"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 17:27:58 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

Yes, and I suspect it's intentional. They're playing a dicey game with
copyrights and they have a new project going now, in which they had to
spend
$7 million of advertising around the world to let authors know that
they're
engaged in an opt-out program, to settle a court suit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/bo...20books&st=cse

I can understand somewhat with stuff still under copyright,
but why do crappy work (a good scan/photo takes the same
amount of time as crappy. Turning & positioning takes most
of the time.) with stuff in public domain? I've looked at
what others have done with this using the djvu format and it
is quite good.

For instance, this series of books is pretty good (Turning
and mechanical manipulation intended as a work of general
reference and practical instruction on the lathe, and the
various mechanical pursuits followed by amateurs - 1850):

http://www.archive.org/details/turni...nica01holtuoft

http://www.archive.org/details/turni...nica02holtuoft

http://www.archive.org/details/turni...nica03holtuoft

http://www.archive.org/details/turni...nica04holtuoft

If you want a local copy to peruse, click on the "All Files:
HTTP" on the upper left side and download the djvu version
from the file listing. If you click on the djvu version
directly you will get the stream, which is for use with a
browser plug-in.

This would be the link for volume 1 for instance:

http://ia360939.us.archive.org/3/ite...1holtuoft.djvu

If you need a free djvu viewer there are a couple other
alternatives besides what Lizardtech offers. See:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/windjview/

http://djvu.sourceforge.net/djview4.html

The latter set of tools can create simple djvu documents
also.

You may find this listing of interest too, just don't expect
too much if the original source was Google. The text is
usually readable, but the diagrams and images can be poor:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?qu...iatype%3Atexts

For the Google stuff I've found that the pdf version is
usually a bit better. The djvu versions seem to be based on
the pdf and thus suffer from compression artifacts.

I think I already have some of Fred Colvin's texts. Take a
look at this listing:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?qu...type%3 Atexts

It is a fun place to poke around looking for old books...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

Wow. 'Lots of stuff to look at. I have the DjVu plug-in but it only worked
for a few pages and then crapped out. But I could see what you mean; the
quality was quite good.

That Colvin book list looks pretty complete. My old boss at _American
Machinist_, Andy Ashburn, knew Colvin and may have worked for him. It's a
little vague in my recollection.

He sure was prolific. I wonder when he had time to write for the magazine.
g

--
Ed Huntress