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Books, Books, Books
By Donald Christiansen
I like books. Most of the rooms
in my home are covered with bookshelves, many of
them floor to ceiling. Most of my books are
nonfiction—I’m guessing over half of them are
STEM-related.
For the edification of the few
digital natives (anyone born with a smartphone
in his or her crib) who may be reading this, let
me briefly explain what a book is. It consists
of a number of sheets of paper with writing or
printing on them, fastened together along one
edge, usually between protective covers. (I am
not against “e-books”—I both read them and write
them. But they are not books!)
A Safe Haven for Endangered
Classics?
Stephen Kahne, emeritus
professor and former vice president of technical
activities for IEEE, recently expressed his
concern about the fate of “the once outstanding
libraries of classic technical texts and
reference books” that many of us own. “What are
we going to do with them?” he asked. His
question struck a sympathetic chord, prompting
me to review my own collection. Here are just a
few of them.
-
Perhaps my most venerable
book is an 1896 edition of Silvanus
Thompson’s Elementary Lessons in
Electricity & Magnetism. Thompson was a
professor of physics at the London Technical
College. His classic 1910 Calculus Made
Easy is still in demand, available from
Amazon in both contemporary hardcover and,
yes, Kindle editions.
-
Among my collection are two
editions of Frederick Terman’s Radio
Engineering. The 1937 edition dates from
my Navy radio technician courses during
World War II. His second (1947) edition,
assigned to me as an undergraduate at
Cornell, was completely rewritten, with
extended coverage on uhf and microwave
techniques, radar, and television. Terman
was a professor of electrical engineering at
Stanford and president of the Institute of
Radio Engineers. Among his other works were
Fundamentals of Radio,
Measurements in Radio Engineering, and
the Radio Engineers’ Handbook. Many
years after profiting from the lessons in
his several texts, I was privileged to meet
him. I introduced myself and audaciously
asked him “Have you written any good books
lately?” I breathed more easily when he
responded with a chuckle and a hearty
guffaw.
-
Here’s another of my
favorites: The Principles Underlying
Radio Communication, an Army Signal
Corps book (1921) issued to my father when
he was a member of the U.S. Signal Corps
Radio Laboratories at Fort Monmouth. His
signature with handwritten date, May 27,
1922, appears inside the front cover.
-
Here’s Photocells and
Their Applications, written by Vladimir
Zworykin (RCA) and his co-author E. D.
Wilson (Westinghouse). This is the second
edition (1934) in which the chapter on the
photocell in television has been expanded.
-
Another: A First Course
in Physics, 1906, by Robert Millikan and
Henry Gale, both then professors at the
University of Chicago.
-
And The Electric Circuit,
by Vladimir Karapetoff (1912 edition), famed
EE professor at Cornell University. The Eta
Kappa Nu Karapetoff Award for outstanding
technical achievement is named in his honor.
-
A valuable text during my
undergraduate EE days was Physics, by
Erich Hausmann and Edgar Slack of Brooklyn
Poly. It was widely used in many schools. I
have the second edition, 22nd
printing.
-
Another favorite: Vacuum
Tubes, by Karl Spangenberg, Stanford
University EE professor. First edition
(1948).
-
A 1929 classic still on my
shelves, Transmission Networks and
Filters, by T. F. Shea of Bell Telephone
Laboratories.
Professor Kahne’s question,
reinforced by a review of my own library,
prompted me to search for possible recipients of
classic engineering texts. Many public libraries
no longer accept technical textbooks as
additions to their holdings or even for resale
at fundraisers.
Michael Geselowitz, senior
director of the IEEE History Center, notes that
while many history scholars often think of texts
as secondary sources, a well-organized and
-written textbook can provide an excellent
snapshot of the state of the art at any given
period of time. In 2003, Frederik Nebeker of the
IEEE History Center collected a few classic
texts for a pair of articles he was preparing
for IEEE Spectrum. At the time, additions
to this modest collection were not possible due
to space limitations. However, with the
relocation of the History Center to the Stevens
Institute of Technology underway, serious
consideration is being given to expanding its
library. If you have electrical, communications,
or computer engineering texts that you would
consider donating, you may send a list of them
to
m.geselowitz@ieee.org. Please do not
send any books, as temporary storage space is
not yet available, and funding required to
operate the proposed library is being evaluated.
The Smithsonian Collection
The Smithsonian Institution
houses and provides access to rare books of the
Dibner Library of the History of Science and
Technology. Bern Dibner was an EE graduate of
the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn who
founded the Burndy Engineering Company in 1924.
He was also a student of the history of
technology, and author of more than a dozen
books on the topic. Dibner’s collection of rare
books from the fifteenth to the nineteenth
century includes mathematical works by Euclid,
Bernoulli, Euler, and Gauss, and physics texts
by Galileo, Newton, Planck, Coulomb, Galvani,
Volta, Oersted, Faraday, Ampere, and Henry. His
donation of portions of this collection began in
1974, with the presentation of one-quarter of
these holdings to the Smithsonian.
The Dibner Smithsonian Library
now houses more than 35,000 volumes. Against the
background of this outstanding collection of
science classics from the pre-electronic years,
I wondered if the Smithsonian might be
interested in acquiring texts of the 20th
and 21st centuries—especially those
representing watershed developments in
electronics and computers. It may be that some
organizations consider it premature to archive
technical volumes that are less than 90 to 100
years old. When I asked the Smithsonian whether
its National Museum of American History Library
might be interested in seeing a list of classic,
university-level, science and engineering texts
for possible acquisition, and for the purpose of
being made accessible to scholars and
historians, I was informed that “we do not
collect them.” It was suggested, instead, that
interested recipients might include local thrift
stores, Goodwill, or the Salvation Army. [!!!]
The Smithsonian Libraries also provided a list
of some thirty universities with history of
science or technology programs, some of whom
might wish to receive donations of historic
texts.
The Future of Books
Author Rex Pickett is among
those who envision the end of books, writing, in
2012, “in less than five years . . . all paper
books will be as anachronistic as music CDs now
are.” In one study, reported by Mark Bauerlein
in his book The Dumbest Generation, over
40 percent of college freshmen said they did not
enjoy reading serious books and articles, doing
so “only when I have to.” In another survey of
college students, one quarter said they never
read a word of anything for either enjoyment or
edification. Information gurus predict that the
Internet will guarantee the obsolescence of
books. College professors will teach from
lecture notes or through online courses. With
textbooks projected to become unnecessary, the
question remains: will classic texts increase or
lessen in value and usefulness to scholars and
historians?
Lest I end this essay on a
somewhat negative note, an architect friend,
observing that my collection of books nearly
always covers the outer walls of each room,
encouraged me. “Good insulation,” he remarked.
“That should cut your heating bills!”
Resources:
·
Nebeker, F., “Treasured Texts,”
IEEE Spectrum, April 2003.
·
Nebeker, F., “More Treasured
Texts,” IEEE Spectrum, July 2003.
·
Smithsonian Libraries Special
Collections
http://library.si.edu.departments/special-collections
(retrieved April 19, 2014)
·
Bauerlein, M., The Dumbest
Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young
Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future,
Persica, 2008.
·
Dibner, B., The Founding
Fathers of the Electrical Science, Burndy
Library, 1954.
·
Basulto, D., The Future of
Books: From Gutenberg to e-readers
http://www.washingtonpost.com (retrieved
March 20, 2014)
Christiansen is the former
editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and
an independent publishing consultant. He is a
Fellow of the IEEE. You can write to him at donchristiansen@ieee.org.
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