Product Description

The technology underground is a thriving, humming, and often literally scintillating subculture of amateur inventors and scientific envelope-pushers who dream up, design, and build machines that whoosh, rumble, fly—and occasionally hurl pumpkins across enormous distances. In the process they astonish us with what is possible when human imagination and ingenuity meet nature’s forces and materials. William Gurstelle spent two years exploring the most fascinating outposts of this world of wonders: meeting and talking to the men and women who care far more for the laws of physics than they do for mundane matters like government regulations and their own personal safety.

Adventures from the Technology Underground is Gurstelle’s lively and weirdly compelling report of his travels. In these pages we meet Frank Kosdon and others who draw the scrutiny of the FAA, ATF, and other federal agencies in their pursuit of high-power amateur rocketry, which they demonstrate to impressive—and sometimes explosive—effect at the annual LDRS gathering held in various remote and unpopulated areas (a necessary consideration since that acronym stands for Large Dangerous Rocket Ships). Here also are the underground technologists who turn up at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada high desert, including Lucy Hosking, “the engineer from Hell” and the creator of Satan’s Calliope, aka the World’s Loudest Thing, a pipe organ made from jet engines. Also at Burning Man is Austin “Dr. MegaVolt” Richard, who braves the arcing, sputtering, six-digit voltages of a giant Tesla coil in his protective metal suit. Add in a trip to see medieval-style catapults, air cannons, and supersized slingshots in action at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin competition in Sussex County, Delaware, and forays to the postapocalyptic enclaves of the flamethrower builders and the future-noir pits of the fighting robots, and you have proof positive that the age of invention is still going strong.

In the world of science and engineering, despite its buttoned-down image, there’s plenty of fun, humor, and sheer wonder to be found at the fringes. Adventures from the Technology Underground takes you there.


• Launch homemade high-power rockets.

• Catapult pumpkins the better part of a mile.

• Watch robot gladiators saw, flip, and pound one another into high-tech junk heaps.

• Dazzle the eye with electrical discharges measured in the hundreds of thousands of volts.

• Play with flamethrowers, potato guns, and other decidedly unsafe toys . . .


If this is your idea of fun, you’ll have a major good time on this wild ride through today’s Technology Underground.

From the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s high desert to the latest gathering of Large Dangerous Rocket Ship builders to Delaware’s annual Punkin Chunkin competition (a celebration of “science, radical self-expression, and beer”), you’ll meet the inspired, government-unregulated, and corporately unfettered men and women who operate at the furthest fringes of science, engineering, and wild-eyed arc welding, building the catapults, ultra-high-voltage electrical devices, incendiary artworks, fighting robots, and other machines that demonstrate what’s possible when physics meets human ingenuity.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24911 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-23
• Released on: 2007-01-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307351258
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review

Editorial Reviews

The Age of Invention is Still Alive: Catapults, Air Cannons, and Skycars

Punkin' Chunk Catapult

Taser Air Cannon

Skycar

Watch Adventures from the Technology Underground Slideshow (requires Flash).

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From Booklist
What is the technology underground? According to engineer and technology consultant Gurstelle, it's a community of like-minded amateurs--inventors, mostly, although some of them might more accurately be characterized as daredevils. Men and women who have devoted their lives to the things that conventional science has dismissed as unworkable, impractical, or just plain pointless. Flying cars, for example, or newfangled catapults, air guns, and flamethrowers. Or fighting robots and, of course, LDRS (large and dangerous rocket ships). The author explores not only the people who devise these wondrous new inventions but also the technological wizardry behind them: every chapter features illustrations and technical explanations of the devices discussed within. The writing is a bit scattershot, alternating frequently between clunky ("it is reasonable to outline, at the outset of a conceptualization or a project, the rules of conformance") and the outright funny: after describing an early flying-car design, the author deadpans, "It never got off the ground." But the book's target audience won't be bothered by the prose. They will be looking for adventure, excitement, and really wild stuff. They won't be disappointed. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
William Gurstelle is the author of Backyard Ballistics, Building Bots, and The Art of the Catapult. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

More like "Cool Tech for Dummies"
I really wanted to like this book, but it's written in such a simplistic and unfocused way as to leave me very disappointed. The author barely scratches the surface of the many technologies/projects/events he covers, and I always felt cheated after finishing each chapter... thinking "That's IT?!"

Underground tech IS a very cool subject to write about, but the lack of information about the inner motivations and passions of these "garage warriors" leaves a glaring hole in the text. If you have a short attention span and hate to read long books, this book is easily absorbed in a few hours. This is NOT a deep exposition on underground tech; it is a quick overview for newbies. Considering that the audience for this subject would be (I assume) more literate that the national average, it's a shame that the writing seems to be limited to what a sixth-grader could easily digest.

I notice now that the price has now dropped to 10 bucks. At that price, it's more in line with the quantity/quantity of content provided, and could now be considered an "okay" value... just don't set your expectations too high. I know this was a fairly harsh review, but I really was disappointed that the amateurish quality of the writing didn't live up to the slick cover design. Don't judge a book by it's cover!

fresh machines from the underground
I've been waiting for this book to come out, and it's cool to finally see it. Gurstelle wrote my favorite -- the authoritative book of cool and potentially perilous home projects, Backyard Ballistics.

"Adventures . . . ." describes projects and devices that are an order of magnitude more sophisticated (and probably more dangerous). No one is better at teasing out the details of these amazing and exotic home-built contraptions. There are the requisite tesla coils and air canons, but also stuff I'd never heard of before -- like coin shrinking machines, sky cars, and pulse jets (not to be confused with plain ol' turbine jets).

Damn, the book made me realize that the world is just so full of specialists in so many odd areas. Gurstelle has covered the terrain longer than anybody. It's full of imagination, and made me start thinking bigger about my own home projects and new areas I could explore.

A little mad scientist in all of us...
Did you ever get the urge to go pick up some scrap metal and bang together a fighting combat robot, flamethrower or a gigantic pumpkin-chucker? This book is full of tales of backyard builders and basement scientists who have built just these machines and more. The builders are motivated by a desire to compete against other builders and the satisfaction of making something unique rather than any monetary reward. The competition gets fierce when pride is on the like at the World Championships of pumpkin chucking in Delaware where massive air cannons battle middle-ages catapults to see who can hurl a pumpkin the farthest. Homemade combat robots battle to the mechanical deaths in improvised arenas carved out of scrap metal yards. Wild performance artists use flamethrowers and mega-volt electrical generators to create wild spectacles for the audiences at the Burning Man alternative culture festival. Part Mad Max, part mad scientist, this book proves that the only limit to our creations is our imagination.