Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements (1868) (opens in new tab)

How does one find such rarities without having prior knowledge about the book or author.

I downloaded a copy for keepsakes

This is a great book, that and Watt's book on steam and others which talk in pretty simple terms about how to make things for your steampunk collection.

If you are looking for fun things to print on your 3D printer you can make a number of interesting clock mechanisms, and from there some interesting pieces for an automaton. Lots of fun.

My favorite btw:

"226. This movement is designed to double the speed by gears of equal diameters and numbers of teeth—a result once generally supposed to be impossible. Six bevel-gears are employed. The gear on the shaft, B, is in gear with two others—one on the shaft, F, and the other on the same hollow shaft with C, which turns loosely on F. The gear, D, is carried by the frame, A, which, being fast on the shaft, F, is made to rotate, and therefore takes round D with it. E is loose on the shaft, F, and gears with D. Now, suppose the two gears on the hollow shaft, C, were removed and D prevented from turning on its axis ; one revolution given to the gear on B would cause the frame, A, also to receive one revolution, and as this frame carries with it the gear, D, gearing with E, one revolution would be imparted to E; but if the gears on the hollow shaft, C, were replaced, D would receive also a revolution on its axis during the one revolution of B, and thus would produce two revolutions of E."

It's baffling that Google requires a captcha to download this book, which prevents anyone (actually no one) from efficiently downloading all of these books, and that google adds a ridiculous page to the front, self-servingly begging the reader not to remove, but really just serving as an ad for Google. I'm not saying Google doesn't deserve credit for digitizing these, but they should not be restricting access or defacing the book. The book is public domain and belongs to everyone. It's not more content for them to use to drive ad revenue. So much for "don't be evil".

Of interest is also 507movements.com, which is trying to provide animated versions of the movements.

Most aren't done yet, of course, but as you click through, you can find some interesting ones:

http://507movements.com/mm_038.html http://507movements.com/mm_123.html http://507movements.com/mm_223.html

I love this book, but I got tired of having to flip through each page to find the drawing I wanted, so I put them all into a giant poster set with every drawing on it. I thought some other nerds might be interested, so it's up for sale here: http://society6.com/RettgerGalactic/Five-Hundred-and-Seven-M...

Similar book is "Computing Mechanisms and Linkages" by Antonín Svoboda from 1948. He worked on anti aircraft artillery sights which would track moving aircraft. This is probably first book dedicated to practical construction of computers.

For a treasure trove of technical books like this, check out Lindsay Publications:

http://www.lindsaybks.com/

I have a copy of this book which Amazon recommended to me for some wonderful reason. Makes a for great bathroom pondering.

I love this. In fact, it's older age is a boon as it predates the hyper specialization that leads to none of us being able to do anything 'on our own'. This is practically a mechanical hackers how-to book -- The stuff you need to know to build stuff on your own.

19th century 'Design Patterns'