Circa 1930s Airship & Aircraft design:

Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer (Wiki) is the partial autobiography of the British novelist Nevil Shute.

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Many 'Engineering History' books are written by people that rose to leadership roles. So their books will tend to concentrate on that part of their career. Their hands-on Engineering work is often described in just a few early chapters.

The Manhattan Project (Los Alamos, etc.) and the Space Race (Apollo, etc.) are two topics that have generated a vast number of books relating to their engineering.

Google : ingenious mechanisms for designers and inventors - Vol I (free download)

Other rich topics are:
- Barnes Wallis
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel


Watchmaking by George Daniels is a classic that is just packed with precise line drawings. It's presently less expensive than when I bought it last year.

A book still on my wish list is Chief Engineer (a biography of Washington Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge) by Erica Wagner. Brand new (Remainder, with a black mark) hardcover copies are available on-line for under US$10.

Worth mentioning is that, between the used book market and brand new Remainders, nice hardcover copies of these sorts of books are often available for about US$10 delivered. For the used books, undeclared ex-Library copies can be disappointing. For the new Remainders, free shipping requires buying in batches. Of course there are plenty of stubbornly expensive titles too. Eventually a very good offer pops up.

Pricing of used and Remainders seems to be just supply and demand, with little apparent correlation to the quality of the writing.

I can highly recommend 'Engineering in History':

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-History-Dover-C...

As well as 'The Evolution of Useful Things':

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679740392/ref=d...

And speaking of Henry Petroski, his many books on engineering failures throughout history is very enlightening for any engineer, particularly 'Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering':

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Paradigms-Histories-...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
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The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

On my Christmas list this year "Not much of an engineer" by Sir Stanley Hooker.

Hooker took over the Merlin engine development in WWII, then went on to be involved in UK jet engine development and returned from retirement to solve the problems with RB211 in the 70's

I would agree with VEIBLL.

Biographies of people with engineering backgrounds come to mind. Their content may tell you what they had for breakfast (written sarcastically) but details,
specifications, and drawings describing how they constructed their French toast pile, supplemented the serving with syrup and so on is typically void.

As an ardent collector of books on electricity and mechanical disciplines, textbooks tend to have illustrations and drawings (sometimes to a high level of detail),
but books more specifically focused on a direct subject will have even better examples.

The 1930 era Franklin D. Jones Industrial Press volumes are a good suggestion to seek out. I don't think the illustrations have quite the crisp dimensional details
a source of material from the mid 1940s through the 1970s will have... but I do enjoy both volumes on my book shelf.

To me, the degradation of illustrations in many published works began when computer programs were starting to be used for creating illustrations.
Yes, they have improved.... but there will always be this couple-of-decade blemish on illustrations until (if ever) the quality is raised.

I'm not comparing an exact arrangement but here's an example of what I mean:



The illustration on the left is from a 1955 New Departure bearing reference.
The picture to the right is from a 2001 SKF bearing installation guide.

In comparing the newer computer generated reference source to the older one, the level of visual detail is watered down considerably.

At any rate, recommending anything "good" is a tall order.

A book within reach that did come to mind but lacks the "story of people" factor is a McGraw-Hill publication from 1960.
It has a nice balance of text, photographs, charts, drawings, (including electrical schematics) three dimensional exploded view illustrations etc.... and it's on line.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b452790...

As the crowd here tosses out some good ideas... I'll also suggest to look for what you like!

John

The old (ring bound) Timken catalog had many many pages of cross sections similar to your stub axle, and calculations to go with them. No, you can't have mine!

Cheers

Greg Locock


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Many of the really useful reference books for my line of work (shell & tube exchangers) are long out of print. I'd see something a guy had that I didn't, I'd say "Where did you get that?". He'd say "Well, I had it." I'd say "Think I could get one?". He'd say "No."
:)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Interesting recommendations. Just what I was looking for. I will check these out. Meanwhile please keep posting new ones...

"American Electrician's Handbook" is currently in print, but for the historically minded, it's worth a search through used book sources.

I have one printed in 1953. It is useful to see what we've forgotten.

old field guy

In general, history and "technical details" are mutually exclusive. People that buy history books tend to be looking for "big picture" things. Moreover, reconstruction of historical details for specific events are difficult enough when there are historians documenting things, but engineers tend not to publicly document their actions.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down
The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor
Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound, and Revolution of the Electric Guitar
The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are
Engineering and the Mind's Eye
The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT

"In general, history and 'technical details' are mutually exclusive."

Yes, agreed.

An exception to this general rule are the detailed technical books about systems that are now historical. In other words, the history is inherent in the subject matter, leaving plenty of room for all the technical details.

For example, I recall that the book 'Digital Apollo : Human and Machine in Spaceflight' was quite detailed on the technical deatils (if I recall correctly, this recollection is from a 2008 reading), but it's about a system (the famous Apollo Guidance Computer) that is quite historical.

The Space Race offers numerous books like this. For example, the famous Haynes Repair Manuals series extends to include the various Apollo spacecraft and the Lunar Rover; just in case you need to fix your Saturn V. They have nice line drawings, although they seem to be modern versions.

For some reason , the books about the history of the Mahatten Project (Los Alamos, etc.) typically fail to provide the ultimate in technical details.

Quote (VEIBLL)

...the books about the history of the Mahatten Project (Los Alamos, etc.) typically fail to provide the ultimate in technical details.

Gee, I wonder why that would be

Note that back during the 80's and 90's, I made eight or nine trips up the mountain, i.e. Los Alamos, most of the time driving up from Albuquerque but on at least a couple of occasions, flying in and out, which provided an 'enhanced level of excitement' in and of itself. The reason for going there was to visit the labs as they were a customer, in fact they were our oldest customer, purchasing the first of our CAD systems back in 1974. Now it was interesting being in the labs as security, as you can imagine, was very strict. You had to be pre-cleared for each visit and while inside 'the fence', you had to be accompanied no matter where you went, including going to the restroom. And there was very visible armed security both inside and outside the buildings (I was told that these guards had all passed psychological screening where it had been determined that they would actually shoot people). Now those were in the good old days, when you could drive-up to the mountain (actually a mesa), stay at a local hotel, see the sights, other then just the labs, eat at the local restaurants, maybe even visit the home of one of the guys whom you had known and worked with over the year. Unfortunately, that all changed on 9/11. The last time I was near Los Alamos was in August 2007 when my wife and I visited Santa Fe on vacation. We drove around looking at places like the Bandelier National Monument, the Loretto Chapel, etc. Anyway, I told my wife, lets drive up to Los Alamos and while I knew we couldn't get into the labs, we could at least see the town and so on. Well, when we got to where the road started up the side of the mesa, we encountered a chain-link fence, with concertina strung along the top, a substantial gate and a security building, with those armed guards, and we were told that you can't even get into the town of Los Alamoa without prearranging the visit and you had to have a valid reason for being there. BTW, this is basically the situation during WWII, the entire mesa was off-limits, and at least in 2007, it was that way again.

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

There was a high school student around the time I was in high school that actually wrote a term paper on atomic fission that got him arrested, briefly, and his term paper classified. I think he got his A, though. But, he did acquire all the information he wrote from sources publicly available to a high school student, back in the early 1970s.

As for Digital Apollo - Human and Machine in Spaceflight, that depends on the level of detail you're looking for, I guess. Certainly, there's not enough for anyone to actually build a copy, albeit, there's definitely more detail than you might find in a normal history book. Nevertheless, the only reason there is so much detail is because it was Apollo. A comparable book is "The Soul of a New Machine," but there's even less technical detail there, even though it's about the development of a relatively important milestone in computer development.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
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Truck and bus, I thought engineering and the minds eye was the best.

George Dyson also wrote a history of Project Orion I really liked. I think the government reclassified the project so the books is only available secondhand for quite a bit more than the $10 or $20 I paid for it back when.

Meh, Amazon has a number of used Project Orion books starting in the mid-$20 range... not a bad price.

Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival by Laurence Gonzales. Lots of technical details on the engine, its manufacturing process, its failure, and the crash sequence. I listened to the audio book on my daily commute over the course of a couple of weeks. I don't have a hard copy so I don't know if there are any technical illustrations, but the detail given in the text of the book is quite good.

Transformer was patented in 1885 and the first book on transformers was printed in Germany & Paris in 1888 titled " History of the Transformers " by Friedrich Uppenborn. English edition came out in 1889.https://archive.org/details/historyoftransfo00uppe...

+1 for Hooker's book. The appendix has schematics of the Merlin and the Rolls Royce engines, even including a few performance curves.

My recommendation is any one of JE Gordon's books:

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

and


The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor

www.sparweb.ca

Gene Kranz: Failure is Not an Option White knuckles. Also has a lot to say about how to make a team out of bunch of people.

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Dr. Andrew Hodges If you like math, you're in heaven - or you already know all this stuff. It was an eyeopener to me.

Henry Petroski: To Engineer is Human Careful consideration of the ways to learn from failure.

Apogee Books Space Series (Apollo, Gemini, Mercury) Robert Godwin Very technical. Includes mostly NASA technical press released and technical briefing documents.

Engineer’s Sketch-Book OF MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS, DEVICES, APPLIANCES, CONTRIVANCES AND DETAILS by Thomas Walter Barber I have actually used a reference like this (not this exact one) to help visualize a mechanism that I needed to modify. Also useful during discussions to illustrate a kind of mechanism when you are proposing an idea and don't have the time to draw it.

www.sparweb.ca

For a detailed history of how our capabilities for ever more precise machinery progressed, and who the the main heroes were, here is an absolutely captivating book:
https://www.amazon.com/Perfectionists-Precision-En...

That one is already on the shelf and waiting for its turn .

Jobst Brant: The Bicycle Wheel

www.sparweb.ca

Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy by Moore is a great account of the history of measurement and the development of highly accurate machine tools since the industrial revolution.

Karl Terzaghi: The Engineer as an Artist

Talks about Terzaghi and the many geotechnical projects he was involved in around the world. Has some small, but focused, discussion about the development of theories related to soil mechanics and how his novel solutions evolved our current state of practice.

NASA has some interesting free e-books. Next to others there are 4 volumes of "Rockets and People", history of Soviet rocket/space industry by Boris Chertok.

Good suggestion Gearguru!

Another: Separating the Real from the Imagined: Flight Research at the NACA and NASA, 1915-1998 by Michael H. Gorn

www.sparweb.ca

Here is link to NASA History e-books section:
https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/history_ebooks...
More about Chertok:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Chertok