Stickers & Thanks!

Hey Patrons! It's the second of the month, and that means time for the credits to be updated on the blog and future videos. It also means stickers are in the mail for all new Rockstar Patrons who joined in January.

Even more, it also means it's time to talk about a book! I haven't done one of these in a while, since my acquisitions of weird old machining books have slowed as of late. However a kind viewer recently sent me this gem.

With a catchy title like "Engineering Reminiscences to 'Power' and 'American Machinist'" it must be good, right?

It's sort of a self-promotional and autobiographical set of articles by one Charles T. Porter. What it really is, though, is a fascinating window into the technical journals and technological development of the time (circa 1886). It's easy to look back on the history of steam power and the last steam engines and think they are designed that way because it's obviously the best way. It's easy to miss that we had to develop them to this highly refined state that we all think of, and journal articles like these are how it happened. For example here's an entire article about an improvement that Mr. Porter developed for crank pin lubrication.

Again, this seems obvious to us now because it's now how all such things are built. However someone had to think of it, and someone had to write articles about the idea so others would try it and share it along.

Much is written about engine governors. That's a whole topic of clever developments (and a little snake oil) since governing RPM across varying loads and steam pressures was crucial to good consistent power delivery for factories, mills, etc. It's not an easy thing to do, so there are many ways to do it (including the charismatic fly-ball governor that we all love).

Another great example is the switch from beam engines to the horizontal stationary engines we know today. The vast, vast majority of surviving engines are the latter type, but again that was not an obvious or automatic thing. It was developed over time that a horizontal layout would be more efficient, as would eliminating the walking beam. Mr Porter was part of this innovation as well, having invented a type of air pump that can operate on a horizontal engine. Until then, beam engines still operated for pumping air in mines and such, even though their inefficiencies were known, because nobody had yet managed a horizontal engine that could pump air.

All that said, books like this are a tough read at times as well, because the language is both very formal to our modern ears and also rather self-aggrandizing. Such was the nature of the period, that individual engineers needed to promote their work through articles such as these. I'm not sure if that's really changed, honestly. Have you read a software engineering journal lately? They aren't great works of humility either. 😁

Anyways, it's a fun book to own and it has been reprinted so you can find it if you'd like to give it a go.