Books

26 May 23

Book review: ‘Flight Not Improbable’ by Simine Short

Civil, Structural & Architecture, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

When it comes to protagonists in the early history of aviation, Octave Chanute does not spring to mind perhaps so readily as the Wright brothers, who are generally accepted as being the pioneers who invented, built and flew the first motor-operated aeroplane. Yet, as Simine Short observes at the start…

11 Apr 23

Book review: ‘Charging Around’ by Clive Wilkinson

Civil, Structural & Architecture, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

In summer 2010, my old friend Kevin Dawson (then a BBC Radio 4 producer and now a public radio executive in the USA) was invited to take part in one of the first long-distance electric car journeys across Europe. In my capacity as E&T’s features editor at the time, I…

14 Jan 23

The Inner Beauty of Basic Electronics

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Eric Schlaepfer was trying to fix a broken piece of test equipment when he came across the cause of the problem—a troubled tantalum capacitor. The component had somehow shorted out, and he wanted to know why. So he polished it down for a look inside. He never found the source…

18 Oct 22

Book review: ‘The Sounds of Life’ by Karen Bakker

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Humans are rather poor listeners, compared with our fellow Earth-dwellers. The world is alive with sound that we cannot hear, from the ultrasonic echolocation of bats to the infrasonic ‘drumming heartbeat’ of the Earth’s crust beneath the crashing of ocean waves. In ‘The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is…

10 Oct 22

Book review: ‘Positive People Leadership’ by Nigel Rowe

Engineering & Management

Not many of us will have sufficient spirit of inquiry to work out how many bosses we’ve reported to in our careers. But Nigel Rowe has, and as his debut book ‘Positive People Leadership’ (The Book Guild, £9.99, ISBN 9781914471704) posits, there’s a lot to be learned from such data.…

22 Jul 22

Book review: ‘Sweet Stakeholder Love’ by Sigi Osagie

Engineering & Management

It was the great American statesman Benjamin Franklin who said that in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. Of course, he wrote that at the end of the 18th century. Had he been considering the position today, and had he been in possession…

17 Jun 22

Book review: ‘Artificial Communication’ by Elena Esposito

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

When it comes to the algorithms that work with deep learning and big data there’s a strange paradox emerging, says Elena Esposito in ‘Artificial Communication’ (The MIT Press, £22.50, ISBN 9780262046664). The better they become at driving cars, composing music and scanning books, the more our discomfort increases. You only…

17 Feb 22

Where did going to work go?

Engineering & Management

“The ‘Nowhere Office’ is a moment we are in today,” says Julia Hobsbawm. She’s referring not just to the title of her new book, but also to what she describes as a new kind of landscape in which we now work. Over the past two years we’ve had to recalibrate…

16 Sep 21

Book review: ‘The Quiet Zone’ by Stephen Kurczy

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Deep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the Green Bank Observatory, which is used by astronomers to search the depths of our vast universe. But in order for the observatory’s telescopes to work properly, radio frequencies in the area must be eliminated to prevent interference – the town of Green Bank…

17 Jun 21

Book review: ‘How Do You Fight A Horse-Sized Duck?’ by William Poundstone

Engineering & Management

Imagine for a moment you’ve gone for an interview at one of those giant technology companies and the person on the other side of the desk asks you the following question: would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses? Once you’d got over the surprise of…

Book review: ‘Flight Not Improbable’ by Simine Short

Book review: ‘Charging Around’ by Clive Wilkinson

The Inner Beauty of Basic Electronics

Book review: ‘The Sounds of Life’ by Karen Bakker

Book review: ‘Positive People Leadership’ by Nigel Rowe

Book review: ‘Sweet Stakeholder Love’ by Sigi Osagie

Book review: ‘Artificial Communication’ by Elena Esposito

Where did going to work go?

Book review: ‘The Quiet Zone’ by Stephen Kurczy

Book review: ‘How Do You Fight A Horse-Sized Duck?’ by William Poundstone

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