1866. The sequence of images is essentially continued by RGO 51: RO and RGO Solar Plates Contact Prints.

Comprising 9 albums of photographs which include bought photographs and personal ones depicting places, people, animals, and landscapes. Most of these relate to the Isles of Scotland.

Papers comprising diaries, correspondence, manuscripts of books, articles, lectures, broadcasts, preparatory notes, copies of original papers used in research, card indexes, subject files for the official naval history of the Second World War, press cuttings, microfilms and photographs.