I have a complete Encyclopaedia Brittanica from 1875. I HIGHLY recommend buying these old books; the knowledge is priceless, the window into a world long gone equally so. I want another encyclopaedia...anything from before 1911 (I have been told they started watering down the information in the encyclopaediae from that year onward...an example: the 1875 EB has 37 pages devoted to blackpowder...and a modern EB has a few paragraphs. Can't have folks learning how to make boomy-stuff, can we. Lawyers...friggin lawyers...)
I have Audel's Guides for plumbing and carpentry from 1926. There is so much there, so much of use, they are worth their weight in gold. I have The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments from 1960...it teaches more and better chemistry than my college courses did. I have The Amateur Scientist from 1960; it contains real info on rocketry, building seismographs...astonishing stuff...and it was all once considered so simple as to be in the province of the amateur scientist.
I have a two-volume set of Woode's Practical Household Medicine. It's from 1875, too, and it's great. I touched on it a little in the above post.
There is an eBay shop called MagicSale that sells digital collections of old magazines and books. I've bought a lot from them. It's amazing for research and it's actually cheap when you consider what you'd have to pay to source all these materials. They have a lot of collections with older science magazines, too.
Barbed wire was invented in the late 1800s, about 40 years before WWI. So a story with a scene of a dog getting tangled in it in 1910 is quite believable.
Thank you, I stand corrected. I had read an article a while back that it was not highly used before being mass produced during WWI to use on the battlefield.
Almanacks are also good. The Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle (a private library which has been around since 1826 -- you can't check anything out that is over 150 years old and its reading room is unchanged since Robert Stephenson's day) has a number starting around 1830. It is the ads in the back and the listings which are so interesting. And things like Mrs Beeton's which was often reprinted and gave helpful hints on how to manage servants etc.
You can sometimes find these things online as well, like Tunis Campbell's book on hotel management (2nd book ever published by an African-American) -- among other things it shows that he knew about time management and efficiency etc many years before Fredrick Winslow Taylor (there are reasons why he rose to become the head of the Freedman's Bureau).
I would love to be able to look through a library like that. I'm going to have another post in the near future about where to get these materials digitally. I tried to find this dictionary in PDF but I can't imagine any person wanting the job of scanning it! There are actually sellers on eBay who scan old books and sell the DVD for affordable prices.
I have a complete Encyclopaedia Brittanica from 1875. I HIGHLY recommend buying these old books; the knowledge is priceless, the window into a world long gone equally so. I want another encyclopaedia...anything from before 1911 (I have been told they started watering down the information in the encyclopaediae from that year onward...an example: the 1875 EB has 37 pages devoted to blackpowder...and a modern EB has a few paragraphs. Can't have folks learning how to make boomy-stuff, can we. Lawyers...friggin lawyers...)
I have Audel's Guides for plumbing and carpentry from 1926. There is so much there, so much of use, they are worth their weight in gold. I have The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments from 1960...it teaches more and better chemistry than my college courses did. I have The Amateur Scientist from 1960; it contains real info on rocketry, building seismographs...astonishing stuff...and it was all once considered so simple as to be in the province of the amateur scientist.
Old books is da best books.
If you end up buying from MagicSale, tell them I sent you!
https://open.substack.com/pub/thedastimemachine/p/the-analog-archives-your-historical-fiction?r=e338n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I have a two-volume set of Woode's Practical Household Medicine. It's from 1875, too, and it's great. I touched on it a little in the above post.
There is an eBay shop called MagicSale that sells digital collections of old magazines and books. I've bought a lot from them. It's amazing for research and it's actually cheap when you consider what you'd have to pay to source all these materials. They have a lot of collections with older science magazines, too.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/116120250745?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D777008%26algo%3DPERSONAL.TOPIC%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D273431%26meid%3D1dcac001f74e4e2e92b739b979f0a12d%26pid%3D101963%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26mehot%3Dnone%26itm%3D116120250745%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D4375194%26algv%3DWatchlistVariantWithMLR&_trksid=p4375194.c101963.m47999&_trkparms=parentrq%3A1edf240b1920a6240569b9a6ffffe1b2%7Cpageci%3A0000be5e-79a8-11ef-82c2-2e5bdf4f0c0a%7Ciid%3A1%7Cvlpname%3Avlp_homepage
Barbed wire was invented in the late 1800s, about 40 years before WWI. So a story with a scene of a dog getting tangled in it in 1910 is quite believable.
http://npshistory.com/brochures/home/barbed-wire.pdf
https://www.invent.org/inductees/joseph-f-glidden#:~:text=Joseph%20Glidden's%20innovative%20barbed%20wire,cattle%20in%20and%20trespassers%20out.
Thank you, I stand corrected. I had read an article a while back that it was not highly used before being mass produced during WWI to use on the battlefield.
Thanks again for catching that, I've removed that part of the article.
So Cool!!!!
Almanacks are also good. The Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle (a private library which has been around since 1826 -- you can't check anything out that is over 150 years old and its reading room is unchanged since Robert Stephenson's day) has a number starting around 1830. It is the ads in the back and the listings which are so interesting. And things like Mrs Beeton's which was often reprinted and gave helpful hints on how to manage servants etc.
You can sometimes find these things online as well, like Tunis Campbell's book on hotel management (2nd book ever published by an African-American) -- among other things it shows that he knew about time management and efficiency etc many years before Fredrick Winslow Taylor (there are reasons why he rose to become the head of the Freedman's Bureau).
I would love to be able to look through a library like that. I'm going to have another post in the near future about where to get these materials digitally. I tried to find this dictionary in PDF but I can't imagine any person wanting the job of scanning it! There are actually sellers on eBay who scan old books and sell the DVD for affordable prices.
I like the way you write so easily and entertaining capturing my interest.
Thank you!
What a lucky stroke and a nice neighbor to pass that gem along to you!
I am lucky! At the time, I never thought I'd use it as much as I do, but it's fascinating.