Mark's free (legal) technical e-books links

Technology

High Tech, low-tech, old-tech, appropriate technology. Those in the public domain can also be useful as clip art sources for writing tutorials.

At first count, this page had around 200 free technical books, including 50 books on machining, 9 on welding, 23 on material properties, 1 on blacksmithing, 6 on other metalworking, 2 on woodworking, 2 on hydraulics, 6 on motors and generators, 7 on drafting, 21 on electronics, 2 on thermal engineering, 8 on physics, 22 DOE handbooks, 35 tube era electronics, 3 on chemistry, 5 on Units of Measurement, and 4 related to CAD, and misc others.

Machining

Although there is some newer stufff, Many of these books are of order 100 years old but manual machining practice hasn't changed that much in that time period. Today we have CNC and better alloys and some new cutting methods. But the practice of turning between centers goes back 5500 years, if not longer. Metal lathes emerged around the 16th century, cylinder boaring 1775 screw-cutting engine lathe to 1797, change gears to around 1800. Also, back then they might be more likely to make a tool than buy one so the age of the books can be a benefit. The shaper dates back to 1839. The miling machine was invented by Eli Whitney in 1818 and refined in 1862. The turret lathe was developed some time during the 19th century. In 1896, the gear shaper was developed. Grinding machines and artificial abrasives were developed in the late 19th century, though use of abrasives goes back much further.

The internet archive now has a lot of books that weren't scanned when this page was first written. Note that many of these books are rare; some I looked at had maybe half a dozen copies at libraries throughout the US with the nearest copy being hundreds of miles away. Electronic versions make these much more accessble to the people who need them and many have aready been downloaded hundreds of times. Being rare, they might be hard to obtain through interlibrary loan, as well. I suspect these books may see more use in the first year of scanning than in one or more decades before scanning, due to geographic limitations.

Electroplating, Anodizing, etc.

Extrusion

The extrusion of metals

Sheet metal work

Welding/Soldering/Brazing

Bunch of new stuff from the internet archive:

Material Properties

Colors

Blacksmithing

Other Metalworking

Woodworking

Architecture and Structural Engineering

Hydraulics

Audel's

Stirling Engines

Motors and Generators

Drafting

Motors

Mechanical Engineering

Statics and Dynamics

MANY more on internet archive under Mechanical Engineering

Fasteners

Electronics

Hydroelectric

Physics

Astronomy

Misc

Periodicals

Thermal Engineering

Physics

Units of Measurement

Chemistry

Microscopy

Math

Wiki's

CAD

History of Technology

DOE Handbooks

Alternate Energy, Sustainability

Pete Millett's Collection

Pete Millett's Technical books online

I've found that most of the technical books published before about 1964 never had their copyrights renewed, so now are in the public domain.  So I am endeavoring to digitize and post some selected books relating to the "vacuum tube age" of electronics here.

Titles are listed below, but follow the link above to his website for more detailed descriptions:

Medical

Sources

Computers

There are a lot of online computer books. I don't have time to link them right now. A few notable titles I have used in the past include: Linux Device Drivers, Grokking the Gimp, DocBook: The Definitive Guide, Xlib Refernce Manual (and the rest of the X11 books),

Government Agencies

Theses and Dissertations

Non-free

Subscription Libraries

These provide online access (no downloads) to many books in print for a monthly fee.

Previews

There are some sites that allow limited previewing and searching inside large numbers of commercial books.

Other media

Notes on copyright

Copyright law is murky and the government of the people, by the corporations, for the corporations has made some changes that are in violation of the public interest by perputually renewing copyrights. In the US, books published before 1923 are public domain. Books published before 1964 may be in the public domain if not renewed. Books published before 1989 that did not have a (proper) copyright notice "Copyright 9999 by xxxx xxxx; All Rights Reserved" are also probably public domain. Note, however, that these apply to books originally published in the US; if it was originally published in another country, other rules may apply. US Government publications are in the public domain.

Project Gutenberg Copyright FAQ has more info on when books enter the public domain. href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ Search renewal recordsat Rutgers, at stanford

Copyright laws vary in other countries.

Tips on scanning books

Programs mentioned in this section run under free operating systems such as Linux. They may or may not run on proprietary operating systems.

Videos

Other Links