Before Google There Was the Chemical Rubber Company (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: The CRC Handbook is one great example of how access to information has changed over the years. Now, you open up Google and find your answers. In decades past, hard data needed to solve engineering problems was embodied in volumes of text known as Databooks. One of the best known was the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook. Don't let the name fool you, the CRC Handbook contained traits, properties, equations, and much more on all kinds of materials and techniques for using them. It's still around today and has one big advantage over our searchable digital lives: you know you can trust the accuracy of the information in those books at face value while online information requires validation.

Comments

Trust?

[rfengr]

Why would you nescesarily trust the accuracy of a refernce book over the internet? I have found mistakes in both.

Re:Trust?

[sunderland56]

There probably wasn't some asshat intentionally inserting bogus facts into the book.

Re:Trust?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

And errors on the Internet can be fixed and the corrected version is available immediately upon fixing, while errors in a giant printed manual will need a re-print every time an error is found and fixed, not to mention shipped to your house.

Handbooks. Love them.

[pz]

I am an avid collector of handbooks. They embody so much information, so much detail. So much effort into compiling them. They were often the life's work of an individual expert. On the shelves immediately above my desk we find, "Drafting for Engineers" by Svensen. "The Making, Shaping, and Treating of Steel" bu the United States Steel Company, "Th Vertebrate Visual System" by Poliak, "The Retina" by Poliak, "Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia" (I used to sit and just read random entries as a kid), "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", "Halsey's Handbook" (the one with a beautiful screed against the metric system), "The Merk Manial", "Machinery's Handbook" along with "Machinery's Handbook Guide", "Physician's Desk Reference" (although out of date), etc.

One of my greatest pleasures in graduate school was to visit the local used bookstore that, given it's location could draw on the libraries of many professional engineers, machinists, and mathematicians as they retired, and thus had a huge technical section that was both broad and deep with information.