Boy's Book of Science and Invention (1957) is a boy's encyclopedia showing "how things work".with a variety of non-fiction articles about various subject including space flight.
Wallace, Carlton. The Boys' Book of Science and Invention (3rd ed.) London : Evans Brothers Ltd. (192 p.) 26 cm. Cloth, DJ. 1957
First published in 1949, and revised in 1953 this 1957 edition covers space flight topics in a series of 2 to 12 page articles. Topics (with drawings) of interest include: "Inside a rocket ship", "Building a space station", "The first Moon colony", and "Examining the Moon by rocket camera". Especially nice is the single color plate of a painting of a manned landing on the Moon. Also 1961 edition.
The factual articles are pleasantly visionary of what the future in space might look like. Even with only B&W drawings to illustrate it.
Here is a nice space quiz...
I had a copy of this book and loved it - though I was not its original owner (I wasn't even born until 7 years after it was published). It was given to me by a kindly neighbour when I was about 10. I devoured every word in it - thanks to it I *understood* how a nuclear reactor worked long before we studied any such thing at school. Only two complaints; the first is about the short story at the start - about the crazy professor who hijacks a spaceship to rendezvous with a passing asteroid so he can get a "free ride" around the solar system. It was a good story but (as I can now see) totally full of scientific inaccuracies. The scientists who wrote the factual articles should have been asked to check out that story before it was included. My other complaint is about the title: "Boys" book??? Who's to say that girls can't be interested in rocket ships and nuclear energy too? SO sexist!
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