Anyone Else Collect Old Engineering Books?

Q: Do any other engineers here collect old electrical engineering books? Any particular specialties (radio, power, circuit analysis, etc)? What do you use them for? I started collecting old electrical engineering texts a few years ago, mostly radio and circuit analysis books. Among others, these are interesting: Pierce, "Principles of Wireless Telegraphy," 1906 Pierce, "Electric Oscillations and Electric Waves," 1920 Kennelly, "Wireless Telegraphy," 1906 Puckle, "Time Bases," 1946(?) Edson, "Vacuum Tube Oscillators," 1953 Moullin, "Spontaneous Fluctuations of Voltage," 1938 The early radio books are mostly concerned with wave propagation and simple detectors (coherers and electrolytic detectors). By 1915-1920, there was much more discussion of circuits, filters, and tubes. Most of my books get rotated through my bookshelf at work. A few books, like Terman's "Radio Engineer's Handbook," have a permanent spot there. Others are interesting to look through when I'm working on a particular problem, like Moullin's book when I'm working on noise and jitter problems. Moullin has a reference to a paper by Kappler in 1931 that has plots that look virtually identical to the constrained random walk that the phase of a PLL follows. After a little more investigation I found Willem Einthoven's Nobel lecture from 1925, which shows similar graphs, and some references to earlier papers. In the end, it led to a remarkable historical journey, beginning with Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion in 1905, electrical current analogs to Brownian motion in the 1910s, and a solution to the mechanical analog of a PLL in 1931. What books do you have? Do they still find use?

A: I'll grab anything old of a technical or scientific nature as long as it's cheap. Old technical books usually are because general book collectors have no idea of the contents and thus cannot garner any cachet of approval from other collectors. I've about 40 older 'electrical' books. The earlier ones don't have this word in headings as 'electricity' was new and came under 'Natural philosophy' or 'Science'. The oldest -all electrical- book I have is an 1890 'elementary treatise on natural philosophy' by A. Privat Deschanel. Covers, Galvani's experiments, Wheatstones single needle telegraph and a new invention "coming into favour, "Swan's incandescent lamp" !. Interesting line on page 627 "It seems to be fully established by experiment that electricity has no definite velocity". (they were having problems with submarine lines). I've a series on "Science" from 1850. Fascinating to read of experiments using pitch to deflect H.F. waves. I've a 1870 Spon's "Workshop Receipts for the use of manufacturers, mechanics and scientific amateurs". Tells me how to make *anything* from "cheap looking glasses" to dynamite and nitro-glycerine. Many of the older books can make fascinating reads and their engraved drawings *are* works of art. It's humbling for me, to casually connect my fancy 6 digit DVM to take a reading when I know the effort, sweat and toil employed by the early experimenters in just figuring out what a volt meant. I prefer to use the old books to look for any really *basic* stuff but other than that enjoy them for the scientific snapshot of a time and culture, that only they, can uniquely offer. My all time best book (any book at all) is 1964 vintage, Autonetic's, C.F.O'Donnell "Inertial Navigation Analysis and Design". After reading it I 'just knew' I could build an ICBM guidance system or guide the Nautilus submarine under the polar ice cap!.

Discuss It!

C Paterson said:

My 93-year-old father died recently, leaving behind a large collection of engineering and math textbooks. Anyone interested?

Danny said:

Sorry for your loss. My dad was 85 when he passed in Nov. I am cleaning out his house and he has a ton of engineering books dating back to the 30's. Let me know if you get anyone who is interested.

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