Kaleidscopes in the 1980s

 

  Cozy Baker. Through the Kaleidoscope... and Beyond (1987) Second, expanded edition of a catalogue of US kaleidoscope makers and vendors in the 1980s. Some history of the toy, including a copy of the inventor’s patent application. Some colour plates, a handful of nicely done black and white drawings, and photos of most of the artisans. The book seems to be a vanity project by Ms Baker. No doubt useful for kaleidoscope fans at the time, and possibly useful for anyone wanting to write a history. Printed on heavy paper in a well-made cloth case. The colour plates are well printed, but do not add as much information as I would like. Not a keeper. **

David Feldman. When Do Fish Sleep? (1989) Second in Feldman’s series of “imponderables”, which attempt to answer those nagging questions that  our high school classes didn’t cover. Such as the title question. Do fish sleep? Well, they do exhibit episodes of near-zero activity, which I suppose could be seen as sleep. Wrasses cover themselves in a thick blanket of mucus, not to keep warm, but to obliterate their odour, which would attract predators.
     A nicely done potato chip book, with an index, which makes it a useful reference for the times when you can’t be bothered to start up your device and search online. Online searching for fishes’ sleep patterns offers so many hits that deciding which one to open may be more trouble than opening the index in this book and finding the answer on page 161 to 162.
     I like these books (and many others like them, for example the urban legend compendiums), hence ***

Henry Petroski. Small Things Considered (2003)

      Henry Petroski. Small Things Considered (2003) Petroski, an engineer with a flair for both history and writing, has done a number of books on the art that we call engineering. His best known book perhaps is To Engineer is Human, a discussion of engineering failures, both of their specific reasons and the general problem faced by all engineers, that they can’t always predict precisely enough how structures will behave. Here, he applies the same point of view to design in general, with the constant theme that design entails compromise, and that therefore no design is perfect. Several of the chapters originally appeared as magazine pieces; others read suspiciously like lectures revised for reading. All in all, the book has a cobbled-together feel, a design flaw that Petroski would no doubt acknowledge.
      His last chapter ends with a reminder that engineers cannot make perfect devices, that failure is inevitable, and that therefore the non-engineering public that uses the products of engineering design must be neither too demanding nor too complacent. Good points, but it doesn’t take a whole book to make them. So, although any one chapter in this book is a pleasure to read, I can’t recommend reading the whole thing at one sitting, unless of course one wants to know all about the many small things whose design history Petroski traces, from pizza savers to chairs. In other words, a book to keep as a reference, perhaps. **½ (2004)