After translating the technical memoirs of Dr-Ing Karl Kollmann from German to English during the course of writing my first book, ‘The Secret Horsepower Race’ – the possibility to use his work as the basis for an exciting and useful science text presented itself. Renowed Turbomachinery expert, and Bechtel Fellow Dr John Gülen has worked with me to adapt Kollmanns discoveries in fudamental turbomachinery design during the Second World War to produce a useful guide to turbomachinery incorporating practical and theoretical lessons from the past. It is therefore updated with modern discoveries – to provide a learning framework rich in history and technical depth.
It was published by ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) in late 2021.
Purchase here.
The visible horizon of Engineering and Science moves on constantly, but the human capacity for knowledge retention and our intellect remain static. The effect of this is that in ever decreasing field of vision around our own specialisms we lose sight of what has passed before us, and that which lies adjacent to us. Often the most important aspect of any field is the basic understanding of it from first principles – from which we can build an intuitive grasp of the mechanisms at work in the systems we work on and design.