Customer Reviews

The Evolution of the Heat Engine

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What could be drier than "The Evolution of the Heat Engine" (Thermodynamic Atlas 2, when it was first published)? Perhaps "Thermodynamics Atlas 1" by the same author. As it turns out both are completely engrossing and completely original. Atlas 1 does need a little grounding in classical thermodynamics for the reader (viewer?) to make progress but The Evolution of the Heat Engine tells a wonderful story to any inquisitive reader.

Both books exploit pictures, diagrams and graphs to the full - in Atlas 1 almost to the complete exclusion of text, in this volume the sparse text is used to complement the illustrations. These illustrations are not the empty, space filling bubbles and arrows from business guru texts, they are the meat of the work. They deliver real information and understanding, enormous amounts of it. More than that all the graphs, drawings and calculations are in Kolin's own hand, immaculately executed and composed. When you find yourself spending a long time on one page, it is not because it is difficult to understand, it is because there is so much to learn from it.

This book tells the story of one of the most important of man's self made artefacts, picking its way elegantly and informatively through the science needed to explain the behaviour (often anti-intuitive) of guns and rockets, steam engines and Sterling engines and many, many more, whilst giving a carefully distilled description of their mechanical manifestation. I know of no other book with which to compare it. (Wainwright's famous Guides to the English Lake District have a similar flavour, perhaps, but in a very different field.)

There cannot be many books about thermodynamics which can be read for pure pleasure, perhaps this is the only one.

I'd like to start out by saying that I'm not an engineer. I bought this book more out of interest. This book has some very interesting designs of older heat engines, including the wests historical fascination with vacuum power rather than pressure power. The work is well illustrated and the engines are presented in an easy to understand fashion. Highly recommended for anyone with a technical bent.

Probably the most comprehensive book on different heat engine designs that you can find. Very well researched and an invaluable reference for those that are interested in this field. The shape is awkward, but that is a small price to pay!

This book is fully satisfying for those who are studying thermodynamic engineering or just like to see well done drawings. Lots of great text, and as much calculus as you care to see.

Firstly, this spiral-bound book is such an odd shape it doesn't readilty fit a bookshelf. Secondly the diagrams are too small to have any use to anyone not already familiar with the engines. It might be a good, quick refresher for those already knowledgable, but useless for those not. The text is not very good (of what use is it to know that the inventor of the Stirling engine was an engineer, not a minister?) and coupled with diagrams that do not permit us to figure out how the mechanisms operate is not a good combo. We also need a glass to read the tiny equations and it is simply not possible to make sense of the mechanical drawingsl