Power from Water - T.A.L. Paton and J. Guthrie Brown, 1960

With my interest in hydroelectricity (and especially the Scottish type) in full flow, sometime last year I purchased a 1960 author-signed copy of the book on eBay. This short book provides an engineer's perspective on hydro-electricity in direct and highly-readable writing. Technical communication often seems to lack a middle-ground, either satisfying the needs of career experts or simplifying content sufficiently to reach a mass audience; this book explores all the little details of planning, gaining approval, constructing and operating hydro-electric power stations but in a readable way. The authors are experienced civil engineers who worked on a number of the pioneering projects they discuss, and treat each consideration with interest; and what does that reward the reader with? An interesting account of the subject, studded with little pieces of rare learning and unexpected understanding.

Now I do love 'Plates', hand-drawn Figures and yellowing but high-quality paper but I wasn't interested in this book for the vintage aesthetic (only). It provides a concise portrait of the changing technology of hydroelectric and civil engineering through the early projects through to the contemporary of 1960. The authors speak of new techniques in engineering calculation; the use of electrical computers and the photo-elastic effect. They speak of scale models, the Reynolds number and experimental salmon-ladders. They talk around the way that the power grid and, increasingly, the super-grid, were and would change the adoption and priorities for hydro-electric power. They talk about chemical engineering advancements improving the properties in concrete and their perspective on its significance. They speak about Nuclear and the power of the atom as an exciting and upcoming development that will accompany coal, oil and hydro-electricity. As the authors emphasise, good engineering understands its context, demands and technical constraits and selects the most appropriate path; to understand so clearly the contemporary context of the 1960s hydro-electric engineer is the real enjoyment Power from Water offered me.

It's a bit unfair to read someone's predictions from over 60 years ago. While I'm just as poorly equipped to speak of the year 2080 the authors did have one thing on their side; confidence. They exalt in a career contemporaneous with increasingly virtuoso schemes. They recognise the best schemes have been developed in the UK and speak easily of new developments. What happened next? There was only some five more years of committed hydro-electric construction by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board to come. The authors were right about Nuclear power, to an extent; the 60s saw around ten Nuclear stations connect to the grid - but what they could not have anticipated is that pace would also fade. Curiously, they do not mention or anticipate such issues as waste, decommissioning costs (either hydro-electric or nuclear) or deindustrialisation. What I know that they could not is that Gas would become the UK's principle fuel, and that it would be the variability introduced by new wind and solar that would return interest to pumped hydro storage projects. I like to be reminded that we are no smarter than people of the past and know no more about the future than they did.

Sounds Wild and Broken - David George Haskell, 2022

I picked up a copy at the recommendation of Tom Fisher / Action Pyramid at the Glasgow Listen Gallery's 'Listening as Porosity' event. His exhibition was my first real introduction to hydrophones and how applying technology to augment our human senses can reveal the activity of life underwater.

Sounds opened my mind, or rather ears, to the huge sonic variety of nature and has given me a new enthusiasm for listening attentively not passively as an important way of interacting with the world. As with all things, our world's sonic landscape (soundscape) is rapidly changing in a very short timeframe compared with the evolutionary periods over which our hearing and aural communication developed. As Sounds charts that evolutionary history for humans and other animals, such as birds, frogs, small mammals and whales, there were numerous takeaways that made me pause and reflect on how I understand myself, humans and other species.

Particularly enjoyable is coming to understand how the hearing and communicating organs in different animals have evolved to so carefully respond to their respective sonic habitats and needs. This knowledge lets us make deductions about the sensory realms for both ancient and contemporary species - did you ever wonder what a Dinosaur could hear? or how much we know about what they sounded like? That we are today becoming more sophisticated in our ability to listen and parse the sonic communication of diverse animals is exciting and, to Haskell, marks an opportunity to change our relationship with non-human animals. He poses numerous prompts relevant to our conservation efforts today: why do we relate so easily to animals we can hear? which make sounds we like? and if we cannot understand their sounds, why do we consider them to be unimportant or unintelligent? how will it change our attitudes to be able to, through new technologies, listen to and even understand such sounds?