Project Gutenberg is so totally coooool!!!

[miriam_e]

A recent foray out onto Project Gutenberg in the search for the book by Emile Zola, that the lovely BBC series "The Paradise" is based on, ended up netting me a wonderful treasure trove of other scrumptious information. (I love my periodic random wanderings in that forest of literature.)

One that I'm especially looking forward to reading is the 5th book in the list below: Charlie Chaplin's record of his visit to Europe as a vacation, unwinding from seven years of flat-out work making films in the early Hollywood. During his trip he meets H. G. Wells and I'm really eager to reach that part.

Another one that I think will be particularly interesting is Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright's account of the early history of airplanes.

A E Dolbear - The Telephone
A Frederick Collins - The Radio Amateur's Hand Book
Archibald Williams - How it Works
Babcock & Wilcox Co - Steam, Its Generation and Use
Charlie Chaplin - My Wonderful Visit
Derek J de Solla Price - On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass
Edward Godfrey - Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design
Edwin A Battison - Screw-Thread Cutting by the Master-Screw Method since 1480
E G Thomssen - Soap-Making Manual
Ellen H Richards - The Cost of Shelter
Ethel M Mairet - Vegetable Dyes
Francis C Frary - Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing
Franklin D Jones - Turning and Boring
George E Woodward and F W Woodward - Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings
G W Septimus - The Art of Perfumery
Harold P Manly - Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting
Howard I Chapelle - Fulton's 'Steam Battery' - Blockship and Catamaran
H R Playtner - An Analysis of the Lever Escapement
Hubert E Collins - Steam Turbines
IBM 1401 Programming Systems
John Mills - Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son
J S Zerbe - Electricity for Boys
J S Zerbe - Practical Mechanics for Boys
Kate Field - The Drama of Glass
M Luckiesh - Artificial Light
Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright - The Early History of the Airplane
Radio Shack TRS-80 Expansion Interface - Operator's Manual
Richard Bonner - The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone
Samuel Dibble - Elements of Plumbing
Sara Ware Bassett - The Story of Silk
Steam Engines (Machinery's Reference Series, Number 70)
Talbot Hughes - Dress design
Thomas M St John - How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus
W A Shenstone - The Methods of Glass Blowing and of Working Silica in the Oxy-Gas Flame
W H Simmons and H A Appleton - The Handbook of Soap Manufacture
William Fairham - Woodwork Joints
William T Lewis - Friction, Lubrication and the Lubricants in Horology (Horology is the study of time-keeping devices -- clocks.)

In case you think steam engines are old hat, may I remind you that all the nuclear, coal, oil, gas, solar-thermal, and geothermal power stations in the world are steam engines -- that is, they use one method or another to heat water to steam to drive stuff (usually turbines).

There are tens of thousands of free books available for you at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org), but also don't overlook Project Gutenberg Australia (http://gutenberg.net.au/search.html) which has lots of books not hosted on Project Gutenberg because of greedy giant corporations' inversion of copyright. If you speak other languages you might like Project Gutenberg Europe (http://pge.rastko.net).

Comments

[greylock]

Charlie Chaplin's record of his visit to Europe as a vacation, unwinding from seven years of flat-out work making films in the early Hollywood. During his trip he meets H. G. Wells and I'm really eager to reach that part.

Woah. They seme like two time periods that don't belong. Mind: BLOWN.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Expansion Interface - Operator's Manual

If I could get this and a working TRS-80 my stepfather would love it.

[miriam_e]

Let you be the bearer of glad tidings for your stepdad...
http://sdltrs.sourceforge.net/
or
http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~pphillip/trs80.html
or
http://www.mess.org/

The first lets him run all his TRS-80 software on his current computer whatever that is (MSWindows/Linux/MacOSX). He doesn't need to get the hardware.

The second has a TRS-80 emulator that uses standard javascript to run inside an ordinary web browser page!

The third address has a much more flexible system -- it lets you run almost any of the old machines (old computers, games consoles, even calculators!) on your current computer (MSWindows/Linux/MacOSX). The list of emulations possible with MESS is truly mind-boggling. Think of your fond memories for some of those weird old machines you used to play some of those beepy games on. They're likely there.

Incidentally, if adventure games were your thing there is an utterly ginormous (and still growing) archive of them at the Interactive Fiction Archive:
http://www.ifarchive.org/

If your stepdad really, really wants the TRS-80 hardware I can probably be persuaded to part with mine (it just gathers dust in a box). I don't have the expansion device though -- just a basic TRS-80 model 1.

I have the manuals on paper and in electronic form... or I thought I had the manuals as ebooks... a quick look didn't find them where I expected them to be. I've backed up and reorganised stuff many times and haven't looked at many of these emulators for ages, so it may still be here somewhere. The paper stuff I've just now looked at (I reorganised most of my computer dead-tree books fairly recently because they take up so much goddamn space). I could always scan in the paper stuff I guess.

NOTE: The emulators generally need ROM files for most machines. They can usually be found out there on the web. If you're unable to locate what you want, I may have it squirrelled away in my compulsively accumulated repository here. :)

[miriam_e]

Documentation...

After a more thorough search I realised my memory was faulty. I was thinking of manuals for a different computer. I've now remedied that shortcoming and have downloaded manuals for TRS-80s from here:
http://akhara.com/trs-80/docs/index.html
and
http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/comp/trs80m2/doc/