E-books that might be of interest to others

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Mmm... My friend became quite skilled at taking the black powder from those mini rocket engines you can buy, and transplanting it into used CO2 canisters, and adding a fuze from regular fireworks.

*BIG BOOM*

Me, i "just" mostly made some fun stuff happen with KNO3 mixed with sugar and sometimes other interesting things.
Then i found an "old chemical recipes" book and came up with a number of additional "things".

*Ooh look at all those pretty colours!*

For my rockets, I used zinc powder and sulfur. For my black powder, I used potassium chlorate. And I did get in trouble over some nitroglycerine. The CO2 canisters were the same, though.

[Spica75]

*lol*

[Té Rowan]

I recall a tale of some guys mixing saltpetre and sugar in a wheelbarrow and setting it on fire. When they saw that the rubber on the wheelbarrow's tyre was beginning to look… hot, they ran with it outside and emptied it onto frozen ground. Made a nice BANG, which was the first thing I knew about the incident.

https://archive.org/details/magicphotographw00towl — "The Magic Photograph"
The invisible writing sure looks like a fun thing for a children's party. Maybe something for Halloween, too.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/sliderulehowtous00char — "The Slide Rule and How To Use It"
Yep, the very symbol of all the world's nerdology and geekography.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

My father gave me a slide rule, and showed me how to use it, the morning of the day of the big chemistry test. I used it. The cries of "Cheat!" were numerous, to which the chemistry teacher simply said, "If you learn to use one, you can do it too."

I ended up being dragooned into teaching the use of slide rules.

[Spica75]

My father gave me a slide rule, and showed me how to use it, the morning of the day of the big chemistry test. I used it. The cries of "Cheat!" were numerous, to which the chemistry teacher simply said, "If you learn to use one, you can do it too."

I ended up being dragooned into teaching the use of slide rules.

I think i maaay just have been maybe about a decade too young when my dad tried to explain his to me.

The fact that he had 4 of them, 2 of which were of triangular types i was unable to find anything like when i just googled for them (searching for triangular sliderule only finds ones with a single moveable part, and IIRC, his had 3 and 4 respectively), which were quite frankly hideously complex, might have contributed slightly.

I vaguely recall playing around with the 2 "normal" ones a bit, but i was always the opposite of my dad, i counted everything i ever could get away with mentally only, so i never really took to them as much as i probably should have. Again though, i was definitely younger than 14 at the time(might have been closer to half that), so they were a mix of overkill and "too much extra work"...

I always did love how he could use them to do most calculations faster than other people could do the same on electronic calculators.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/dultc — A small section of Duke U's Libraries that contains old commercial telegraphic codebooks and a few other brevity codes..

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Davis's Manual of Magnetism from 1842. The use of the words 'magnetism' and 'magnetising' were in use those days because electromagnetic induction of voltage was relatively new.

It's amazing how much electrical apparatus was available out of a catalog way back then. I was fortunate in running across a copy of the Manual of Magnetism bound with his catalog, and got the illustrations without the text. (I already knew what he was talking about.) This book, however, has almost all the apparatus he was making at the time, along with its uses. Pity the electric train wasn't in this one; it was in the 1848 catalogue. So I'll append a picture of that page:

[Spica75]

It's amazing how much electrical apparatus was available out of a catalog way back then.

It was a really big thing, both "cool" and an extremely convenient way for new industries to reach out.
It pretty much kept growing and growing up until WWI(when the system completely crashed apart), at which point you could mailorder reliably to and from literally almost every corner of the world thanks to the rapidly spreading railroads, telegraphs/phones and other infrastructure.
It isn't until the last 10-20 years that we've gone back to that level of "global shopping".

Really surprised me when i read about it, because of how it's not something "important", it tends to not be mentioned in history books, and often not considered "interesting" enough either, so intentionally looking for it often finds nothing, you literally have to stumble on it like i did to find it easily.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/howtoadvertisemen00chicrich — "How to Advertise to Men" (1912)
Unsurprisingly, given the age of this book, the answer given is not "Throw tons of tits over it".

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/cu31924011803958 — "Weather Lore", 3.ed, compiled by R. Inwards (1897)
That's a lot of old weather wisdom, and not all of it is from the UK.

[Té Rowan]

A short article this time.

https://archive.org/details/COMPUTOMATIC
It shows how to build a blinking, bleeping box. Might be something for a cheldren's section of a science museum, near the box that plays recordings of old computers musicating.

[Spica75]

A short article this time.

https://archive.org/details/COMPUTOMATIC
It shows how to build a blinking, bleeping box. Might be something for a cheldren's section of a science museum, near the box that plays recordings of old computers musicating.

*lol*

I built some stuff like that when i was a kid, never needed anything THAT fancy to LOOK fancy.

[Té Rowan]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62008 "Notes Upon Indigo" by John L. Hayes (pub. 1873).
Of course, I have no idea if anyone is interested in dyestuffs anymore.

[Té Rowan]

https://archive.org/details/quietingpractica119bere — "Quieting: a practical guide to noise control", published as NBS Handbook 119.
How to make your surroundings that little bit quieter.