General News
14 March, 2025
New tech for Dunolly museum
A black and white or sepia photograph can be a frustrating prospect when you don’t know who’s in the picture, but that frustration has changed at the Dunolly Museum.
Facial recognition technology has been used for the first time in the Dunolly Museum to identify the firefighters in a photograph over 125 years old.
The photo of the Dunolly Fire Brigade outside a burnt out shop in January 1899 is of 18 people, all without names.
President of the Goldfields Historical and Arts Society John Tully used the Dunolly Fire Brigade report of fires register to get the names of the 14 firemen who attended the fire. That, alongside portraits taken of the members four months later, was the key the program needed.
“That was the beauty. We knew the names of the people we just didn’t know who they were,” he said.
“Having the names meant the person had to be there. Even if it wasn’t [a strong match], it was the [closest which] became the match through a process of elimination.”
The program would compare individual faces from the group photo to a portrait giving a percentage score based on the match.
“When there was a match I would look at the two photos myself and go ‘oh yeah I can see that’ but until you’re told you don’t see it,” Mr Tully said.
The challenge of these old photographs is the people look so similar. In this case they were wearing the same uniform, around the same age, and many had the same moustache.
“I’m sure we’ve got a lot more photos like that one we can go through,” Mr Tully said.
Mr Tully sees the program being used again in the Dunolly Museum but also in other similar organisations.
“I can do that by eye but the computer can do it better,” he said.
It’s also a value add for people who are tracking down their family history, something the Dunolly Museum often helps with. While they have a lot of documentation, photos aren’t so easy.
“If you look hard at a photograph of a person you imagine a bit of their character. Rightly or wrongly you probably make a comparison to yourself,” Mr Tully said.
“With this photo of a shop fire the shop is still in the main street. If people wanted to they could walk down, look at the same shop, and say ‘oh, my ancestor was standing right there’.”