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Old engineering books and collectables

Old engineering books and collectables

Old engineering books and collectables

(OP)
Does anyone else collect old engineering books and other engineering related collectibles? I have a few power books that are over 100 years old. Good ones not filler. (Stienmetz, Clarke, Westinghouse stuff) I think they do a better job at explaining analysis than the books we have now where the insight gets lost due to easy access computer simulations. It is also kind of fun to track down the engineer who had signed his name in the book. In my really old books, the internet is no help at all in tracking someone down. I found a sterling silver 45 year Westinghouse sterling silver keychain with diamond in it for $20 on ebay that is kind of neat. The person started with Westinghouse around 1905. There is a lot of really neat Westinghouse stuff that just periodically shows up on ebay. It is kind of a shame that Michael Jordan tore that company apart. Anyways, what old engineering things do you guys have?

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I have an 1835 copy of William Grier's Mechanics Calculator, which actually comes in handy sometimes. I also have an 1844 copy of A Treatise on Mechanics, by Captain Henry Kater and Reverend Dionysius Lardner. I am keeping an eye out for any mechanics of materials books from the late 1800s. I also collect old history books.

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I have been collecting old engineering books and memorabilia for some time.

I used to work in a number of New England cities and would always seek out the used book stores. Periodically widows of deceased engineers would "clean house" and dump book collections.

I am now 67 years old and am looking for a good final home for these old treasures. There are early books on power plant design, riveted boilers, steam turbines etc. I would hate to see these books destroyed.

I have considered contacting the local university engineering school ..... but I am not sure that they would help.

Aside from selling them off slowly on Ebay ...... does anyone have any other suggestions ???

mjcronin16 "at" gmail "dot com"

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Whether or not this outfit accepts "seasoned" engineering books, it may be worth investigating. see "Project Gutenberg" at: https://www.gutenberg.org/

good luck!

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

MJCronin,

The very worst case is that you contact a second-hand bookstore. You might even get paid for it. The book eventually will find a loving home.

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I really enjoy the few I have. Late 1800s Modern Machine Shop Practices, Elements of Mechanical Engineering. Have a 'newer' Westinghouse air brake book. The plates in the books are works of art.

Ted

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

When I come across 100+ year old books on manufacturing, I like to take note. I have a few on gunsmithing and gun building. I have, of course, a very old Machinery's Handbook, though I haven't come across an original printing yet. I have a 5th ed. from 1919, I believe.

I don't go out of my way to seek them out so much, and I don't do ebay, so I know I miss out on things. I do take note when they cross my path, though. I tend to only buy those I would spend time reading, rather than just having the spine visible on a shelf.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

There are stores in the U.S. called Half Price Books who pay cash for any books. Most of them are in Texas, where they started, but there are many across the country. I have seen some old engineering books on their shelves, though none as old as being described.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I've recently started collecting older engineering books and tools as long as it is a tool or book of interest anyway. Like PEDARRIN2 mentioned half priced books really has some good collectables books sometimes. I've also had luck visiting estate sells, it's too bad the one I went to a week ago I missed picking up a slide rule that was made around 1940.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I, too, have picked up a few over the years from the early 1900's in used book stores.

At some point in our lives, we all become "Collectables".

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I have a couple of electrical books from Metropolitan-Vickers which explain their subjects far better than any of the modern texts. One is on protection and a pair on switchgear. The technology is outdated but still common in industry, and modern texts don't deal with the older technologies with any degree of authority. I also have a few books from the early 20th century from BTH and Metro-Vick, and latterly GEC, which offer an amazing insight into the history of these companies.

I'm currently reading a volume of five books from the 1930s which discusses everything from building your own motors to power generation to lighting installations. I am hugely impressed how smartly turned out the craftsmen are - the electricians are in white shirts, ties, smart trousers and polished shoes. I barely manage that working in the office, never mind on site.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Other then my own textbooks from college, which are themselves 50+ YEARS OLD winky smile, the only other 'old' engineering books I have is a copy of the 14th edition of the 'Machinery's Handbook' published in 1953. That being said, since I was trained as and worked 14 years as a machine designer, I've always enjoyed reviewing anything that showed how old machines worked, particularly ones with unique or complex mechanisms. With that in mind, I've acquired a few of what are modern reprints of older engineering reference texts in this field. These include reprints of 'Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements', by Henry T. Brown originally published in 1868, '1800 Mechanical Movements and Devices', by Gardner D. Hiscox originally published in 1899 and '970 Mechanical Appliances & Novelties of Construction', also by Gardner D. Hiscox originally published in 1904.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I am not getting old, I am becoming a classic.

If you are ever in England DON'T go into a used book store.
I went into one in Birmingham and almost spent everything that I had.
Metallurgy books from the late 1800's.......

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

EdStainless,

English bookstores attend book fairs here in Toronto Canada. I now have an interesting cookbook from the 1850s, and a book on household management from the 1820s. I agree. They are very dangerous. I also have Unsinkable Ships, a catalogue published just before they launched the Titanic.





A lot of the ships featured in the book did not survive WWI.

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Anything that floats can sink...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Not according to my book!

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Perhaps... However, despite what it says on the cover of your book, the author covered his a** by having the title page read "Ships Practically Unsinkable".

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

it's like everything can fly but can also crash...

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

M^2,

Are you sayin' our wives view us as collectable? I guess this is what it means to be a trophy husband...

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

When I worked in Boston, I collected a lot of old construction manuals, old design manuals, builder pocket books, etc. Folks would come in with a renovation project on an old building and I'd pull out my books to show how they were designed and what the thought process was. I love my old books!

Powell's in Portland, OR had a bunch of really nice books on standards for hand drafting - which for the majority of my projects is exactly the scale I work on. I was limited only by the weight limit for my return baggage.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

btrueblood:

Yes, and that's collect a bull!

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


RE: Old engineering books and collectables

SLTA,

That's similar to what I do with some of my older books. The plant I work at was built in the early 1970s using proven technology of the day, i.e. the equipment was probably in manufacture since the 1960s and perhaps the 1950s or before. Modern books don't really cover the old equipment in any technical depth, and often just dismiss it as the stuff of yesteryear which belongs in a museum. Where the old books are especially helpful is when you're trying to understand why the design engineers of 40-odd years ago made one design choice rather than another, seemingly much more obvious, one. One thing I have concluded: some of these old timers were very very good at designing things. smile

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I have no hard-cover 19th century engineering books - and I suppose having downloaded and saved scanned copies from dub dub dub dot archive dot org doesn't count... smile

My oldest early 20th century treasure is Sothern's "Verbal" Notes and Sketches For Marine Engineer Officers, Fourteenth Edition, Greatly Enlarged, Volume II. I haven't had any luck yet finding a copy of Volume I...

FWIW I did once ask a question about large steam engine balancing using the Yarrow-Schlick-Tweedy method, and recently downloaded and saved both "Steam Engines and Other Heat Engines" by J. A. Ewing and Dalby's "The Balancing of Engines," which between the two of them pretty well told me all I wanted to know, and way more than I could grasp...

CR

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

(OP)
ScottyUK,

Some of clever design I think comes from having constraints. Give someone very little and tell them to make due and they'll be forced to be clever. The director ,Terry Gilliam, has often said that his best ideas come out of having to make due with a small budget. Zero Theorem was done for 8-12 million or 2 episodes of Game of Thrones imho looks better than movies with budgets ten time that. CGI in general ,which is often looked at as this I can do anything tool, is one of the worst things to happen to movies.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I love old textbooks and have been trying to get my hands on them over the years (and sets of encyclopedias). It has not been easy. I find a lot of stores that accept and re-sell books do not want textbooks. I even dropped into some antique book stores in France when I was travelling, amazing stuff, but not much in the technical area.

One job I worked had a massive technical library, they had a shelf set up where they would get rid of their old texts for 25 cents a piece. I picked up some neat older texts there, but not quite the vintage that I really prefer (most were from the 50's or so).

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

My parents are downsizing as the get into their 80s so my dad finally gave me his mid-50s vintage Versalog slide rule with leather holster and instruction book and his copy of Engineering Drawing by French.

I've picked up a few automotive texts from the 50s and 60s - nice plates

Oldest book I have is from the 1920s - Machine Sketching

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I started collecting older mining engineering books almost 30 years ago... maybe not quite pre-ebay years but close. I got a lot of satisfaction browsing used bookstores in every city I had cause to visit. It rapidly became apparent that there was a lot of interesting stuff published around 1910-1914 and again in the early 1930s. My oldest was published in the 1860s..... " The use of nitroglycerine in driving the Hoosac Tunnel" Absolutely fascinating. Many of the mining methods described are no longer in general use due to changes in the cost of labour vs increased mechanisation over the years. Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer who published a few books regarding his early life before going into politics. Again fascinating stuff. Men really were men in those days!!

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

At the local Half Price Books, you'll find some semi-old stuff in the "Engineering" section (which is pretty limited, and tends to be mainly old textbooks) but anything really old will be in their "vintage books" category, regardless of the topic. I've picked up a few old books along one the way, one obviously being from a "widow dump" as described above.

If you're interested in the material and not the antiquity, check out Dover Books, who was republishing some of the classic texts in not-too-expensive paperback versions.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

When I was working at a consulting/design shop in Chicago in the 70's, they had a very excellent library. The decision came down that it was time to clean house and reduce the library's footprint. The company had been in business since the 1890's, so there were some nice old texts going into the dumpster. One of the prizes I grabbed was a 14th Edition (1929) of the CRC Handbook of Physics and Chemistry.

Leather bound and gilt-edged, it has a section devoted to "Laboratory Arts and Recipes". For instance, how to clean mercury; how to make stop-cock grease; how to make an acid-proof stain for lab tables. I got a kick out of "making cross-hairs from spider web" -- "the fibers of the egg nest of certain species are employed and may be obtained of most dealers in scientific apparatus". Times have changed!

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

A sad day: I went to pull my CRC Standard Math Tables off the shelf just yesterday, dropped it, and that ripped the rear cover completely off. So much for the collector value, which was probably up to 50 cents or more by now. It was the 25th Edition from about 1979.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

JStephen,

Clear shipping tape. Nothing says "this book is useful" like obviously being repaired, frequently.

I bought my 21st edition Machinery's Handbook when I was in college. I have replaced it with the 26th edition, but it still is useful...


Next time, I get the heavier, large print version.

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

Got more stuff from my father's school days- Hughes-Owens wooden engineer's scales and compass/dividers set

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I've got the same sort of thing, only they're from MY schooldays sad

And don't forget the eraser shield and circle/ellipse templates.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

John,

OMG ...I still have all of my old circle/ellipse templates.... same ones I have used for 30+ years.

They have been in continual use for sketches/figures for many years.

My son has been specifically instructed to place these firmly under my right arm when I am in the casket

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

JohnRBaker,

Thanks for the reminder. I just pulled out the eraser shield I keep in my briefcase. I needed to to check in some seams to see if gaskets were being engaged. Yes, they are. The eraser shield still is useful!

--
JHG

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I used to leave an eraser shield on my desk just to see who would recognize it or not. It was a sort of 'talisman' to spot people who had actually worked on a drawing board.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I used to leave an eraser shield on my desk just to see who would recognize it or not. It was a sort of 'talisman' to spot people who had actually worked on a drawing board.

I still have mine along with the complete draftman's set, including the drafting board from my Engineering Graphics course at North Carolina State University, circa 1964.

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I like to tell (bore) my interns when they question the usefulness of their assignments that my first job was data base compaction - I took the contents of two drawing tubes and re-rolled them into one tube and then relabeled the tube

RE: Old engineering books and collectables

I have been collecting old Brown and Sharpe engineering and machinist books for a while, it appears they kept the same format of 6" x 9" size for many years, and always a blue cover. See the attached picture, the first book I got is on the left, bought from a flea market sale at the local mall. The oldest is from the 1880's and the most recent is from the 1950's.
Dan

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