Pulp-era resources, if anyone is interested.

**Basil** · Aug 25th, '05, 08:46 PM

Well, I feel like an idiot. I've got unlimited access to a couple of resources from the Pulp era, and never thought to mention them until this evening. You may throw rocks (very, very tiny ones) at me for spacing out on this.

#1) the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Eleventh Edition, copyright 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920 ,1922, 1924, 1925, 1926. This covers the college-level (and beyond) scientific knowledge of circa 1926; well, tables, formulae, and such. Highly useful if your character is a scientist, or any scientific training, and quite helpful if he's an engineer. It's way too much for me to scan the whole thing if there's no interest; if there is interest, I could scan the Table of Contents, and put the result up on a Freewebs website; if there's a lot of interest I could OCR the TOC as well. After that, people could ask for whatever they need, and I'd scan that portion. Saves me from scanning anything no-one cares about.

#2) Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fourteenth Edition, Copyright 1929, 1930, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940; there's also the Yearbooks for 1940-1948, complete. This is definitely too big to scan even the index; if anyone is interested in a subject, ask me and I'll look it up and scan what's available. NB: large articles, multiple articles, and general subjects may get answered "no way, Jose."

P.S.: there may be some more stuff from the 40's and (possibly) the 30's around here, but I'm not going digging unless there's a good deal of interest in what I've mentioned so far.

P.P.S.: Like, say, the 1942 World Almanac. Yeah, it's largely post-Pulp, but a good deal of the data it has is from a few years before. Anyway, it's just plain cool.

**Basil** · Aug 27th, '05, 11:17 AM

Well, that's gone over with a resounding splot.

Perhaps nobody saw my post. Let's try a *bump* cleverly disguised as a mention of other resources.

How about a Concealed Carry Permit from Washington State, from the 40's? Or a few dozen pieces of sheet music from the 20's, 30's, and 40's?

Any interest now?

**st barbara** · Aug 28th, '05, 12:00 AM

You might get more responses when more people have got "Pulp Hero" and are planning their own campaigns. Period maps and information on populations might be useful. I will certainly want to ask a few questions of you once I can get hold of a copy of the rules and start planning my campaign ! Thank you for the offer.

**Basil** · Aug 28th, '05, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by st barbara

You might get more responses when more people have got "Pulp Hero" and are planning their own campaigns. Period maps and information on populations might be useful. I will certainly want to ask a few questions of you once I can get hold of a copy of the rules and start planning my campaign ! Thank you for the offer.

Populations, huh? Well, there's the 1942 World Almanac I've got, though that's a little on the late side. The 1940 Britannica will also have some info along those lines.

Maps: the Britannica has some basic maps, and there's some from the National Geographic I can access, though most of those will be post-Pulp, I'm afraid. Unless there's some other stuff around here I'm not calling to mind.

Anyway, you and everyone else are welcome to ask and suggest.

**Cancer** · Aug 29th, '05, 07:18 AM

I have an heirloom at home that I have used as both gaming and teaching resource. It's a turn-of-the-20th-Century "Contractor's Handbook", about a thousand pages of on-the-verge-of-modern construction and raw materials information, for the practicitioner on the job site. Literally an heirloom (it was my great-grandfather's) with raw data of all kinds of utility.

I would have to look and see what it says about concrete and so on; I never thought to look at whether it would have things to say about constructing 1900-era fortifications.

My brother (The Monster on these boards) has another heirloom, a 1928 (I think) World Book encyclopedia. Sort of scary reading that; the intoxicated euphoria from the US, post-WW1 but pre-Great Depression, is astonishing to see.

**Vanguard00** · Aug 29th, '05, 08:06 AM

I think you should scan all this information into PDF format and send it out to everyone who asks

**Basil** · Aug 30th, '05, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by Cancer

I have an heirloom at home that I have used as both gaming and teaching resource. It's a turn-of-the-20th-Century "Contractor's Handbook", about a thousand pages of on-the-verge-of-modern construction and raw materials information, for the practicitioner on the job site. Literally an heirloom (it was my great-grandfather's) with raw data of all kinds of utility.

I would have to look and see what it says about concrete and so on; I never thought to look at whether it would have things to say about constructing 1900-era fortifications.

Actually, the '26 PhysChem Handbook has a surprising amount of info on building materials; strength, modulus of elasticity, and such. Not as much as what you're talking about, but a useful amount.

Originally Posted by Vanguard00

I think you should scan all this information into PDF format and send it out to everyone who asks

Problem with that is scanning it all. I'm not prepared to do that unless I have reason to believe there will be interest. Are you saying you would be? If so, anything in particular? I'd hate to scan the whole book, if all you want is one page.

**Vanguard00** · Aug 30th, '05, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by Basil

Problem with that is scanning it all. I'm not prepared to do that unless I have reason to believe there will be interest. Are you saying you would be? If so, anything in particular? I'd hate to scan the whole book, if all you want is one page.

No! All of it!

Heh...I was just kiddin'. I think I can get an old chemistry book myself--lotsa connections in the local school system--and I saw an old almanac on eBay (1929). I think it'd be cool to have that info, but I can't honestly say I need any of it. I'm not anywhere close to running a Pulp Hero game anyway.

**Basil** · Aug 31st, '05, 05:24 PM

Oh, by the way, I've been doing some research on copyright matters, relating to offering this material, and learned something surprising.

The ©1926 PhysChem Handbook had its copyright due and properly renewed. This means it is under copyright until 2021.

So, all I can do is offer imformation gleaned from it, but presented in a different form (and I have to be careful about that). Sorry for the bad news.

In good news, I'm finding more and more stuff from the 30's and 40's around here. I'm thinking of scanning &/or OCRing some of this stuff, and making it available on a website (probably Freewebs). What do people think of such an idea?