I’ve been trying to find this book for a while. I got it by interlibrary loan, but being a very technical tome, 3 weeks wasn’t nearly enough to grep it all. I could get it again and photocopy the whole thing, but I want a real book.
The specific book is the english version of “Pulsating Combustion” by F.H. Reynst. It was published by Pergammon Press. I watch Powell’s and eBay, and it hasn’t come up on either of them.
It won’t be the last book I look for, though, so general pointers would be helpful.
No joy on bookfinder, just two $20+ photocopies sold by an unscrupulous guy that I really don’t want to have any dealings with. I’ll keep watching it, though.
… the same $20+ photocopy sold by an unscrupulous guy that I don’t really want to have any dealings with.
He pops up everywhere.
Thanks for trying, guys. I was hoping for a secret Dope bookstore where I could buy this, the Necronimocon, and some stamps with upsidedown biplanes with a wink and a nudge and the secret handshake…
Any other ideas, short of stealing it from a library?
The only thing I would suggest is to keep checking with bookfinder. (tisiphone – the copy you found in the Phillipines is the same one he found on bookfinder – it’s a photocopy.) Bookfinder changes constantly, and the only way to find something as rare as this appears to be is to keep checking.
The other possibility is to get the interlibrary loan again, get it copied and bound into a “real book”.
Pulsating Combustion: The Collected Works of F.H. Reynst. Mr. Reynst was a scientist who knew more than pretty much anyone else on pulse combustors. Wot’s a pulse combustor, you ask? It could be a pulse jet engine, like on the V-1. It could be a burner for a furnace. It could be a jam jar with a 1/2" hole in the cap and a bit of methanol in the bottom.
They’re special because they’re incredibly clean burning and really efficient at converting fuel to heat. They’re not so efficient at converting fuel to thrust, though, which is why the turbine jet killed development on them right after WWII. They can run on anything from gasoline to coal dust to french fry grease and don’t produce nitrous oxides or carbon monoxide.
Pulsejet engines also have the highest noise to thrust ratio of any engine on earth, which is really nifty. Relatively small engines producing less than a hundred pounds of thrust have been heard from over three miles away. You can also make engines with absolutely no moving parts.
Anyway, by ‘technical tome’ I mean that it’s chock full of higher math, schematics, and a bunch of stuff you can’t really absorb in an afternoon read. It was also translated from German, which makes things even more difficult. There’s been a recent surge in interest, and a couple very promising designs have come up that may be soon seen on experimental aircraft in the U.S. and on target drones for the military. If I can get this book, it would probably make me the most knowledgeable person about these beasts on this board. Of course, that also means that no one will ever ask a question about them.
Do you admin types edit your posts just to taunt us plebes?
I searched on www.powells.com, and their database knows about it, even though it isn’t in stock. They have a ‘Notify Me’ button, so you could give them a try.
Hey, Wikkit, if you get a copy of the book, let me know! I’ve always had a hankerin’ to build a replica of a V-1!
I know it sounds stupid, but have you tried seeing if the out-of-print sections of Amazon or Barnes and Nobles have copies? The other thing that you could do is write to Dover Publications and see if you can’t convince them to reprint the book since they carry a lot of old techinical books that no one else prints anymore.
As a collector of rare, collectible books, as opposed to rare scientific books (I don’t know if the object of your quest is collectible or merely obscure) here is what I would do:
Try to find your book on the above sites and via references to it at engineering, jet-related and academic sites
If you can’t find that particular book, look for related books - by the same author, on the same topic, related science - anything more well known and in the same ballpark
Get the names of people references on the web sites - especially the names of the book dealers with either that book or related books.
Call those people - it is the only way to find stuff like that - via networking. Get them talking, and put out feelers.
Be patient
Some dealers will offer to search for you for a fee, but you would need to determine that they are offering a more value-added service than just checking the same web sites you can check (e.g., rummaging through academic archives in person, accessing secret stashes, etc…)
Best of Luck - this isn’t one with an easy solution that I know of.
http://www.alibris.com has this service called Book Fetch that will search out the book for you. Don’t know how well it works, as I’ve never used it, but sounds like a good deal.
