Buses, Bankers & the Beer of Revenge: An Eccentric Engineer Collection

Since the autumn of 2007 Justin Pollard's 'Eccentric Engineer'

column in E&T magazine, has been campaigning to remind

engineers of the extraordinary role that their subject has

played in human history. This book gathers together three

years of those musings, highlighting not simply the most famous

engineering tales but the unusual, the erratic, and occasionally

the patently insane. In its fi fty stories it covers everything from

aircraft carriers made of ice, to the origins of the omnibus.

We'll toy with Roman turbines and Greek computers, look at

Renaissance hypertext and have arguments with Americans over

the shape of our lightning conductors. We'll shake Scotland with

earthquakes and build cars out of beans. But most of all we'll

celebrate the joys and perils of living in an engineered world