AA Archives, New Acquisitions: James Cheyne
The AA Archives have just received a substantial donation of student work from James Cheyne, including his award winning scheme (with Thomas Donnelly) for plastic petrol stations for National Benzol (1966). Likewise, an innovative 5th Year thesis (1969/70), written by James Cheyne and John S. Lloyd is included in the donation. The thesis is a structural analysis of the London Borough of Southwark and attempts a systematic study “…in terms of measures relating to social, economic and physical structure… All the information is expressed in a standardised or comparable form and then using the technique of multivariate analysis… the principal components are drawn out of the data.” The use of raw statistical data, processed using an IBM computer owned by University College London and early software programmes including FORTRAN (Formula Translating System) is especially innovative and was undertaken with the help of the AA’s ‘Systems Studies Department’, run by John Starling.
