Enginnering history books with technical details 3

[JerinG]

I'm looking for more books like:
- Kelly: More Than My Share of It All
- A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States

I'm interested in stories of people that had a strong influence in certain engineering fields. But in these books I'm missing more enineering representation of what these people did, like drawings or sketches.

Can anyone recommend anything good?

 

[Sparweb]

+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

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[Sparweb]

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.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[Jboggs]

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/Perfectionis...?keywords=precisionists&qid=1575300994&sr=8-2

 

[JerinG]

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

 

[Sparweb]

Jobst Brant: The Bicycle Wheel

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[Guest0527211403]

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.

 

[skeletron]

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.

 

[gearguru]

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.

 

[Sparweb]

Good suggestion Gearguru!

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

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[gearguru]

Here is link to NASA History e-books section:

https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/history_ebooks_archive_1.html

More about Chertok:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Chertok