Reminds me of the locomotive buffs who are interested in every detail of markings on the locomotives, their routes, schedules, and paint colors. Whereas there's very little about the engineering evolution of those locomotives. Sigh.
For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.
It is difficult to know how best to document this kind of thing, the people who know about it probably don't want to write books or create their own websites.
My grandfather was responsible for part of the engineering side of the early British radar equipment, Wikipedia only really describes the scientific experiments that led up to it. I have plenty of stuff that I could add that he told me when teaching me electronics when I was a kid, but I would expect it to get deleted if I can't point at an external source.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/operations-research/History
Heck, I'd like to read it as well!
I know some things about the air war in WW2 told to me by my father (B17 navigator) that I've never seen in any history. I write about them once in a while on the internet.
For example, the air crews would squat on their flak jackets instead of wearing them, for the simple reason that the trajectory of the flak shrapnel was mostly upwards.
Thesis covers an earlier time frame than you want (up to 1800), but is this the kind of analysis you are after?
Would pull in development of precision machining, and various improvements in steel making I imagine. The paper below has a time line and details of 'start ups' involved in UK.
https://www.iris.sssup.it/retrieve/handle/11382/304403/988/G...
In twentieth century various people tried to adapt the steam turbine to rail use with varying success. Marine turbines dominated ship engines then for larger ships.
I think a carefully worded question on a UK railway forum might yield some results. I can just about remember steam locomotives clinging on in the early 60s (my mother hated them - put your washing out and watch the soot land...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine_locomotive
Has a time line of the companies involved in some of that.
Ward goes into excellent detail on the support facilities used for engineering tests, what the engineering tests consisted of, how they were conducted, etc. Even (sad) details on how 39A was immediately reconfigured for STS operations after Apollo Soyuz.
Makes for a very long, but interesting read for those who are NASA and history buffs.
Technical as all get-out.
Are there documentary crews at SpaceX right now?
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Rocket-Weapon-Walter-Dornberger/...
Although Dornberger was not an engineer, the book does go through many technical difficulties and how they were resolved. The V2 is, of course, a direct ancestor of the Saturn V, and the solutions to those difficulties are present in the SV as well.
It saddens me that Facebook has become this big, opaque data hole in the Internet. Even searching for that group name only returns one reference back to it.
All that accumulated recorded knowledge that exists only so long as Facebook determines that Groups have financial benefit. All that knowledge that can't be archived for the greater Internet.
I think the op's comment is the same kind of thing...
The most beautiful airplane ever built.
