I received this lovely coffee table book entitled simply Engineers, from my wife Jayne for my birthday.

Bound in a gold metalic cover with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge embossed into it, this is a real treasure.

Like most such massive books this isn't the kind of thing one sits down to read cover to cover, and one could quibble a bit over what Engineers and inventions are included.  

However as the subtitle says...

From the Great Pyramids to the Pioneers of Space Travel

This book covers a lot of ground!

The book is written as a series of individual articles chronicling the course of technological development from ancient times right up to present day.  What I find most fascinating is that just like the Industrial Revolutionaries that I reviewed a few days ago, this book includes lots of biographical detail for the inventors. Although because each section is relatively short, 1-2 pages each, the details provided are in the context of the inventions being discussed.

Lots of fine illustrations, including historic photographs and detailed diagrams, are included.


The book has five sections each covering a historical time period:

1. The Early Engineers
2. Renaissance and Enlightenment
3. The Industrial Revolution
4. The Machine Age
5. Modern Times

Each section starts with an full two page introduction, which includes an illustrated timeline placing the major innovations into a chronological context. Then follows sections divided by the technological developments themselves. Since many of these occurred in parallel they are dealt with individually in sections with an article devoted to each Engineer.
For example here is the section on Steam Engines from Section 3, "The Industrial Revolution"

Developing the Steam Engine 

1. James Watt
2. Watt's Workshop
3. Oliver Evans
4. Jacob Perkins
5. Richard Trevithick
6. Ernst Alban

From the back cover;

Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been.
--Albert Einstein

An epic visual guide to the World's greatest engineers and their groundbreaking achievements -- From the ancient Roman aqueducts to the Large Hadron Collider

A lush and lavish book to really spend some quality time with, although it probably wouldn't be a good book for reading in bed! 
Highly recommended.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Title
Engineers
From the Great Pyramids to the Pioneers of Space Travel

Author
Various
Edited by Adam Hart-Davis

Publisher
Dorling Kindersley Limited
London

Date
2012

ISBN
978-0-7566-9264-3

Amazon Link
Engineers

Here's another component that might add some interest...

As part of the water reservoir there could be a refrigeration section that cools the water.

An "old fashioned" mechanical, air heat pump could chill the water. This would need to be "pumped down" significantly before use. I would need a second power section, possibly a chain driven section on the opposite side.

The idea here is that when setting up a "minion" could spin the cooler section at fairly high speed to drop the temperature in a brine container as close to zero as possible.

Then as the Absinthe is prepared the water being dispensed would pass through a coil in the chilled brine.
A temperature gauge on the brine container would indicate when it needs to be pumped down again during use.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Click here to see the other Absinthium posts.

This poem, Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley has always resonated with me:

I met a traveller from an antique land.

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

There is a danger in writing too much of ones own achievements as the future may look upon them in a much different light.

This poem written by Horace Smith in 1818, also talking of Ozymandias, points out a similar if larger view:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,
The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand. — The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race,
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Where will all our technical marvels go when their workings are forgotten?
There is something to be said for human scale technologies, where the workings are vissible and understandable by inspection.
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

This book is a history of the development of transatlantic shipping in the period when steam power overtook sail.

The book is not only a chronological history, with excellent photographs and line illustrations, but also a technical analysis of the developments that changed intercontinental transport forever. The routes between Europe and North America are stormy and the adoption of steam power brought a new regularity and reliability to the movement of people and goods. The technical challenges in design of ships and engines, as well as ship handling, communications and business practices are all outlined in detail in this masterwork.

Written by Peter Allington, a Master Mariner, and Dr Basil Greenhill, Director of the National Maritime Museum in England, I highly recommend this book if you are interested in the transition from Sail to Steam in the late 19th century.

Title
The First Atlantic Liners
Seamanship in the Age of
Paddle Wheel, Sail and Screw

Author
Peter Allington
Dr Basil Greenhill

Publisher
Conway Maritime Press
London

Date
1997

ISBN
0-85177-668-X

Amazon Link
The First Atlantic Liners


Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Mechanical laser-cut gear fractal computer


Brent Thome, a computer scientist in San Francisco, is building a mechanical computer out of beautiful, laser-cut gears that will compute and draw fractals. He's documenting as he goes in a fascinating blog, in which he also recounts his adventures with kinetic wooden sculpture.

Brent Thorne's Blog is here:
Fractal Clockwork

Musings on the metaphysical nature of computing.

Theory of Operation
I could tell you that it took years and years of research and development to create a theory of computation that could be implemented in wood, but alias it would be untrue. The idea was formed after only a few reductions and one night when I couldn't get to sleep. You see, computers are much simpler than our teachers might of taught us in school. You don't even need the Boolean logic primitives to create a computer. These so called primitives are merely symbolic.

The most primitive computer is comprised of only two parts and from these two parts we can create all others. Those two parts are memory and a comparator. Some may claim that any practical computer must also have input and output, but that just is memory, or registers, memory again, or an ALU, nope that's a comparator.

We can further delineate memory into two types, read-only and read-write. We need the read-write type of memory to store temporary values for comparison. For example, read-write memory could be a toggle or counter. Read-only memory is convenient for storing tables or a program, however these two examples are symbolic and not necessary for computation. An example of read-only memory is pegs in a disc, where the presents of a peg represents a symbol.

The true heart of a computer is the comparator. A comparator simply compares two values. One of those two values was read from memory previously and the other value is read at the current position in memory.

Now that we have our fundamental blocks we can start creating all the other complications that are common to modern computers. However, I'm out of time now so that will have to wait until later.
--------------------

This will be a fascinating project to follow.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

There are several name generators out on the web.
Here are a couple with some examples of their output.

Victorian & Steampunk Name Generator by Spencer Rhodes
This one is nice because you can set the number of names.
Professor Coote B. Balls Esq.
Professor Hamo Songthrush Towell Esq.
Commander Reynold Tymperley Chiffchaff III
Fleet Adm. Nellie Darcy Guilfoyle
Dr. Gloria Wigley Royston

Victorian Name Generator
Merrit Necket
Elwin Kerslake
Bulah Thorndale
Orpha Downham

This page Victorian Era Names, a Writer's Guide
Has a great couple of lists of names taken from actual Victorian census lists.

The Ship Namer at Seventh Sanctum
Katie's Vigilance
The Brandon
The Duke
The Nomad
The Philosopher Sheila

Update Mar 5' 2014
A lovely little name generator from:
Dark Charity and Clever Jeanette


Enjoy.
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

Amazing steam powered creations by I-Wei Huang, Crabfu Steamworks.



Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ