Adventures from the Technology Underg..., William Gurstelle
Adventures from the Technology Underg..., William Gurstelle
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Adventures from the Technology Underground
Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them

Author: William Gurstelle

Narrator: Marc Cashman

Unabridged: 7 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/03/2006


Synopsis

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.

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Urey

A very generalized treatment... and definitely not a "How-To" book (that is simply an observation, not a complaint). Gurstelle explains generically what the various devices do, how they work but without the actual scientific and engineering info one would need to understand how they work... more des......more

Goodreads review by Lori L

The full title of Gurstelle's book is: Adventures from the Technology Underground: Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them. That pretty much explains what it's about. We're talking about regular people who like to make or invent......more

I got this book randomly from the library and it was very good. I didn't read all the chapters, I skipped around. Basically it looks at 10 underground technologies and examines them in a light way, not too dense at all. I read chapters on High-powered rockets, Technology of Burnin Man, Tesla Coils,......more

Goodreads review by Greg

this was a delight to read. the author jumps around enough to keep things from bogging down, and yet gives just the right amount of depth to the culture and design principles of these outsider technologies. i recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in any of the covered technologies. this i......more

Goodreads review by Paul

Real-life stories of tech crazies that do big dangerous projects. I liked it, but I sort of expected more laughs.......more