Amazon.com description: Product Description: Reprint of the 1914 edition. Oversized Octavo. vii, 119p. Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S., was born in York on 19th June 1851, the second of eight children of a Quaker schoolteacher. From 1870-75, he taught at the school where his father was senior master. He went to Flounders Institute - a training school for teachers, where he took the London B.Sc. degree in 1869. He was a recognized authority on electricity, magnetism and acoustics and his writings are numerous. In 1884, he published his epoch-making work 'Dynamo-electric Machinery: a Manual for Students of Electrotechnics'- practically every designer of electrical machines gleaned his first information on the subject from this work. In the 1900s, he was commissioned towrite the official biography of Lord Kelvin who was able to help him in the early stages of the work but died before it was completed. 'The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs' was published in 1910. Thompson held many important positions in the world of science and received many British and International honors. As for hobbies, he was an avid book-collector and sometime President of the Sette of Odd Volumes, a dining club for bibliophiles; his remarkable library is now in the possession of the IEE [The Institution of Electrical Engineers]. This exceedingly rare bibliography of books in the Thompson's library has only 10 listings on OCLC. Besterman 1930 mentions one thousand books citations for this book.