Technology & Engineering Books

THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES I MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW It would be difficult to find anything in the encyclopedia that would justify the claim that we are about to make, or anything in the dictionary. Even a poem—which is supposed to prove anything with a little of nothing—could hardly be found to prove it; but in this beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us—for... more...

INTRODUCTION Any ordinary, active man, provided he has reasonably good eyesight and nerve, can fly, and fly well. If he has nerve enough to drive an automobile through the streets of a large city, and perhaps argue with a policeman on the question of speed limits, he can take himself off the ground in an airplane, and also land—a thing vastly more difficult and dangerous. We hear a great deal about... more...

HOW NEWSPAPERS ARE MADE. We will suppose that it is a great newspaper, in a great city, printing daily 25,000, or more, copies. Here it is, with wide columns, with small, compact type, with very little space wasted in head lines, eight large pages of it, something like 100,000 words printed upon it, and sold for four cents—25,000 words for a cent. It is a great institution—a power greater than a... more...

CHAPTER I. THE DAWN OF AERONAUTICS. "He that would learn to fly must be brought up to the constant practice of it from his youth, trying first only to use his wings as a tame goose will do, so by degrees learning to rise higher till he attain unto skill and confidence." So wrote Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, who was reckoned a man of genius and learning in the days of the Commonwealth. But so... more...

CHAPTER I. THE APPARATUS. To a proper comprehension of the succeeding chapters, it is necessary first of all to be familiar with the apparatus employed in carrying out electro-balneological treatment, and I therefore proceed to give a description of this. It may conveniently be divided as follows, viz. a. The tub; b. The electrodes and connections; c. The water; d. Chemicals; e. The batteries. (a) The... more...

Robert Fulton. This story is about a giant. Do you believe in them? He peeps out of your coffee cup in the morning. He cheers you upon a cold day in winter. But the boys and girls were not so well acquainted with him a hundred years ago. About that long ago, far to the north and east, a queer boy lived. He sat in his grandmother's kitchen many an hour, watching the tea-kettle. He seemed to be... more...

THEORIES OF TUITION Only eight years ago, in 1908, it was declared impossible for one man to teach another to fly. Those few men who had risen from the ground in aeroplanes, notably the Wright brothers, were held to be endowed by nature in some very peculiar way; to be men who possessed some remarkable and hitherto unexplained sense of equilibrium. That these men would be able to take other... more...

INTRODUCTORY It was at Mons in the third week of the Great War. The grey-green German hordes had overwhelmed the greater part of Belgium and were sweeping down into France whose people and military establishment were all unprepared for attack from that quarter. For days the little British army of perhaps 100,000 men, that forlorn hope which the Germans scornfully called "contemptible," but... more...

FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SALMON. In the following observations I intend to offer some remarks on the various migratory fish of the genus Salmo; and then some facts and opinions which tend to show the importance of some change in the laws which are now in force regarding them. We have first the Salmon; which, in the Ribble, varies in weight from five to thirty pounds. We never see the fish here... more...

Advantages of Common-Battery Operation. The advantages of the common-battery system of operation, alluded to in Chapter XIII, may be briefly summarized here. The main gain in the common-battery system of supply is the simplification of the subscribers' instruments, doing away with the local batteries and the magneto generators, and the concentration of all these many sources of current into one... more...