Hi Michael

I have a copy of Molesworth's fascinating little book – Twenty Fourth Edition, dated 1901!

In it is a copy of the preface to the first edition, dated November 1862!!

There are numerous old adverts at the front and back covering all sorts of ancient machinery, even one claiming the 'efficiency and economy' of the 'World-Renowned EDISWAN Incandescent Electric Lamp'…!!! Needless to say, it's leather cover is getting a little dog-eared now!

My copy of Machinery's Handbook is the edition of 1942. It holds a section on the use of a slide rule – when did you last use one of those? Can't think of life without a pocket calculator now ….

My! What progress we have seen over our lifetime! Remarkable ..!

Trevor T

Hi Michael G ,

About 30 years ago, our Daughter wanted a Calculator for use at School.

Beastly Dad insisted that she must explain the working principle of Multiplication and Division on a Slide Rule, before she could have a Calculator !

Apart from modern electronic calculators it's interesting to think about calculating methods of earlier times :

Fingers .

Counting wheels with or without gearing and more complicated gear devices .

Simple bead frame or more advanced abacus .

Counting stones , tablets and cards with different values for different sizes/shapes .

Counting board with pegs / markers or chalk .

Arrays of stones on the ground .

Counting sticks with notches / knotted strings

Writen arithmetic on paper / backboard / sand / clay .

Mental arithmetic .

Look up tables and Ready Reckoner – calcs tediously done by scholars and then published for general use . Many of these over centuries for simple sums , finance , science , astronomy and engineering . Later logs and trig .

Charts , graphs and nonograms . (Various spellings)

Standing stones (?)

I'm sure that there are many more .

Regards ,

Michael Williams .

Edited By MICHAEL WILLIAMS on 02/03/2013 08:48:50

I have a Molesworth's pocket book. Although it does have a lot of useful information, a great deal of it appears to be a bit esoteric. Frankly I got a bit irritated that it never seemed to have the information I really wanted! I'm not sure there isn't a section of formulae for working out how to taper wallpaper to do the inside of a lighthouse…

For my ref needs I have:

Machiner'ys Handbook 15th edition-1956

Newnes Mechanical Engineers pocketbook 1990 ed.

Zeus databook metric edition.

Workshop Practice editions # 2-3-15-20-22-35-49

The Compact Lathe by stan Bray

Model Egineers Handbook (2nd ed.) by Tubal Cain, a superb ref. book I might add,

Assortment of manufacturers freebies e.g. Presto/Dormer(usual disclaimer) drilling & milling ref pocketbook etc,etc.

Various ref notes from my days as a Mech.Eng. Instructor in a training establishment, so I reckon I am pretty well covered for information, & yet I am amazed at the wealth of knowledge shown by members of MEW forums, a lot of it had me thinking back many many years & saying to myself 'I'd forgotton about that, many times I have thought 'why didn't I think of that! when I have usually 'overthought & overengineered 'simple stuff, to the point of not doing productive stuff.

I must offer my thanks to all members for reminding /refreshing my old grey matter now that I am retired & have a little more time to concentrate on Model Eng. long may it continue.

Regards

George.

The Compleet Molesworth and the other books in the series probably contain more interesting and useful information than most of the books written by expert model engineers and are certainly well worth a read .

I wonder if he mentions injectors anywhere ???

MikeW