FAIRBAIRN, William Useful information for engineers being a series of lectures before the working engineers of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Together with a series of appendixes containing the results of experimental inquiries into the strength of materials, the causes of boiler explosion, &c. London, Longman, Green etc. 1860. 3rd edn.
8vo. xx + 380pp. 9 engraved plates (3 folding) numbered I-VIII and 1 within text, 3 un-numbered wood-engraved diagrams and some wood-engraved text ills. Publisher's mauve cloth, spine faded. Ownership stamp of James H.Thompson, Kirkhouse. In the three series of "Useful Information" Fairbairn was able to disseminate throughout the engineering profession the main body of his work, particularly his studies into the structural properties of iron. The volumes originated in a series of lectures that he was asked to give in 1851 to some of the Mechanics' Institutes in Yorkshire on his findings about the causes of explosion in steam boilers. He subsequently gave other lectures but although at the time some may have been published as pamphlets or abstracted in local journals they were generally inaccessible to the greater part of the profession and Fairbairn therefore decided to collect and publish them. He also decided to include papers that had previously only appeared in learned journals with a limited circulation, such as the Philsophical Transactions of the Royal Society, together with results of many of his experiments.In this, the first series, he includes the original two lectures on the construction of boilers (he had invented and patented the Lancashire boiler with its two internal fire-tubes in 1844) and on the various reasons for boiler explosions, together with an investigation into the nature and properties of steam, drawing on authorities such as Black, Robison, Watt etc. There is also a lecture on iron ship-building, the first public appearance of his seminal work in this field, and the lengthy appendices include the results of his experiments on wrought-iron plates and rivets as applied to ship building and his researches into the strength of locomotive boilers.The work was immensely successful, going into three further editions. Such was the demand for the book that a second edition appeared in the same year as the first. This third edition contains new material on boiler flues with the results of Fairbairn's experiments on their collapse, together with the rules for proportioning vessels to resist an external strain given in a form in which they can be easily applied in practice.
£250
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