For what it's worth, people do still enjoy those books sometimes. You did! I spent a lot of time browsing the MIT library for their century-old books on metalwo

For what it's worth, people do still enjoy those books sometimes. You did! I spent a lot of time browsing the MIT library for their century-old books on metalworking, aircraft design, electromechanics, and similar topics. A lot of fascinating information is locked up in those pages, in many ways no less useful than what is published today, but much less commonly known.