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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 17:56:07 :
In Reply to: Audel's books posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 14:26:37 :
They seem to still be around, but they're sort of a joke now. They had great books and pamphlets about how to make good machines from common junk using ordinary tools. Really good stuff.
Going even further back in time, I have a pamphlet that was my grandfather's when he was a boy, entitled "Every Boy His Own Toy Maker" from "The People's Handbook Serise". It has instructions for building all kinds of stuff we'd never let kids build nowadays, even if they had the inclination to do it.
The pictures are few and the instructions are full of big words, but I guess boys in 1890 were smarter than they are now. One of the projects was a very clever little steam engine that combined the rocking cylinder and slide valve into one unit, if I remember right. The boy was even expected to make his own flywheel by carving a mold in a piece of wood, and filling it with molten "lead block tin". Another project was a windmill that you could build so you could let the wind pump the water for you instead of having it be one of the chores your mother made you do.
Then there is the section on home-made fireworks, with instructions like "Grind completely to powder and mix carefully together twenty-seven parts of flowers of sulphur, five parts of saltpetre, three parts of charcoal, and two parts of metallic arsenic.", all of these being things any boy could buy at the drug store.