[IAEP] Two Project Gutenberg books that mat be of interest

[James Simmons]

James,

I had to use GIMP to clean up over 300 images to make this e-book. The page
images were old and dingy and I used White Balance and Threshold to fix
that. I wouldn't normally include the image of the title page in an e-book
but this one was so fancy I put it in. It was a little crooked. Some of the
illustrations I had to fix were much worse in the tilt department, so I
guess I didn't notice this one. I've submitted a corrected image to my PG
whitewasher.

Your other comment is in line with other people's reactions to Morgan's
books. He recommends that boys do things that might be a bit dangerous at
times. The chapter on building a Medical or Shocking Coil would alarm most
parents today. Having said that, he did encourage boys to take an active
role in their own education (as he apparently had done himself) and
inspired many of them to do it. If you do a YouTube search on "Alfred
Morgan Radio" you'll see videos by people that grew up reading his books
and built some of his projects.

James Simmons



On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 8:04 PM James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:

> Thanks.  Interesting.  I reviewed the first, in HTML, and saw no
> significant problems with the production process.  The title page is
> on an angle of a degree or two.
>
> I hit quite a few electrical "we don't do it this way now" moments, of
> course.  One of them was the telephone line lightning arrester; a
> simple gap, then later enclosed gas discharge tubes were used so that
> flammable atmospheres or light fuels were not ignited by a distant
> strike.
>
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 07:42:24PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
> > Alfred Powell Morgan was a Constructivist and a Maker before either term
> > existed. He loomed large in my life in the Sixth grade and two of his
> books in
> > the public domain have been transcribed by me for Project Gutenberg.
> >
> > The Boy Electrician
> >
> > [1]https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63207
> >
> > How To Build A 20-Foot Bi-Plane Glider
> >
> > [2]https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63077
> >
> > The first book was one I read back then, but the edition I read was a
> much
> > later edition. That is available as a reprint.  The second book I only
> > discovered recently. Both are lavishly illustrated by the author.
> >
> > I have donated several e-books to Project Gutenberg, including complete
> > translations of The Ramayana and other sacred texts of Hinduism,
> Farewell My
> > Lovely by Raymond Chandler for PG Canada, and I even taught myself LaTeX
> so I
> > could publish new editions of some of these books for print on demand.
> None of
> > that work fills me with the pride that making The Boy Electrician
> available as
> > a free e-book does.
> >
> > You might object to the title, and I agree it hasn't aged well, but if
> the book
> > had been called Electricity Projects for Boys and Girls back then I
> wouldn't
> > have gone near it and my life might have taken a very different course.
> >
> > Check it out!
> >
> > James Simmons
> >
> > References:
> >
> > [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63207
> > [2] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63077
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.netrek.org/
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20200916/e5b95758/attachment.htm>