Machine Dreams Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science

Book Description

This is the first cross-over book in the history of science written by an historian of economics, combining a number of disciplinary and stylistic orientations. In it Philip Mirowshki shows how what is conventionally thought to be "history of technology" can be integrated with the history of economic ideas. His analysis combines Cold War history with the history of the postwar economics profession in America and later elsewhere, revealing that the Pax Americana had much to do with the content of such abstruse and formal doctrines such as linear programming and game theory. He links the literature on "cyborg science" found in science studies to economics, an element missing in the literature to date. Mirowski further calls into question the idea that economics has been immune to postmodern currents found in the larger culture, arguing that neoclassical economics has surreptitiously participated in the desconstruction of the integral "Self." Finally, he argues for a different style of economics, an alliance of computational and institutional themes, and challenges the widespread impression that there is nothing else besides American neoclassical economic theory left standing after the demise of Marxism. Philip Mirowski is Carl Koch Professor of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame. He teaches in both the economics and science studies communities and has written frequently for academic journals. He is also the author of More Heat than Light (Cambridge, 1992) and editor of Natural Images in Economics (Cambridge, 1994) and Science Bought and Sold (University of Chicago, 2001).

Customer Reviews:

Impressive and fun.......2006-06-21

As you can see from the previous reviews, this is a book that provokes strong feelings. As usual that's often more a reflection on the reader than on the book. You'd never guess that this book is (by intention) very funny. But it is.

Mirowski has written elsewhere that John von Neumann is the "hero" of this book. Von Neumann thought neoclassical economics was nonsense, and made no secret of that opinion. As a result, many post-war American economists have tried to write him out of history. One fruit of their effort was the beatification of John Nash as the patron saint of game theory, a process that began in the 1980s.

According to this book, the irony is that those same economists have "followed the trajectory" of von Neumann's thinking for the last five decades, even if they wouldn't acknowledge it. Through the 1970s or so they relied on fixed-point theorems and other nonconstructive proof techniques (von Neumann in the 1930s). From the 1980s to now, they have relied on game theory (von Neumann for a few years in the 1940s). Recently, they have begun to rely more on computers, particularly to study "agent"-type automata (von Neumann from the mid-1940s to the end of his life). And, as for von Neumann, military funding has been an important factor throughout this development.

Actually, this isn't "the" irony, but just one of many. If you've ever had any suspicions that neoclassical economics was kind of a crock, you'll find them well-supported in this impressively well-researched book. (Some highlights include the misplaced aspiration to axiomatize economic theory, the impossibility of computing Nash equilibria, ditto for Walrasian general equilibria, the socialist antecedents of "free market" jingoism, the bounded usefulness of V. Smith's market experiments, and much else.) It may be a bit of a stretch to say that the book reads like a thriller, but the fun of uncovering some additional bit of intellectual dishonesty with each turn of the page did keep my attention.

For over 500 pages, this story is told with a sustained, righteous and gleeful sarcasm. Such a tone may sound tiresome, but based on the evidence Mirowski brings forward - much of it the neoclassicals' own words - it struck me as quite justifiable. And I laughed a lot.

However, be aware that this book is less self-contained than Mirowski's earlier book, "More Heat Than Light". Even if you've read that book first (which I recommend, especially if you're not an economist), you should have at least a Scientific American-level of acquaintance with theory of computation, a bit more math-intensive experience with game theory (like a few chapters of Myerson -- not that "Machine Dreams" has any equations, but the math is often alluded to), and smidgens of Arrow, Debreu, Herb Simon, Vern Smith and Kahneman & Tversky. You should also know "who" Bourbaki is and have some experience of the Bourbakist style, because it's taken for granted that you already do.

There are a few quirks, but nothing so dire as what other reviewers have mentioned. For example, the "Newtonian" issue appears maybe in one offhand comment. More frequent, no less irritating, and just as utterly inconsequential is the use of the word "thermodynamics" when "statistical mechanics" would have been more appropriate. (None of those physics gaffes is important to the main theme.) An august group of manuscript readers allowed the author repeatedly to use "phenomena" and "automata" as singular nouns in the first two-thirds of the book. And throughout, there are ironic allusions and silly puns based on pop culture references, which is fine; but those of you born after 1965 may miss a lot of them.

Maybe one day, some econ undergrad as yet unborn will write a senior honors thesis glossing those many dozens of goofy remarks. For its multitude of remarks both insightful and trenchant, this book deserves to continue to be read at least until that time.

A weak case.......2004-04-18

Recognizing apprehension about current developments in technology and the "closed worlds" of the "brave new world of electronic surveillance and control centers", and the presence of anti-cheerleader/antagonists towards artificial intelligence and its supposed tendency to reduce the complexity of humanity to "a very small part", the author of this book attempts to step beyond this and give an historical overview of the influence of what might be called (and these are words of this reviewer), a "cyborg epistemology" in the field of economics. The evidence cited is on the whole anecdotal, and what results is a view of economics that could more properly be called "deterministic". If economics is to be labeled "cyborg science", then this labeling might have many different meanings depending on the attitudes and background of the reader. For this reviewer, the decision to read this book was based on the belief that it might shed some light on how intelligent machines are being used either to develop new economic theories or to understand the vast amounts of empirical economic data currently available.
Luckily though the author does not intend to give the reader another neo-Luddite treatise on the perils of technology. He lets the reader know early on in the book that this is not his intent, in spite of the first few pages of the book, which might lead a reader to think otherwise. The author describes "cyborg science" as a description, taken by historians and sociologists of science, of the manner in which science has been transformed as an institution since World War II. According to the author, this designation is due to Donna Haraway, a contemporary sociologist of science, and applied by many other researchers whom he lists. In order to be fair to the author's use of the term as delineated by these researchers, one would need to study their works. This reviewer has not read any of these, but concentrated instead on the arguments put forward by the author himself, independent of any prior analysis or works of others he depends on. And it is the opinion of this reviewer that although the author might have respected the goals and opinions of all of these researchers in their concept of "cyborg science", it does not conform to the concept of "cyborg" as viewed (in general) in artificial intelligence. The concept of cyborg as an "automaton" is one that the author had in mind, but thinking of machines as automatons takes place in only a few small circles in the field of artificial intelligence. Further, the "attack of the cyborgs", which labels one section of the book, is a theme of many Hollywood movies, but it is an exaggerated and even comical view of artificial intelligence, and does not deserve inclusion in any serious study of the history of the influence of artificial intelligence on economic theory.
The author begins his "cyborg genealogy" with Charles Babbage and quickly moves on to von Neumann, Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, the main instigators (consciously or not) to the "cyborg science" of post-war economics. Throughout the book one can see clearly how the field of operations research was influenced by these individuals, and how ideas from physics, in particular from thermodynamics and statistical physics, found their way into economics. Babbage is described as someone who saw no reason why the human mental faculties could not be "economized" with the assistance of machinery. His portent of the future is certainly remarkable, given the trend in the last decade of low-level machine intelligence replacing hundreds of tasks typically done by humans. The "Second Industrial Revolution" spoken of by Norbert Wiener, and currently advertised with gusto by the new technophilic generation of inventor/visionary Ray Kurzweil, is fully in place, and shows every indication of having extreme social consequences.
One must not however exaggerate the influence of well-known individuals in science and technology in bringing out true changes in society. The ideas of these individuals are widely quoted, but their efficacy is usually tested by many unknown individuals, whose sole interest is in the applicability and marketability of these ideas. The author spends too much time elaborating on the contributions of a small collection of people, ignoring those who were (causally) responsible for the rise of the information age and machine intelligence. In addition, the anecdotal comments attributed to Babbage, von Neumann, Shannon, Turing, and Weiner, that the author believes proves their view of economics as a "cyborg science" does not mean it has actually become one. The author does not propose any criteria, independent of these anecdotes, for establishing his case that post-war economic theory should be characterized as such. These criteria would have to involve the use of statistical sampling and tests, which is completely absent in this book. A much stronger, and more interesting case could be made if the author did not shy away from these techniques.
So no, this book is not one of the reactionary anti-technology polemics that are beginning to proliferate the bookstores. But it is clear when reading the book that the author is expressing anxiety about the current state of technology and he makes a deliberate attempt in the last pages of the book to engage in philosophical value judgments. The "raw emotions" he says he felt in the development of his ideas compel him to make moral commentary on the state of economic theory. He does not see sinister plots behind military funding of economics, but he does hold the researchers obtaining this funding accountable for their results, and we should not believe them when they say they were working independently and without outside interference or pressure. The author though does show some traces of the post-hermeneutic criticism that has in large measure dominated the humanities. His worries of viewing markets as machines are in the opinion of this reviewer unjustified if one is to go solely by the content of the book.
The (thinking) machines of today are making markets, but not controlling them.

Note added later.......2002-12-30

The suggestion made in the last chapter is to try to identify an automaton that describes a particular market. This program will not work because of lack of uniqueness, as is explained by the work on generating partitions in nonlinear dynamics. Given any sttistical distribution, one can find infinitely-many different automata that can be programmed to generate that distribution. Mirowski's suggestion cannot be carried out in any meaningful sense for that reason. In finance theory we have recently (with Gunaratne) deduced a particular stochastic dynamics from market histograms, and there we also have faced nonuniqueness in identifying the underlying dynamics. The bigger and more immediate problem is to find nonfinancial economic data that are accurate enough to draw any meaningful conclusion from the purely empirical histograms.

Now for the irritation. I find it academically irresponsible in this day and age to equate Newtonian mechanics with 'equilibrium'. From the beginning, Newtonian mechanics was about periodic and quasiperiodic orbits. The orbits that were studied prior to 1900 typically have neutral equilibria. To be 'in equilibrium' in such a case, the earth (for example) would have to sit at the center of the sun. Poincare' discovered chaos in Hamiltonian systems around 1900. In a chaotic system all equilibria are unstable but the orbits are bounded. See Ivars Peterson's 'Newton's Clock' for a description of the history of the discovery of chaos in the solar system. Toffoli and Fredkin discovered Turing machine-level complexity in a Newtonian system (constructed of billiard balls) around 1983, and Chris Moore (now at the Santa Fe Institite) showed around 1993 that certain area preserving maps are equivalent to Turing machines. In other words, Newtonian systems can exhibit not merely chaos but maximum complexity as well. The misidentification of Newtonian mechanics with 'equilibrium' or simple mechanics should now be laid to rest once and for all. It would be more accurate to say that the economists borrowed the idea of static equilibrium from Archimedes. Also, take note please that every digital computer is a Newtonian electromechanical system.

Undecidable econ vs. Perfect Rationality.......2002-06-18

I've read about 250 pages and can recommend that anyone with an interest in economics and finance should read this fantastic book. The basis for the text are the contributions of Shannon, Turing, von Neumann, Wiener, Koopmans, Marshak, and Arrow. Mirowski tells us the main story of the interaction of the Cowles Commission with RAND, which Bernstein does not at all hint at in his Capital Ideas. Having praised the book, I will now concentrate mainly on a few points of disagreement. Undecidability should not be confused with noise in stochastic processes. Systems at the transition to chaos can define automata that can perform simple arithmetic. That 'cyborg' has it's origin in the physical sciences seems farfetched (the connection between Turing and physics is supposed to be via Maxwell's demon, but was Turing really motivated by the idea of Maxwell's demon?). Nonlinear dynamics and fractals ('chaos' and fractals) certainly did not evolve from cybernetics or 'system theory' ('system theory' was based at best on an awareness of equilibria and limit cycles of differential equations, and made vague, unjustifiable allusions to holism). Cybernetics cannot really be seen as the midwife of what is now loosely called 'complexity' either, rather, that (still undefined) field grew out of nonlinear dynamics, neural networks, computability theory and molecular biology. Mirowski is right that many scientists confuse simulations with experiment and observations. I have argued against this confusion in papers and books.

Mirowski paints an intriguing picture of (Gödel-influenced) von Neumann, RAND, researchers with awareness of information and computability limitations leading to agent-based modelling with some respect for empiricism on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, Arrow, the Cowles Commission and their later rejection of empirics, instead with emphasis on Bourbaki-style existence proofs leading to infinte demands on information requirements on Walrasian agents and noncomputable equilibria. We now know that agent-based modelling can easily lead to fat-tailed price distributions (as observed empirically), whereas in contrast the origin of the systematic head-in the-sand philosophy of the neo-classical economic theorists is made quite clear in this work. One can summarize the neo-clasical economic agent as follows: his dynamics are trivial (equilibrium, including Nash equilibria) but the information demands made on him to interact with other agents and locate an equilibrium point are impossible (noncomputable). Moreover, we now know that financial market statistics point toward the instability of Adam Smith's hand, so that the notion of dynamic equilibrium is complelety uninteresting so far as understanding markets is concerned.

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Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science [A book review from: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization]
D.M. Levy
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RQYHIS

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This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science.(Book Review): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues

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Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science.(Book Review): An article from: Journal of Economic Issues
John J. Hisnanick
Manufacturer: Association for Evolutionary Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Journal of Economic Issues, published by Association for Evolutionary Economics on September 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1116 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science.(Book Review)
Author: John J. Hisnanick
Publication: Journal of Economic Issues (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2004
Publisher: Association for Evolutionary Economics
Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Page: 875(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, pp. xiv+655, US$37.00, ISBN 0-521-77283-4 ... from: Information Economics and Policy]

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Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, pp. xiv+655, US$37.00, ISBN 0-521-77283-4 ... from: Information Economics and Policy]
J. Enos
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RQYHV0

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This digital document is a journal article from Information Economics and Policy, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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A breakthrough is a discontinuous change that makes new things possible and takes performance in a market to a new level. This book is about creating breakthroughs in large organizations where so much energy is often committed to existing activity. Drawing on their wide experience of working with top companies including British Airways, BUPA, and Carphone Warehouse, Ray Langmaid and Mac Andrews argue that it is customers themselves who are best-placed to conceive great new products and services, but that they will need time and trust to work out how these might best be created. Traditional ways of talking to customers such as focus groups lack honesty and place perceptual barriers - what is needed is a new approach that is open, honest and ongoing. The solution is the Breakthrough Zone, a creative meeting of customer and executives in which desires are unlocked and needs identified. Versatile enough to be used with groups of any size, this process is built on personal relationships, and proven to generate really innovative ideas for brand extensions and product development.
Provides the tools and techniques to enable you to get closer to your customers - a step-by-step guide shows you how to implement the 'Breakthrough Zone' process
Explores why this type of communication is so much more effective than focus groups or traditional database-driven approaches to engaging in customer dialogue
Previous innovations generated in the Breakthrough Zone include BA's 'Beds for Business', BT's 'It's Good to Talk' and new market strategies for VISA and Dell

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Customer Reviews:

A Must for the Commercial Chicken Producer.......2000-12-18

North & Bell's classic reference is a guide to people in the commercial chicken industry. It covers every aspect of chicken production in its modern, factory-farm form, including often-neglected aspects such as hatchery management and breeder flock management.

This edition is useful to the small commercial flock owner, including people with free-range operations, because most small operation use modern commercial breeds of chickens, and this is the owner's manual.

I refer to this book constantly to help me with my family farm. We have about 500 free-range hens and raise about 700 pastured broilers each year.

The book is flawed through having an incomplete index and being somewhat out of date (1990). It is also quite expensive, but worth it if you're raising chickens for money.

A Must for the Commercial Chicken Producer.......2000-12-18

I refer to this book constantly to help me with my family farm. We have about 500 free-range hens and raise about 700 pastured broilers each year.

Book Description

Commercial Chicken Meat and Egg Production is the 5th edition of a highly successful book first authored by Dr. Mack O. North in 1972, updated in 1978 and 1984. The 4th edition was co-authored with Donald D. Bell in 1990. The book has achieved international success as a reference for students and commercial poultry and egg producers in every major poultry producing country in the world.
The 5th edition is essential reading for students preparing to enter the poultry industry, for owners and managers of existing poultry companies and for scientists who need a major source of scientifically based material on poultry management.
In earlier editions, the authors emphasized the chicken and its management. The 5th edition, with the emphasis shifted to the commercial business of managing poultry, contains over 75% new material. The contributions of 14 new authors make this new edition the most comprehensive such book available. Since extensive references are made to the international aspects of poultry management, all data are presented in both the Imperial and Metric form.
Over 300 tables and 250 photos and figures support 62 chapters of text. New areas include processing of poultry and eggs with thorough discussions of food safety and further processing. The business of maintaining poultry is discussed in chapters on economics, model production firms, the use of computers, and record keeping. Updated topics include: breeders and hatchery operations; broiler and layer flock management; replacement programs and management of replacements; nutrition; and flock health. New chapters address flock behavior, ventilation, waste management, egg quality and egg breakage.
Other new features include a list of more than 400 references and a Master List of the tables, figures, manufacturers of equipment and supplies, research institutions, books and periodicals, breeders, and trade associations.
Commercial growers will find the tables of data of particular interest; scientists will be able to utilize the extensive references and to relate their areas of interest to the commercial industry's applications; and students will find that the division of the book into 11 distinct sections, with multiple chapters in each, will make the text especially useful.

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In the 1990s, influenced by the deconstructionist movement in literary theory and trends toward revisionist history, a cadre of academics and historians led by William Cronon began raising provocative questions about ideas of wilderness and the commitments and strategies of the contemporary environmental movement. While these critiques challenged some cherished and widely held beliefs -- and raised the hackles of many in the environmental community -- they also stimulated an important and potentially transformative debate about the conceptual foundations of environmentalism.

Reconstructing Conservation makes a vital contribution to that debate, bringing together 23 leading scholars and practitioners -- including J. Baird Callicott, Susan Flader, Richard Judd, Curt Meine, Bryan Norton, and Paul B. Thompson -- to examine the classical conservation tradition and its value to contemporary environmentalism. Focusing not just on the tensions that have marked the deconstructivist debate over wilderness and environmentalism, the book represents a larger and ultimately more constructive and hopeful discussion over the proper course of future conservation scholarship and action.

Essays provide a fresh look at conservation icons such as George Perkins Marsh and Aldo Leopold, as well as the contributions of lesser-known figures including Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, and Scott Nearing. Represented are a wealth of diverse perspectives, addressing such topics as wilderness and protected areas, cultural landscapes, rural/agrarian landscapes, urban/built environments, and multiple points on the geographic map. Contributors offer enthusiastic endorsements of pluralism in conservation values and goals along with cautionary tales about the dangers of fragmentation and atomism. The final chapter brings together the major insights, arguments, and proposals contained in the individual contributions, synthesizing them into a dozen broad-ranging principles designed to guide the study and practice of conservation.

Reconstructing Conservation assesses the meaning and relevance of our conservation inheritance in the 21st century, and represents a conceptually integrated vision for reconsidering conservation thought and practice to meet the needs and circumstances of a new, post-deconstructivist era.

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The survival of wildlife on this planet depends on animals' relationships with the people who share their natural habitat and influence its management. Nature writer Candace Savage has spent the last 25 years exploring humankind's complex relationships with the natural world. This thoughtful collection showcases Savage's exploration of the varied ways people relate to wildlife, from retelling fairytales about the big, bad wolf; to being surprised by the intellectual capacity of crows; to struggling to find a balance between harvesting trees and allowing grizzly bears the space to roam. Savage is particularly interested in bridging the gap between mythology and science. A constructive approach to the human-wildlife relationship, she says, lies in integrating reason and emotion and recognizing people's connections with the natural world. This book is a record of Savage's lifelong quest to engage readers in a conversation that enriches our lives and the lives of the animals whose stories she tells.

Customer Reviews:

Lyrical, evocative prose draws in even non-science readers........2006-09-24

If Candace Savage's name sounds familiar, it's because she's been writing nature books and magazine articles for the last twenty-five years, appealing to a wide audience of nature lovers with her reflections on ecology, environment, and natural history. CURIOUS BY NATURE explores a range of natural wonders, from the northern lights to peregrine falcons: at the heart of many of her essays are reflections on how humans and wildlife can continue to co-exist in a shrinking world. Lyrical, evocative prose draws in even non-science readers.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

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More than a textbook . . ........2001-08-25

Like many people, I was first introduced to this book while studying at horseshoeing school. From that standpoint, it is the ultimate textbook and a reference that should be read and carried by every practicing farrier. But it is also much more than that. The book is full of interesting and practical information that will appeal to any horse enthusiast. I found myself reading it for entertainment as well as education, as I learned about record-setting Belgians, the history of horseshoes, and other fascinating side-trips through equine fact and fancy. There is also essential information regarding lameness of the horse that is worth the price alone. This is definitely a book that belongs on the shelf of every horse owner.

Excellent resource for both farriers and horse owners........1999-07-21

Great book. Should be in every farrier's truck

A must-have for anyone involved with horses........1999-05-27

This is the book I studied at a farrier school (which, by the way, is the highest-rated horseshoing school in the country) and would not be where I am today without it. This is the book for those of us who are gluttons for knowledge!

A must read for all horseowners as well as farriers!.......1999-05-01

This book is packed full of valuable information that every owner should know. Now when the vet uses medical terminology, I will actually know and understand what he's telling me! --D.D., Indiana

The best textbook on farrier science written this century........1999-04-25

This textbook has really opened doors for my practice. Many thanks to Doug Butler for his insight and his practical approach to horseshoing.

Book Description

User-friendly compendium of mechanical devices. A treasure chest of ideas and data, Robert O. Parmley's Illustrated Sourcebook of Mechanical Components is testimony to centuries of engineering genius that produced the components that make modern mechanical wonders possible. Designed to stimulate new ideas, this unique, lavishly illustrated and conveniently indexed reference shows you many designs and unique contributions hidden from technical literature for decades. This kaleidoscopic display of thousands of applications helps you find the perfect device quickly, including: *Power transmission ù gears and gearing...chains, sprockets and ratchets...belts and belting...shafts and couplings...clutches *Connections - seals and packings...tube and pipe connections...bushings and bearings...locking and clamping...wire and cable *Single components - washers...retaining rings... o-rings...grommets, spacers and inserts...balls..springs...pins...cams...threaded components *Assemblies: fastening and joining...design hints...mechansims...linkage...fabrication tips...innovative valving...pumps...creative assemblies You'll also find design formulas, structural data, nomograms, charts and unusual tables rarely found in conventional technical sources.

Customer Reviews:

Great for non-engineers too!.......2007-05-14

This book is so interesting to browse through. As a mechanical engineer I really appreciate it, and it comes in handy for getting ideas. Great illustrations and descriptions! I highly recommend it.

Inventor's Smorgasbord.......2007-02-21

I am a farmer who enjoys making machinery. I design my contraptions on paper, then using a CAD program to refine the designs. Having no training in engineering I am frequently using references such as "Machinery's Handbook" and "Moving The Earth" and "Mark's Standard handbook of Mechanical Engineering" and others.
I have to say, that Parmley's book is a treasure trove of information, with heaps of unusual ideas for common compnents such as O-rings, rubber balls, pipe connections, washers and many others, plus hard information about more complex components such as gearboxes, cams, governors etc etc.
This is a big book, with many pages (numbering within each section only), lovely clear diagrams, and enough but not too many tables, formulae and specifications. It can be browsed cover to cover, (as I am doing for the 2nd or 3rd time), open a page at random and be fascinated, or look up specific topics in the excellent index.
I have read the other reviews on this book, and clearly it is a valuable rescource to professionals. I can tell you that it is also a fantastic mine of information to the interested amateur.

Book content value.......2005-10-02

This volume contains the most comprehensive list of mechanical components and variations on any given theme that I've seen in one place. Additionally there are significant extensions to computation methods and overviews not found elsewhere. It is an extremely high value book.

Absolute Must.......2003-01-28

The last few favourable reviews cover my thoughts well, but I would like to add that this large volume far exceeded my expectations in terms of both depth of content and quality. This is an amazing value for anyone who works with mechanical components. While its focus is on illustrations of the components themselves, it also includes detailed explanations with graphs, formulae, etc. So it's also a how-to book of sorts. I also purchased a companion volume "Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook", which I also highly recommend.

A terrific book.......2002-02-15

Illustrated Sourcebook of Mechanical Components has lots and lots and lots of line drawings of machinery components. The drawings are clear and simple. Each is accompanied by a well written description, usually a few lines but longer if needed. An interesting book for anyone mechanically inclined. For engineers there are tables and formulas where needed. A great book.

Machine Devices and Components Illustrated Sourcebook

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Fine pictures, poor explanation

Machine Devices and Components Illustrated Sourcebook
Robert O. Parmley
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0071436871

Book Description

Invaluable to anyone who designs, repairs, or operates machines, this sourcebook contains 2000 illustrations of the most commonly used components found in home appliances, office machines, vehicles, aircraft, ships, construction, factory equipment, and machine tools. The author also includes design formulas and structural data.

Contents: Mechanisms * Machine Elements * Gearing * Fluid-Filled Bearing * Bearings with Rolling Contact * Packing and Seals * Pipe, Fitting, and Valves * Key Equations and Charts for Designing Mechanisms

Customer Reviews:

Fine pictures, poor explanation.......2007-07-30

I've found that there are a lot of interesting pictures of many mechanisms, much more than I expected. But I think authors could have added some more detailed explanations about how they work, or which are the main properties, like efficiency in terms of energy for example. At least compare different mechanisms to get an idea of which one is the best suitable for a concrete action.
In several mechanisms it also would have been interesting to get two or three images of the same object but in different movement steps.

Electromechanical Devices & Components Illustrated Sourcebook

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expensive, but has broad coverage of devices

Electromechanical Devices & Components Illustrated Sourcebook
Brian Elliott
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0071477527

Book Description

Master the key elements of electromechanical components

Essential to the design, repair, or operation of your electromechanical devices, this quick-find reference provides illustrations, descriptions, and relevant calculations for 2,000 time-tested electromechanical components.

Customer Reviews:

expensive, but has broad coverage of devices.......2007-06-27

Elliott's book is for the professional repairer or perhaps the amateur tinkerer. It describes some 2000 components that combine both electronics and mechanical parts. While perhaps a little pricey, the sheer breadth of coverage compensates.

A reader should already have some experience with simple electronics, at perhaps the equivalent of 1 or 2 years at a vocational college, or 1 year of an undergraduate engineering program.

ILLUSTRATED SOURCEBOOK OF MECHANICAL COMPONENTS

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ILLUSTRATED SOURCEBOOK OF MECHANICAL COMPONENTS
ROBERT O. PARMLEY
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OFQKIC

Book Description

This book, one of the finest surviving Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, has a fascinating history. Its lavish decorations were painted in two campaigns.

Customer Reviews:

lovely.......2007-06-25

Beautiful!!! I'm still drooling over the beautiful artwork, I just wish it had full color pictures of all the pages... you can get most of them at the brittish library online but there are some black and white pics (and a few color ones) in the book I can't find larger images of, but amazing!

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