Experimental notes, working papers, correspondence and lecture summaries compiled by Charles Wheatstone, 1836-1875, and photographs collected by him in that period. Notably including papers relating to the development and testing of the telegraph, [1836-1960]; descriptions of experiments and test results concerning the measurement of electromotive forces and electrical potential, [1840-1875]; experimental observations on the nature of magnetism, electricity and thermodynamics, including electromagnet design, batteries and dynamos, [1834-1855]; working papers relating to optics including experiments into refraction, colouration of compounds and polarisation, [1850-1875]; drafts of lectures on sound and musical instruments prepared by Wheatstone, [1832-1837]; material relating to the management of the Wheatstone collection of scientific instruments and library, 1890-1992; biographical material relating to the life of Wheatstone, the invention of the telegraph and Wheatstone's musical instrument manufacturing business, with unrelated newspapers, 1757-1975; stereoscopic photographs and glass negatives taken by Roger Fenton, Samuel Buckle, Jules Duboscq and others, featuring landscapes, still lifes, panoramic scenes of cities including Paris and Moscow and the interior and exterior of the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, Sydenham, 1851, and especially the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1855, [1850-1901]; artefacts from Department of Physics, King's College London, including demonstration equipment, telegraph apparatus, a nail fiddle and other prototype musical instruments, [1834-1875]; exhibition of scientific and musical instruments, [1834-1875].

The records of the King's College London Department of Physics comprise minute books, correspondence, staff records, mark books, research notes, lecture notes and texts, inventories of equipment, photographs, press cuttings and printed journal articles and catalogues, [1890]-1984. They notably include minutes and correspondence concerned with departmental equipment and maintenance, 1971-1975; records of staff meetings including arrangements for tutorials and lists of staff publications, 1975-1980; Faculty of Natural Science and Faculty of Education minutes and papers, 1975-1982; correspondence relating to the appointment, training and employment of technical staff by the Department of Physics, 1966-1981; correspondence relating to the planning of the 150th anniversary of the Department including photographs, display captions and off-prints of articles on Professor James Clerk Maxwell, Professor Owen Richardson and Professor Edward Victor Appleton, 1978; papers concerning the merger of Queen Elizabeth College with King's College, 1981-1984; University of London Committee on Academic Organisation: discussion documents, 1979-1981; papers compiled by Professor Ernest Wilson including examination question papers and a mark book on electrical engineering, correspondence concerning the publication of Wilson's research papers and nomination for membership of the Royal Society, and photographs of Wilson and colleagues, [1890]-1928; notes, articles and lecture texts concerning conferences and lectures on crystallography, spectroscopy and X-ray topography, 1978-1981; Departmental equipment order book for the Halley Stewart laboratory, Chesterford Gardens, Hampstead, 1923-1971; data book of experiments conducted in the Department, 1932; inventories of equipment at the Halley Stewart laboratory with record of transfer to King's College London, 1947-1966; printed and manuscript notebooks including databooks describing experiments on resonance, optics and nuclear physics, 1965-1971; Special Physics practical class mark book for experiments carried out by students, with printed guidance notes, 1965-1982; references and testimonials for students, 1947-1970; examination results and records of examiners' meetings, 1976-1981; glass slides of traces of elementary particles through bubble chamber, of graphs and diagrams and laboratory equipment, [1950-1970]; passport size photographs of mainly physics students, but also including some mathematics and chemistry students, 1955-1974; photographs of instruments including early electron microscope and model of DNA, [1955]; photographs of the Wheatstone laboratory physics staff, [1922, 1979]; press cuttings concerning physics staff and students, 1957-1960; offprints of Proceedings of the Physical Society and Proceedings of the Royal Society by Edward Victor Appleton and others concerning ionisation of the earth's atmosphere, the principle of conservation of energy and other topics, 1934-1936; instruction booklets for various pieces of laboratory apparatus including electrical generator and gamma ray detector, 1955-1969. Also outsize teaching diagrams [1850-1870], on subjects including: the mechanics of the telegraph; laying of telegraph cables; hydrostatics; perpetual motion; a water clock (‘clepsydra wheel’); a pendulum bucket engine; bridge construction; eighteenth century designs for a diving bell (ref: KDPY/ILL1-2).

The papers of John Pearson comprise manuscript notebooks of lectures and experimental write-ups compiled by Pearson when he was a student at Chelsea Polytechnic, 1954-1957, and include notes on electricity, optics, electronics and circuit theory, electromagnetic theory, diffraction gratings, wave mechanics and X-ray physics.

Collection comprising three manuscript notebooks of theoretical problems relating to mechanics compiled by James Clerk Maxwell mainly during his employment at King's College London, including exam questions on aspects of mechanics and geometry, 1860-1865; problems on the collision of elastic spheres and the dynamic relation between other solid bodies; the refraction of light; the relationship between heat and volume in materials; attraction between particles, 1860-1873; notes on the works of leading authorities on mathematics and physics including Arthur Cayley, Franz Neumann and Siméon Poisson, 1867-1873; bibliography of textbooks mainly on mechanics, [1860-1865]; list of scientific instrument suppliers, [1860-1865]; outline of the contents of Maxwell's Treatise on electricity and magnetism (1873).

The papers of John Edmund Bowen consist of two manuscript notebooks containing notes on lectures delivered by Professor Joseph John Thomson, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, 1911-1912. Bowen's notes consist of detailed summaries of Thomson's lectures on subjects including the discharge of electricity through gases, recombination of ions, recent developments in researches on light and electricity, scattering of electromagnetic radiation and the quantum theory of light.