Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers. Seventh Edition

This is the Golden Anniversary edition of the Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers. When the book was first published by Professor Marks in 1916 there were doubtless hopes that it would mature to a position of significance in the profession. The intervening fifty years have demonstrated its growth to classic proportions. For those who find history tantalizing, it is provocative to compare the table of contents of the first edition with that of this Seventh Edition. The additions include such new topics as computers and their adaptation to automatic controls, steam turbines od a million kilowatts capacity, boilers burning coal at the rate of half a dozen tons a minute, nuclear reactors and power plants, supersonic aircraft, astronautics, hovercraft, photo elasticity, air pollution, and water supply. But the many developments in such mundane areas as machine elements, metals, wood, plastics, machine tools, welding, adhesives, and piping, must not be forgotten. Even the treatment of such basic sciences as solid mechanics, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, and of the increasingly important area of mathematics, has been overhauled to fit the modern demands imposed upon the mechanical engineer.