Iver P. Cooper – författare

Many people may know about the blazing crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 but are possibly unaware that it had made 62 flights before its final journey (including one transporting author Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint). The disaster, however, did not end the airship era; blimps escorted convoys during World War II and were a part of air defense systems in the 1950s and 1960s. Airships still fly today, and new models are in the construction phase.

This book examines this branch of aviation history, delving into the science and engineering of airships and their design flaws, weather difficulties and operational errors. The chapters focus on function (lift, propulsion, materials, ground handling and so forth). The book concludes with speculations about future airship designs and missions.

For millennia, ships have been used to fish; transport passengers and cargo; and bring divers to particular locations to harvest sea life, salvage wrecks, or conduct studies. Anchors must be raised or lowered; rigging adjusted; and cargo loaded, stowed, and ultimately delivered. Employing navigation, equipment, and methods, ships must be steered to their destination despite the vagaries of wind and wave, communicate with other ships or those onshore, and operate within parameters that may encompass issues such as efficiency and safety.

This book examines innovations in hardware and methodology related to work on (and under) the sea from scientific and historical perspectives. Focusing on how things work, this dynamic and well-illustrated history traces the technology and techniques that evolved over centuries of seafaring.

Conventional aircraft today are propelled by the action of propellers or jets, and powered by the internal combustion of petroleum fuels in piston, turboprop or jet engines. But other power sources, powerplants, and propulsion devices, for airships as well as aircraft, have been proposed and even experimented with over the last few centuries. The power sources considered include human muscles, steam, batteries, nuclear reactors, and hydrogen fuel; and the propulsion devices include sails, oars, flapping wings, rockets and cycloidal propellers.

This meticulously researched book presents the history of these unconventional aerial power and propulsion systems, explains the underlying science and technology behind them, and assesses the crucial question of practicality.

Sometime in the distant past, a human being noticed his or her reflection in a body of water. And unlike almost all other animals, that person perceived that the reflection was of his or her own body. It was, perhaps, love at first sight.

Over the course of several millennia, humans learned how to make that reflection portable, first by polishing stone and metal, then by bonding a metal of some kind to the back of a clear glass or plastic. As the reflections became clearer and brighter, people discovered that the mirror could be used for more than just self-inspection: to extend our vision, in periscopes, telescopes, microscopes, and cameras; for communication, in heliographs, photophones, and the mirror galvanometers of undersea telegraph cables; for amusement, in kaleidoscopes and stage illusions; in solar furnaces and sunlight-propelled spacecraft; and in many additional ingenious devices. This book presents the story of how mirrors were made and how they were used, for work and play.