TOOLBOX MAKE LOOKS AT BOOKS
Blast Off
Rocket Manual for Amateurs by Capt. Bertrand R. Brinley
Price varies, Ballantine Books, 1960
Bertrand Brinley was the author of the famous Mad Scientists’
Club books for teens, stories of unflappable high schoolers who
built all manner of fantastic stuff. Brinley also wrote an impressively
complete guide to designing, building, fueling (!), and launching
your own full-sized rockets. His Rocket Manual contains everything
from nozzle designs to bunker construction plans to extremely
detailed notes on propellants — just skimming it motivated me to
make sure the zinc and the sulfur in my house were as far apart as
possible. It’s also full of complex ballistics calculations, engineering formulae, and logarithm on top of logarithm.
In short, it’s actual rocket science — but it never once occurred
to Brinley that his readers would be incapable of rocket science, or
for that matter any complex and difficult thing whatsoever, as long
as the desire was there. After your incredulity at his confidence in
you dies away, you’ll begin to feel that regardless of what your own
apparently lofty goals are — from starting your own magazine to
building a kit car to knocking over the Bank of Scotland — it would
really be a shame to let Brinley down by not even trying.
—John Krewson
172 Make: Volume 10
Tinkerer’s Delight
970 Mechanical Appliances and Novelties of Construction
by Gardner D. Hiscox
$14, Algrove Publishing
Algrove Publishing offers a reprint series of classic books on
engineering and technology. Originally published in 1904, this
quality paperback is a great way to explore the historic roots of today’s machines and mechanisms. Each entry is illustrated with clear,
crisp line drawings from patents and from mechanics’ magazines,
and describes each device’s construction and use. Topics include
power, steam, explosives, marine vessels, railway devices, gears,
timekeepers, mining, factories, textiles, and construction. Don’t
dismiss this as just a museum of “obsolete” engineering, for the
perceptive reader will find many mechanisms still used today, and
others that might deserve a revival in your next basement project.
Of special interest is a concluding chapter of 56 perpetual motion
devices. Hiscox includes these, even though he “has not the slightest desire to encourage the hopeless pursuit of perpetual motion,”
in hopes they might lead “those who still believe in reaching this
ignis fatuus to bend their energies in causes more worthy of their
zeal.” Anyone who enjoys making things will surely derive inspiration
from this book. —Donald Simanek
