The Steampunk Scholar’s Library
I’m delving into Google Books and having all sorts of fun unearthing downloadable treasures for my reference e-library as I gear up — so to speak — for National Novel Writing Month next month.
It’s not that the books describe the technology so well — it’s that it’s so much fun to get into the mindset of the authors for whom this is cutting-edge stuff; for whom there’s still so much promise in the technology.
It’s also fun to find writings by Charles Babbage, Cesare Lombroso, and so forth.
For example:
- A Descriptive History of the Steam Engine by Robert Stuart (1824)
- The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated by Dionysius Lardner (1840)
- Elements of Phrenology by George Combe (1850)
- The Exposition of 1851 by Charles Babbage (1851)
- History of Mr. Babbage’s Calculating Machine in The North British Review (1851)
- Passages from the Life of a Philosopher by Charles Babbage (1864)
- Aerial Navigation by Charles Blachford Mansfield (1877)
- Aerial Navigation by Arthur De Baussett (1887)
- The Clock Jobber’s Handbook by Paul Nooncree Hasluck (1889)
- Criminology by Arthur MacDonald (1892)
- The Man of Genius by Cesare Lombroso (1896)
- My Airships: The Story of My Life by Alberto Santos-Dumont (1904)
- The Boy’s Book of Airships (1909)
- The Female Offender by Cesare Lombroso (1909)
- The Aerial Age: A Thousand Miles by Airship Across the Atlantic Ocean by Walter Wellman (1911)
- Crime, Its Causes and Remedies by Cesare Lombroso (1911)
- Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot (1915)
- Zeppelins and Super-Zeppelins by R. P. Hearne (1916)
- D’Orcy’s Airship Manual: An International Register of Airships with a Compendium of the Airship’s Elementary Mechanics by Ladislas D’Orcy (1917)
I also found all sorts of interesting books on spiritualism, theosophy, occultism, and some fun stuff such as Principia Discordia, the Vimanika Shastra, a 1798 Domestic Medicine, etc. I couldn’t find any downloadable copies of Al Azif, however, which seems like a terrible oversight on some occult-oriented prankster’s part…. Lots of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, of course, but they’re all over the web.
drupagliassotti @ October 18, 2008
A good collection, I’m going to have to download and read some of these myself.
Also: if by the Al Azif you’re referring to what is commonly known as the “Necronomicon”, it’s available here (among other places): http://www.scribd.com/doc/267598/Azif-Al-The-Necronomicon
-MT3
Ah, perfect; I couldn’t believe nobody had done an e-version. I remember when I was an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara way back in the 19(cough)s, I stumbled across a bogus entry for The Necronomicon in the university library’s electronic card catalog, which amused me….
They had electronic card catalogs in the 19(cough)s? Isn’t that around when the wheel was invented? And you had to walk uphill both ways to school, in three feet of snow, barefoot?