Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer

by Nevil Shute

Overview

Nevil Shute best describes this autobiography in his own words: "Most of my adult life, perhaps all the worthwhile part of it, has been spent messing about with airplanes. For 30 years there was a period when airplanes would fly when you wanted them to, but there were still fresh things to be learned on every flight, a period when airplanes were small and so easily built that experiments were cheap and new designs could fly within six months of the first glimmer in the mind of the designer.

"That halcyon period started about 1910 and it was in full flower after WW I when I was a young man; it died with WW II when airplanes had grown too costly and too compli- cated for individuals to build or even to operate. I count myself lucky that that fleeting period coincided with my youth and my young manhood, and that I had a part in it."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781889439181
Publisher:	The Paper Tiger
Publication date:	12/28/1954
Pages:	268
Sales rank:	835,563
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Nevil Shute (1899-1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who served in the British military in both world wars and spent his later years in Australia. The author of 24 published novels and novellas, his best-known books include Pied Piper, A Town Like Alice, and especially On the Beach, set in a fictional post-atomic-war Australia.