Since the autumn of 2007 Justin Pollard's 'Eccentric Engineer'
column in E&T magazine, has been campaigning to remind
engineers of the extraordinary role that their subject has
played in human history. This book gathers together three
years of those musings, highlighting not simply the most famous
engineering tales but the unusual, the erratic, and occasionally
the patently insane. In its fi fty stories it covers everything from
aircraft carriers made of ice, to the origins of the omnibus.
We'll toy with Roman turbines and Greek computers, look at
Renaissance hypertext and have arguments with Americans over
the shape of our lightning conductors. We'll shake Scotland with
earthquakes and build cars out of beans. But most of all we'll
celebrate the joys and perils of living in an engineered world