How It Works

How It Works

Author: Archibald Williams

Year: 1911

The world is a scary place when we're at the mercy of machines we don't understand. Small wonder that we're seeing a string of book titles for kids: How Stuff Works, How Things Work, How Science Works -- a whole How It Works series. Books were different a century ago. Instead of explaining how other people made machines, they more often told us how to build our own motor, radio, or even the X-Ray machine. Now I find the exception in a 1911 book by Edwardian writer on technology, Archibald Williams. Its surprising title is How It Works. Still, although 500 pages deal with the mysteries of existing products, Williams is more concerned with the process than the product. Example: Henry Ford had yet to mass-produce automobiles and cars were still playthings of the wealthy. So Williams explains the internal combustion engine -- stroke sequences, valves, ignition, cooling, carburetion, and silencer -- what we call a muffler. His diagrams show how these elements fit on an auto chassis, which will eventually give the engine its reason to exist. It's a subordinate idea in the text, although the book's cover shows a chauffeur opening the hood of an early motor car to show the engine to two bo