The Public Records Act 1958 required all government departments to set up archives and records management systems. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was nominally exempt from the act, being a government corporation rather than a department, but voluntarily asked to be included under the Act. This created a position at the UKAEA for an historian and archivist. Gowing applied for and secured the job in 1959. This involved organising systems and criteria for the selection for preservation of scientific, engineering and administrative records, and writing the history of the British atomic project since it had begun in 1939, the UKAEA having inherited the files of predecessor organisations including the Tube Alloys Directorate.