History of Machinery's Handbook
How It Began
Machinery's Handbook was the brainchild of the founder of Industrial Press, Mr. Alexander Luchars, an emigrant from Scotland, who started a monthly magazine called Machinery in competition with other similar magazines in the metalworking field, in about 1880. To produce his magazine, Mr. Luchars was fortunate to employ two knowledgeable engineers, Erik Oberg (1881-1951) and Franklin D. Jones (1879-1967), both of whom were capable of writing in clear English, and had a good command of mathematics, physics, and mechanical engineering. The monthly magazine dealt with the practice of metalworking manufacturing, publishing material on how to make metal articles, descriptions of machines and processes, and advertisements for machine tools and their builders. Throughout, the emphasis was placed on the need for practical information that could be directly applied to improve some machine, process or mechanism, although due regard was also paid to theory.
From time to time, Machinery published articles that contained basic information on various aspects of the industrial universe such as rearrangement and development of formulas, trigonometry, mechanics, strength of materials, threads and fasteners, stamping, welding and cutting, machining of various metals, gear design and manufacture, cutting speeds and feed rates for machining and similar material, in addition to its regular articles of application-specific interest in the industrial field. After many years, a substantial information base had been built up, and one or more of the three above-mentioned gentlemen began to discuss how advantage might be taken of this fund of knowledge, both to benefit the engineering community and to make a profit for their company.
The Letterpress Process
At this point, the idea for a handbook containing a selected range of the available data and information was born. In what time could be spared from editorial work on the magazine, Erik Oberg was given charge of the project to produce such a handbook. He worked with Franklin Jones for some five years to produce the manuscript for the first edition. Counsel and co-operation was given by Fred E. Rogers, in producing this first edition, which was printed by the letterpress process.
In this process, every line on each page had to be typeset in hot type metal and arranged in a typesetter's form of the proportions to fit the page, which was the same size as it is today, measuring 7 by 4.625 inches, with a type area of 6.25 by 3.625 inches. Then the individual forms were arranged in the letterpress printing machine, eight pages at a time, and printed on a sheet of paper that next had to have eight more pages printed on the other side, then be folded, trimmed and assembled into a 16 page section of a finished book of 1400 pages. The earliest Handbooks were bound in flexible leather, and had rounded corners to allow easy insertion into a stout cardboard slip cover, designed to preserve the books for many years of service. The page edges of these books were finished with gold leaf to protect them from the dirt on fingers trying to find references, and the title was also embossed in gold leaf. Because the information in the Handbook was so varied, little attempt was made to arrange it by subject matter. It was thought sufficient to include an extensive index of over 30 pages, with more than 4500 references, from which the location of any subject in the Handbook could quickly be found.
The First Edition of the Handbook - 1914
The first edition of Machinery's Handbook was published in January, 1914, and more than 30,000 copies were sold within the first two years of the book's appearance. During the first World War, the Handbook was in great demand as the call for machines of war mushroomed, and after the war, work began on revising and expanding the material to include tables, more rules, formulas, practical data and manufacturing standards that were developed in wartime to ease manufacturing. This revised and enlarged edition was the sixth in the series, and was published in 1924. The number of pages was increased by nearly 200, with new material being selected from suggestions made by engineers, shop managers, and skilled workers in the metalworking field, all reflecting developments that had taken place since the first edition was produced. In addition, the sixth edition was provided with thumb index tabs, to allow users to access specific subjects rapidly and easily, without the need to consult the index. Logarithm and trigonometry tables, bolts and screws, screw threads, limits and gages, small tools, feeds and speeds, steels and alloys, motors, weights and measures, and index, were shown on these first thumb tabs.
Since 1924, the Handbook has been revised on a regular basis, usually on a 4-year cycle, approximately coinciding with the rate at which developments occurred in metalworking. The tenth edition, published in 1939, contained 1816 pages, and new and revised material that was not in the ninth edition took over 585 pages. With the advent of World War II there was another spurt in demand, but wartime shortages resulted in production without thumb tabs, a condition bemoaned by users, many of whom made their own tabs from adhesive tape.
The 27th Edition - 2004
In today's 27th edition, thumb tabs have been restored to all versions and the Handbook has continued to move with the times. For example, it now includes sections on numerical control, CAD/CAM, plastics, motion control, quality, and machine accuracy, in addition to greatly enlarged sections on many traditional subjects. The Handbook now runs to 2704 pages, but advances in paper technology that have produced thinner sheets of good strength and opacity have allowed the Handbook's weight to be held to approximately the 2 pounds 6 ounces of the first edition, and its thickness to the same 2.5 inches.
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