Julia Elton has spent her life immersed in the literature of engineering and the images of the industrial revolution. She began by cataloguing the pictures in the collection amassed by her late father, Sir Arthur Elton (a member of the Society), now at Ironbridge Gorge Museum, before starting a career as an antiquarian bookseller specialising in the history of civil and structural engineering. She writes and lectures widely on all aspects of engineering history and is currently reading for a PhD in lighthouse optics at UCL. She is a long-standing member of the AIA and of the Institution of Structural Engineers’ History Study Group, She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and an Honorary Member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. She is a past president of the Newcomen Society, the first woman to hold this position. She is also a good amateur oboist and recorder player, specialising in chamber music from the Baroque era.