Before Google There Was the Chemical Rubber Company (hackaday.com) 143
szczys writes: The CRC Handbook is one great example of how access to information has changed over the years. Now, you open up Google and find your answers. In decades past, hard data needed to solve engineering problems was embodied in volumes of text known as Databooks. One of the best known was the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook. Don't let the name fool you, the CRC Handbook contained traits, properties, equations, and much more on all kinds of materials and techniques for using them. It's still around today and has one big advantage over our searchable digital lives: you know you can trust the accuracy of the information in those books at face value while online information requires validation.
Trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Trust? (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't the checksum routine catch it?
Re:Trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
There probably wasn't some asshat intentionally inserting bogus facts into the book.
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There probably isn't some asshat intentionally inserting bogus facts onto reference sites like Wolfram either.
You seem to be equating Wikipedia with the entire internet. It's really not, there are other web pages out there.
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There's a world of difference between fictitious entries as copyright traps, and incorrect information on the real entries. The former is unlikely to ever cause problems for anyone but plagiarists, as nobody is likely to try to look up information on a fictitious substance.
Re: Trust? (Score:1)
Re:Trust? (Score:4, Insightful)
And errors on the Internet can be fixed and the corrected version is available immediately upon fixing, while errors in a giant printed manual will need a re-print every time an error is found and fixed, not to mention shipped to your house.
BOLD, revert, discuss (Score:2)
Did you discuss the revert on the article's talk page? Because that's the next step after being reverted [wikipedia.org].
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And errors on the internet can languish for years and copied by other publishers who never update or verify the information.
I assume that a publisher also recalls all the books published and personally updates them all with the correct information and then returns them....
Manuals such as the CRC Handbook are used and wear out. They published a new issue every year or two. Maybe less now but still plenty for updates and fixes. They also published "Addenda" sheets with corrections, if needed. But the only one I saw for the CRC was for a printing error due to broken type.
By the way, the comment about "copyright traps" is true, at least for encyclopedias. Look up the description for Single-Sideband Radio and see the figure 1, in many it is so bad it is a joke. But then anyone wh
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But the Internet works in reverse. You request the document. So when the information gets updated, you get the updated version when you download the document again.
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I made another comment on the thread about downloading datasheets directly from the manufacturer (I used Atmel as an example), I was thinking about the Internet as a communication channel between us and the manufacturers.
But you're right that if we're talking about the internet as a whole, then yes it only makes the situation even worst.
Re:Trust? (Score:4, Funny)
That's not how the Internet works at all. The erroneous version will show up in results 70 to 79, the fixed version will show up in results 80 to 89 and porn will show up for the first 69 results.
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May I assume a reference book on the internet is only half as accurate?
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May I assume a reference book on the internet is only half as accurate?
You may assume that. But why does that have to be so? In 90 years, won't some website material have had enough vetting to suffice? Why not? We're not talking about a source that just anyone can modify. Is the CRC Manual and other respected sources online somewhere? Why not?
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There's even a datasheet [sparkfun.com] for useless things.
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Because all contributors were vetted and the information was cross referenced to actual research. If you thought there was an error you could chase it down.
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yea its on its 96th edition and I bet every one has more corrections than new information
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For well-edited, complete articles, Wikipedia has a much lower error rate per subject than traditional encyclopedias. For lower-profile articles, Wikipedia lags the average. Nobody has done a comparison on less-emphasized Britannica articles versus more-central Britannica articles to see if Britannica has its low-error-rate and high-error-rate topics.
In medical school, professors and textbooks proclaim that epsom salts will draw toxins from the body. That's failed scientific rigor, and the literature h
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But have you whored an account up to 200 rep so that you can report inaccuracies in answers to their authors in comments?
Steam tables and integral tables. (Score:2)
Two sets of distributed-on-dead-trees tables, which were central to engineering industrial civilization, were discovered, in this cybernetic era, to have substantial errors.
One was the table of integrals that was an appendix to just about every calculus book known to man. When the first symbolic math programs were being developed, one of the intended uses of them was to calculate, on the fly, good analytical solutions to the integrals of various functions. So of course the authors tested them against all
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Why would you nescesarily trust the accuracy of a refernce book over the internet? I have found mistakes in both.
Because the CRC Handbook has been used, for a long time, by very smart people who notice errors. And demand that fixes be made!
And the fixes were made. For about a hundred years, in many subjects.
It may be the most debugged work in existance.
In contrast:
"If Engineers built buildings the way Programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization!"
8-)
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Why? Because the authors had an agenda -- sell more books. You don't sell CRC by being wrong. ...
And, the CRC Handbook is not exactly cheap! But it does have a -lot- of pages.
By the way, calculators -do- somethimes have built-in errors. Look it up...
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Change the Wikipedia entry and hope the control-freak moderator doesn't just auto-revert you to oblivion?
Do you also get auto-reverted when you discuss the correction on the article's talk page?
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Do you also get auto-reverted when you discuss the correction on the article's talk page?
Can't speak to the original commenter's experience. But I did take the time to go to the talk pages sometimes, and my experience was that if the change (or especially deletion of a page for "non notability") was made by an Editor, the response was approximately "This was changed due to 'WP:Antediluvian Reactionary Recalibration' and you should have voted on that topic six years ago, so too bad, it stands." If I made the exertion to actually dig up that policy and make a counter-argument, the result was esse
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[citation needed]
Is that a logical "short circuit"?
Sorry, it was too good a line to waste! 8-)
Ah, the rubber bible (Score:5, Interesting)
As a chemist, that was the one resource that everyone had.
Unlike software, you never needed to know whether it was the latest version.
However, this is a prime example of bloatware. The thing was so big and fat, it ceased to be a pocketbook. I think the last one I used had a version in the 70s.
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And that Hustler we found out in the woods.
You Internet punks, get offa my lawn.
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Especially now that Playboy no longer comes with "muhfugen pix nood".
Re: Ah, the rubber bible (Score:1)
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Nothing like being able to pick it up and read an exciting chemical reaction at bedtime, eh? :-)
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However, this is a prime example of bloatware. The thing was so big and fat, it ceased to be a pocketbook.
Plenty of space in the lab or desk.
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The CRC Handbook may have been a "pocketbook" when it first came out in 1914 with 116 pages, but by the 7th edition in 1918 it was already over 500 pages, and the 11th edition in 1926 was over 1000.
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...The thing was so big and fat, it ceased to be a pocketbook. I think the last one I used had a version in the 70s.
Completely useless and error-ridden.
A Professor colleague wrote to the Editor of CRC several times, with a very specific list of over 60 errors he had found in the current version (at the time).
No response. The corrections were never made.
They just reprint the exact same (error-filled) tables, and stamp a new year on it to keep the money rolling.
Best to (Score:3)
Add pubmed to many of your google search terms.
Rubber Bible (Score:1)
I still have my copy of the 1980 Rubber Bible, which I was awarded as the top science student in my school when I graduated.
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I still have my copy of the 1980 Rubber Bible, which I was awarded as the top science student in my school when I graduated.
Interesting. Nowadays, 'Rubber Bible' would have a completely different connotation. And probably would have been lots more fun to win.
Oh. Wait.
Trust but verify (Score:5, Informative)
As an electrical engineering undergraduate I had a professor who gave an assignment to build a filter. All semester long we had been using trusted tables from a published source for filter parameters. He asked for filter parameters that would lead us into a portion of the published table that was wrong. The point of this assignment wasn't to design yet another filter, it was to understand that errors occur everywhere. Even in trusted sources.
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As a chemical engineering graduate, what I can say is that every textbook I used made at least some references to Perry's Handbook for Chemical Engineers.
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Of course there are errors in printed sources. CRC Tables, though, were around for a very long time and would likely have had most errors corrected.
I remember using it a lot as an undergrad way back when. But I have to say I was happy when electronic calculators went mainstream and I didn't have to be looking stuff up so much.
The Rubber Bible (Score:1)
AKA The Rubber Bible as it was known when I was in Engineering School. Almost everyone had at least one edition.
Good reference book for material. (Score:3)
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I've got one on my shelf, along with a well worn copy of Roark (& Young).
Not really the case (Score:5, Interesting)
The Machinery handbook, the CRC Handbook, and the Radio Amateur's Handbook are the three classics. Encyclopedia Britannica was even larger but often considered to be authoritative. CRC publishes an entire series including The CRC Handbook of Avian Body Masses. It's overstating that they were so authoritative that you could take them at face value. Hand typesetting is an expensive process and when small errors came up, the publishers had to consider the cost of correction before implementing fixes. There is also the fact that many of these works arose from the work of just a few eccentric authors (neurotypical people don't write reference works) and they weren't universal experts.
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The CRC Handbook of Avian Body Masses.
Does it list the European Swallow as about 20.3g (without coconut)?
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I thought it was kind of neat that for decades many toolboxes had a space perfectly sized for The Machinery Handbook. :)
I found a couple of digital copies for my curiosity
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Same thing for manual drafting vs. CAD.
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The Machinery handbook, the CRC Handbook, and the Radio Amateur's Handbook are the three classics.
plus Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain, and Grover's tables of inductance calculations, and Gradshteyn and Ryzhik's tables of integrals
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Nope (Score:5, Funny)
you know you can trust the accuracy of the information in those books at face value
Nope.
information requires validation.
Correct (but verify for yourself that I am right about this).
Trust? (Score:3)
And why should I not trust the accuracy of an Atmel part if I get the datasheet file from the Atmel website?
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just like the books mistakes happen constantly, its not that big of a deal until you try to push the limit
trust but verify
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I guess that explains why my Arduino didn't survive my 500MHz overclock.
Wouldn't it be better to (Score:1)
And you need to add for chemists... (Score:3)
I'm sure other professions have their necessary references they could not do without.
Can't forget (Score:3)
Can't forget Gray's Anatomy.
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Still can't find the G-spot?
CRC Handbook (Score:5, Funny)
I keep an old CRC Handbook on a shelf in the kitchen next to all the cook books. Its just there make guest nervous...
Right here on the shelf. (Score:2)
In praise of the humble printed handbook (Score:2)
Just yesterday, I put an ancient CRC Math Handbook in a pile to donate to my local public library. One sign of its age is that it's pretty small. I don't know how much use it is at this point: the library might put it on the shelves, sell it, or trash it - who knows?
Although these things arguably are made obsolete by the Internet, the humble printed handbook still has its value. My favorite in the math-table genre has always been Schaum's Outline of Mathematical Handbook of Formulas and Tables [amazon.com], which is
Handbooks. Love them. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an avid collector of handbooks. They embody so much information, so much detail. So much effort into compiling them. They were often the life's work of an individual expert. On the shelves immediately above my desk we find, "Drafting for Engineers" by Svensen. "The Making, Shaping, and Treating of Steel" bu the United States Steel Company, "Th Vertebrate Visual System" by Poliak, "The Retina" by Poliak, "Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia" (I used to sit and just read random entries as a kid), "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", "Halsey's Handbook" (the one with a beautiful screed against the metric system), "The Merk Manial", "Machinery's Handbook" along with "Machinery's Handbook Guide", "Physician's Desk Reference" (although out of date), etc.
One of my greatest pleasures in graduate school was to visit the local used bookstore that, given it's location could draw on the libraries of many professional engineers, machinists, and mathematicians as they retired, and thus had a huge technical section that was both broad and deep with information.
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Replying to my own posting ... I'm reminded now of the one book I regret not purchasing. It was an electrician's handbook and the one page I recall (which has influenced the way I join to wires to this day) show various different splicing techniques, including the Western Union splice. Doing a quick search online now shows it was probably "Practical electrical wiring," by Sharp, which Google appears to have digitized.
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 71st ed. (Score:3)
Bought mine used in '74; it still works (Score:2)
dang, it's expensive now (Score:4, Informative)
$153 for the dead tree and $135 for the e-book version??!! then again, for most people a version a couple years old is just as good and those are under $50
my 1983 one is very cheap I see, under $8
Arris RD-24 - The Cable Guy's Bible (Score:2)
Every technician worth anything has an RD book in his truck:
http://www.scte.org/documents/... [scte.org]
Everything you need to spec, design, build and maintain a cable system.
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Likely an untrained contractor. One chronic problem with cable is that any tech or call center employee who has more than a 30 IQ is promoted away from customer contact, or quits and finds a better job in another industry.
I've got one on the shelf (Score:2)
CRC Standard Math Tables, 28th edition. Old, but still works.
Haven't used in years, but I'm not getting rid of it, either.
long term checks are needed (Score:2)
The Radio Relay (?) hanbook (Score:2)
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The Radio Amateurs Handbook published by the American Radio Relay League.
It along with the CRC were every electrical engineers bible when I went to school.
I no longer have a copy of the CRC but I do have a 25th anniversary issue (1948) of the Handbook from before my time. (not much though)
Nokia (Score:4, Interesting)
>> Before Google There Was the Chemical Rubber Company
And before Nokia, there was the chemical rubber company called Nokia
Sliderules (Score:2)
Finding Useful Information on the Internet (Score:2)
Finding useful technical information on the internet is like sifting through horse shit looking for pony.
The search engines all assume that you meant 'Beiber' when you typed in 'Becquerel'. They all deliver results of what they think you want, vs. what you actually asked for. Often you're steered toward pay sites. A lot of information controlled by technical journals is behind paywalls.
If you actually find anything related to what interests you, you'll often find that 1) it is all copied from Wikipedia, and
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The search engines all assume that you meant 'Beiber' when you typed in 'Becquerel'. They all deliver results of what they think you want, vs. what you actually asked for. Often you're steered toward pay sites.
You should check out this search engine: http://www.google.com/ [google.com] I assume you've never heard of it but I think it's going to be a big success some day.
I typed in 'Becquerel' (well, technically I copied and pasted from your post) and the first two results are on Henri Becquerel, the physicist, and the unit of radioactivity named after him. All the rest of the results on the first page are also on either the man or the unit named after him from a variety of different sites and none of them were pay sites as fa
I had one too (Score:2)
Seems almost ironic the way a rubber manufacturer is more famous for its handbooks, though I suppose you could compare it to an Irish brewery which is better known elsewhere for their book of world records. (Yes, Guinness.)
CRC ruined MathWorld (Score:1)
Like a lot of people here, I have a lot of nostalgia for my oldschool CRC handbook. I have many fond memories of poring over its extensive listings of mathematical formulas and scientific tables.
But in a Slashdot discussion of nostalgia over the Chemical Rubber Company, we should not forget the MathWorld debacle. MathWorld was an online math encyclopedia in the mid 90s. It was one of the earliest proofs of the power of the web's collaborative processes for publishing, predating Wikipedia by almost a decade.
CRC (Score:2)
Another excellent reference... (Score:1)
A really comprehensive, albeit very expensive book of every biologically active chemical known so far, is the "Merck index". Expensive.. I paid , I think, $300 for it new, back in the mid 80's. But wow, it had EVERY chemical ever created, their chemical formulae, and everything known to date about them so far.. A very high percentage of them were psychoactive drugs. and most had never been tested on anything yet.. Nor were most regulated either. It was a basement chemist's dream...;-) Unfortunately many t
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I've got an A-Level Chemistry one from the mid 80s. Occasionally I look something up out of curiosity and before I know it an hour's gone.