Books in the Cambridge Library Collection - Technology series

Blinded by smallpox at the age of six, John Metcalf (1717-1810), popularly known as 'Blind Jack of Knaresborough', nevertheless became one of the eighteenth century's great road builders. Published in 1795, his engaging memoirs recount an eventful life, including his part in the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion.

Replete with engravings, this four-volume work presents details of British and foreign participants at London's International Exhibition of 1862. A diverse range of industries is represented, including mining, engineering, textiles, printing and photography. Also featuring a concise history of the exhibition, this remains an instructive resource for social and economic historians.

An electrical engineer, university teacher and wide-ranging writer, Fleeming Jenkin (1833-85) filed thirty-five British patents in his lifetime. First published in 1887, this two-volume collection includes papers on speculative and applied science, literature, political economy, and technical education. Robert Louis Stevenson, his former student, provides a useful memoir.

The man behind the building of the Suez Canal describes his career as an engineer and diplomat in Europe and North Africa. Volume 1 of this 1887 translation focuses on diplomatic visits to Rome and Madrid in the late 1840s, and the early stages of the Suez Canal enterprise.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817) was an Irish educationalist, engineer and inventor, who was connected with many leading scientists, technologists and industrialists of his day. This two-volume autobiography, first published in 1820, was completed after his death by his novelist daughter Maria, who also co-authored his Practical Education.

Hunt's Hand-Book to the Official Catalogues of the Great Exhibition (1851) displays a compelling enthusiasm for the modern world, technology and progress. Aided by a series of meticulous plans, Volume 1 leads readers through the celebrated Medieval Court and spectacular displays of agricultural produce, weaponry, and porcelain.

Aided by plans of the building and tables of classification, in Volume 2 of Hunt's Hand-Book to the Official Catalogues of the Great Exhibition (1851), readers continue their vicarious journey through the Crystal Palace and 'take in' exhibits as varied as enamelled glassware, cotton looms and cement.

A distinguished consulting engineer and professor of civil engineering, Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt (1839-1907) specialised in canals, docks, and river works. This illustrated two-volume survey covers the design and construction of tidal and flood defences, canals, locks, and irrigation works. It is reissued here in the enlarged 1896 second edition.

Following the success of his Life of George Stephenson in 1857, the author and social reformer Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) published this three-volume work between 1861 and 1862. Spanning from the Roman to Victorian period, it provides fascinating biographies of Britain's most notable engineers, including detailed accounts of their pioneering work.

Published in 1914, this two-volume collection yields insights into the life of the artist and inventor Samuel Morse (1791-1872), who spent decades fighting to be recognised for his role in devising the electromagnetic telegraph. Volume 1 provides revealing observations by an American on Europe in the nineteenth century.

Oliver Heaviside FRS (1850-1925) was a brilliant self-taught electrical engineer, physicist and mathematician. Published in 1893, this is the first of three volumes that summarise his work on electromagnetic theory. It gives his first description of vector analysis and reinterprets Maxwell's field equations into the form we know today.

With over 4,500 entries, this two-volume catalogue, in its third, 1877 edition, is a comprehensive record of a major exhibition on which important collections now held at the Science Museum, London were based. It lists and describes the objects, and gives details of the organisers and contributing individuals and institutions.

This two-volume work of 1907 discusses the conception and construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, a 36-mile inland waterway linking two major cities of northern England. Its author traces the historical and economic factors which first led to the canal's proposal, all the way through to its completion in 1893.

This two-volume work, published in 1900-6, contains copious technical detail regarding the early history of the motor car. Drawing on his engineering background, William Worby Beaumont (1848-1929) describes the design, construction and operation of the earliest mechanically propelled vehicles. Technical drawings and photographs greatly enhanced the work.

Replete with engravings, this four-volume work presents details of British and foreign participants at London's International Exhibition of 1862. A diverse range of industries is represented, including mining, engineering, textiles, printing and photography. Also featuring a concise history of the exhibition, this remains an instructive resource for social and economic historians.

Replete with engravings, this four-volume work presents details of British and foreign participants at London's International Exhibition of 1862. A diverse range of industries is represented, including mining, engineering, textiles, printing and photography. Also featuring a concise history of the exhibition, this remains an instructive resource for social and economic historians.

Published 1839-52, this two-volume work records the contribution of William Scoresby (1789-1857) to magnetic science, a field he considered one of 'grandeur'. The result of laborious investigations into magnetism and (with James Prescott Joule) electromagnetism, Scoresby's work was particularly concerned with improving the accuracy of ships' compasses.

Replete with engravings, this four-volume work presents details of British and foreign participants at London's International Exhibition of 1862. A diverse range of industries is represented, including mining, engineering, textiles, printing and photography. Also featuring a concise history of the exhibition, this remains an instructive resource for social and economic historians.

Margaret Gatty (1809-1873) was an English writer of popular science. This volume, first published in 1872, contains detailed descriptions of over 350 British and European sundials, with their mottoes provided and where necessary translated. It remains a valuable reference for the various types of sundials and their mottoes.

This important 1844 survey of the natural resources of Ireland and the potential for their exploitation is a valuable source on the state of Ireland shortly before the outbreak of the Famine. Robert Kane outlines ways in which the Irish economy could be made less dependent on agriculture.

Published in 1845, Reverend Robert Willis' study paints a vivid picture of the fascinating history of Canterbury Cathedral, and remains a work of key interest for the modern visitor. Containing many illustrative wood engravings, the book analyses the rich variety of the cathedral's architectural styles.

After completion, the Severn Tunnel remained the longest rail tunnel in Britain for over a century. Reissued here is the 1890 second edition of contractor Thomas Walker's first-hand account of the problematic construction of this Victorian engineering triumph. Walker admits that building 'one sub-aqueous tunnel is quite enough for a lifetime'.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was arguably the birth of the globalisation of trade, allowing the major powers quicker access to the raw materials and markets vital for growth. These letters by the man behind the canal, published in 1876, document its early planning and progress.

By the time of his death aged 53, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had made a major impact on Victorian civil engineering with projects including the Great Western Railway, the Clifton suspension bridge, and transatlantic steamships. This biography by his son, with technical input from Brunel's former colleagues, was published in 1870.

The arrival of radio technology was a watershed in global communications. In A History of Wireless Telegraphy (1899), reissued here in the updated second edition (1901), the engineer and historian John Joseph Fahie charts the rapid development of one of the key discoveries of the nineteenth century.

Wireless technology was rapidly changing in the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1907 James Erskine-Murray, who had trained under Lord Kelvin, published A Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy, which became a classic in its field and ran to numerous editions, instructing generations of radio engineers and enthusiasts alike.

In this 1884 book, Jeans examines the work of the men who he considered had contributed most to the iron and steel industries of the nineteenth century. Their work made possible many technological developments by allowing higher-quality metals to be produced at lower cost.

Written by the first general manager of De Beers Consolidated Mines, this impressively detailed study describes the discovery of diamonds in South Africa and the development of mines and methods of mining in that country. First published in 1902, The Diamond Mines contains over 500 illustrations.

This work of 1866, illustrated by Robert Dudley, is the official account of the 1865 expedition on board the Great Eastern to lay a cable along the Atlantic Ocean floor between Valentia, Ireland, and Foilhummerum Bay, Newfoundland, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of technology.

This practical 1844 guide provides a detailed insight into the history and application of draining land. Beginning with an address to the public focusing on the importance of farming and the improvement of ground, Henry Hutchinson devotes separate chapters to the various methods of land drainage available in England.