9 books like The Story of Electrical and Magnetic Measurements

When I introduce measurements to my students, I talk about “an exciting adventure across centuries.” I love this book because it tells the long history of measurement, starting from prehistory and arriving at our days as if it were a true, fantastic adventure humankind has lived since the beginning of its existence.

This is not a technical book, nor a book of history, in a strict sense. It is written by a journalist as an adventure novel, telling the story of a fantastic journey across generations to build our present knowledge.

I read it as a novel, eager to discover the next adventure, always discovering players and facts I ignored. 

I love this book because it poses questions that go beyond the traditional concept of measurement as a mere technical activity performed with instruments. Measurements are a way to gain knowledge. I like the approach of this book about measuring (that is, knowing) non-physical quantities such as competence, quality, etc., and assessing how reliable the obtained result is.

When reading this book, we truly understand how cross-disciplinary metrology is and how many philosophical questions it poses, probably more difficult to answer than mere technological ones.

As a metrologist, I found these questions quite intriguing, and I’m confident that philosophy-passionate people can find it intriguing as well.

This book is a collection of contributions from different authors on modern measurements, and I love it because it covers the basis of a very technical subject in a rather simple way so that non-specialists can also find a comprehensible answer to their curiosity on instruments, such as multimeters and oscilloscopes, they have probably seen many times without really knowing why they were used.

I also love the way the explained fundamental concepts are applied to real-life applications that have a significant impact on our lives: by reading this book, for instance, I could understand how the reliability of devices we normally use, from our washing machine to our cars, is measured.

During the 19th century, the scientific instrument industry underwent a transformation. Not only did industrialisation see companies and corporations gradually take the place of individual skilled instrument makers working in their own names, but science took some new, previously unseen, directions. These included disciplines such as electromagnetism, vacuum technology, and spectroscopy, and required new instruments and new skills. This book describes the science and associated instruments in each of fifteen scientific disciplines, with photographs and information about the instruments, background, history, and makers. This is an excellent source of information for historians, collectors, and curators.

The yellow Dover paperback edition of this book was the source for more than a few of the quantitative deductions and qualitative arguments which appear in my own textbook on the subject. I admire the pedagogy of Eyges’ book and he is exceptionally lucid in his explanations of physics. The main text assumes you are familiar with delta functions, vector calculus, and the orthogonal functions of mathematical physics, but if you are not, there are well-written appendices devoted to each one. Eyges knows that there is more to electrostatics and magnetostatics than potential theory and his discussions of multipole expansions, time-harmonic radiation and wave propagation inside and outside of matter are very insightful. This little gem belongs by your side when you study classical electrodynamics.

For my money, Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century. His notebooks detailing his achievements in electrochemistry and electromagnetism should be read by every budding experimentalist as models to emulate. The late Sir John Thomas, a distinguished solid-state chemist, wrote this short biography (only 234 pages) of Faraday during his tenure as the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.  Thomas’ scientific expertise, his insider status, and his graceful writing style led him to produce a real gem. Enjoy yourself as Thomas recounts Faraday’s ascent at the Royal Institution from laboratory assistant to full professor, his scientific work, his private life, and his unmatched skill as a popularizer of science. 

Yong is not a scientist himself, but he is an extraordinary writer who steps into the world view of one scientist after another to capture their passion for discovery and their amazement at what they learn and to share that with us, simply and clearly. He does all this with an ear for prose that delights with its ring as well as its content.

One of the messages running through this hard-to-put-down book is how differently and precisely various species adapt to their niche to sense what matters to them most. A key subtext is how much we lose by changing environments faster than species adapt.

Another fantastic evocation of the vast and complex subterranean world of cities, this time, the focus is on New York.

When I first read this I was immediately transfixed by its cover: A giant hand, holding the Empire State Building and pulling up a huge, dusty, and steaming clump of Manhattan’s underground world – replete with all manner of tunnels, subway trains, wires, pipes, and water mains – in the manner of someone pulling up a tree to expose the roots below.

Whilst obviously dated, the book’s superb prose and fabulous maps and images really take the reader into the vast worlds burrowed over centuries with enormous dedication beneath New York’s bedrock which, in contrast to London’s clay and alluvium, is made mostly of incredibly hard igneous schist.

This is the modern standard text on information theory. It is both comprehensive and highly technical. The layout is spacey, and the authors make good use of the occasional diagram to explain geometric aspects of information theory. One feature I really like is the set of historical notes and a summary of equations at the end of each chapter.