The collection presents an integrated record of US decision making during the 1958-1962 confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the situation of Berlin specifically, and Germany generally. The collection includes primarily records of Eisenhower's telephone conversations with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Under Secretary of State Christian Archibald Herter and minutes of Eisenhower's discussions with Gen Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, Defense Liaison Officer and Staff Secretary to the President and, for the Kennedy administration, records mainly prepared by McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and Laurence J Legere, Assistant to the Military Representative of the President, 1961-1962 and Senior National Security Council Staff Member, 1962-1963. The collection also includes records of East-West negotiations over Berlin and Germany, including US-Soviet 'exploratory discussions', 1958-1962; material relating to Allied efforts to develop a co-ordinated negotiating position during the first months of 1959 and the subsequent protracted talks in Geneva, Switzerland, May-Aug 1959; material relating to LIVE OAK, the tripartite American-British-French Berlin military contingency planning group under the direction of Gen Lauris Norstad, Commander- in-Chief US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Apr 1959; papers relating to US and Soviet nuclear capabilities, 1959-1962; Berlin checkpoint crises, 1959-1961; a complete record of the summit meeting in Sep 1959 between Eisenhower and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev at Camp David, Maryland, USA; papers relating to Western preparations for discussions on Berlin at the aborted summit of May 1960; papers relating to the 'Wall Crisis', including material relating to the refugee problem in the German Democratic Republic and US and Allied reactions to the construction of the Berlin Wall, Aug 1961; US and Soviet confrontations at US zone checkpoint, 'Checkpoint Charlie', Oct 1961; minutes of conversations between Soviet and US policy makers during the Kennedy administration, including a compete record of the talks between (David) Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State, and Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, Gromyko and Llewellyn E Thompson, US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Rusk and Anatoly Federovich Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the US, 1962. It should be noted that papers of major Kennedy administration officials remain closed due to security processing delays at the John F Kennedy Library. Thus, files after Sep 1961 in the National Security Files remain largely sealed. Moreover, documents from files that have been reviewed continue to be withheld or heavily excised. Also, many of the Central Intelligence Agency and US Department of Defense files from 1961-1962 continue to be withheld or heavily excised.

Papers created or collected by Edmonds during the course of his life and career, dated 1827-1838, 1852, 1879-1881, 1890-1957, principally comprising typescript memoirs covering his life and career, 1861-1951, and notably concerning his work at the Royal Military Academy, 1890-1896, and in the Intelligence Division of the War Office, 1899-1901, 1904-1908, his service in South Africa, 1901-1902, and in World War One, 1914-1918, at the Geneva Conference, 1906, as General Staff Officer, 4 Div, 1911-1914, and in the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1919-1949, written in [1951]; correspondence with Rt Hon Sir Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill, 1922-1954, relating to Churchill's book The World Crisis, 1911-1918 (Thornton Butterworth, London,1923-1929, abridged and revised, 1931); letters from FM Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig and his wife, 1903-1939, mainly relating to Edmonds' work on the official history of World War One; correspondence with Maj Gen Sir Ernest (Dunlop) Swinton, 1919-1950; texts of lectures,[1908-1947], notably relating to the American Civil War, 1861-1865, laws of war and the organisation of intelligence and information in warfare; typescript and printed articles, 1893-1957, mainly relating to World War One; official army handbooks and reports by Edmonds and others, 1899-1918, 1945; papers related to World War One collected by Edmonds, dated 1900, 1907, 1914-[1945]; presscuttings, [1906-1943], mainly concerning political and military developments and international relations; photographs, 1895-1918, mainly of Edmonds with Army colleagues.

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].

World War Two maps of the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff and the Army Map Service, US Army, including one inch to the one mile ordnance survey maps of England and Wales produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff, including of London, Bath and Bristol, Cardiff and the mouth of the Severn, Windsor, the Isle of Wight, Weymouth and Dorchester, Bolton and Manchester, 1940-1942; one inch to the one mile ordnance survey maps of British counties produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff, 1940-1942; 1:250,000 and 1:500,000 scale maps of Germany produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff, including of Kiel, Hamburg, Halle, Leipzig, Lubeck, Bremen, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hannover, Osnabrück, Magdeburg, Schwerin, and Munich; Army Map Service, US Army 1:200,000 road maps of France copied from 1939 Michelin guide including of the Carcassonne-Nimes, Avignon-Digne, Auxerre-Dijon, Mons- Luxembourg, and Lyon-Geneve areas, 1943-1944; 1:100,000 map of Utrecht, Netherlands, 1:50,000 map of Arnhem, Netherlands, and 1:250,000 map of Amsterdam, Netherlands, produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff, 1940-1944; 1:250,000 maps of Italy produced by the Geographical Section, General Staff, including of Bologna, Firenze, Genova, and Siena, 1943