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Coventry University Archive Collections include the Lanchester Archive, the single largest collections of the life work of Frederick Lanchester in the world.
Lanchester is perhaps best known for designing and building the first all-British motor car in 1895 but he also published papers and books detailing the first scientific principles of flight, and theorised about the principles of colour photography before it was reality, and devised military strategies that underpin business management courses still taught today.
Thanks to many legacy gifts, the work of archive collectors and extreme enthusiasts over the years, and with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, we can put on show, and bring to life, his collected sketchbooks, notebooks and correspondence. The physical space, and online archive, will enable examination of his many patents and automotie blueprints, which together celebrate and validate Lanchester’s place at the heart of British engineering, and ensure he truly lives up to his description as “Britain’s own Leonardo da Vinci”.
Come and visit our Lanchester Interactive Space where you can...
Discover the genius of Frederick Lanchester, and see the scope of his interest and investions
Take the wheel of our beatiful Lanchester car and find out how it works
See how Lanchester's ideas shaped modern planes and automobiles
See his ideas come to life through our augmented reality
Play some 'serious' games and challenge yourself against Frederick Lanchester's genius
Delve deep into the online archive and see the unique blueprints of his inventions
Coventry University Library archive collections underwent a major development programme with generous support from the UK Heritage Lottery Fund in 2017.
Lanchester Interactive Archive project, led by the Disruptive Media Learning Lab DMLL) with support from internationally recognised Lanchester expert and collector and chair of the Lanchester Trust Chris Clark, brought together archive collections with their origins in Frederick Lanchester’s personal artefacts originally donated to the University in its previous incarnation Lanchester Polytechnic in 1961.
The project began in 2011 with Chris Clark bringing together what had grown into the largest dedicated collection of his life work in the world, a focus on digitisation, enhanced collections management, archival development and volunteer coordination.
DMLL further developed this led by Jaqueline Cawston and Kathryn Thompson-Goodwin who contracted development of a funding application to the Heritage Lottery Fund and expanded the designs for a public exhibition space to include the use of VR and AR.
The project was successfully launched in 2017 and developed an interactive space with an online platform and digitised archive access as a foundation for ongoing developments of the archive collections.
