Document of the Month
April 2010
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Field Club newspaper cuttings: 'mystery object', 1959-1962
Reference: DD/NFC/11/21
Do you have any idea what this mystery object may be? If not, then you are not alone, as this object ‘baffled’ experts when it was discovered in 1959,.according to the press.
The object is about three inches long and in substance resembles a hard grey rubber. It is punctured evenly along its side with small square holes, similar to the row of apertures on a mouth-organ.
The object was found whilst digging in the garden at Rose Cottage, Dale Abbey, Derbyshire by Mr Stanley White. In order to try and find out more about it, he handed it over to the Nottingham Natural Science Field Club for possible identification. They were unable to help, and suggested that it be sent to the Department of Zoology at Manchester University for possible identification.
The University was unable to give a positive identification, and it may have remained a mystery until it was suggested that chemical analysis may finally uncover the mystery.
So the item was sent to the British Museum (Natural History) and from there to the Government Chemist for analysis. It duly did, and the results were revealed in May 1962…
“…the unknown object… consists almost entirely of polystyrene. The nodules projecting from the central ridge on the inside contain a white core of pure polystyrene. Material scraped from the outside edge showed evidence of the presence of some unsaturated substances but is substantially polystyrene.”
The museum wrote that “It is quite clearly a man-made plastic object which at some time has been heated, possibly in the absence of oxygen, and thereby distorted. What the object was in the first place is not easy to say – a mouth organ or the back of a brush are suggestions that have been made.”
See the newspaper cuttings in more detail here [PDF 3049KB] 
Do you have a comment or question about this image? Contact us for more information.
