The Printed Website: Second Volume Out Now

The printed version of Low-tech Magazine can be viewed with no access to a computer or a power supply -- or when the solar powered website is down due to bad weather.

The second volume of the printed website is out now and contains 32 articles originally published between 2007 and 2012. The book, which has 618 pages and 268 images, is for sale in the Lulu Bookstore.

Whereas the first volume contained all but a handful of web articles published between 2012 and 2018, this second volume features a third of the web articles published in the earlier years, carefully selected for their continued relevance and interest today. Overall, we wanted to make an attractive book with timeless articles rather than an exact copy of the website.

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Low-tech Magazine 2007-2012, Kris De Decker, ISBN 9781794711525,  618 pp., December 2019. [+Kindle version]

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Design Changes

Based on the feedback we received on the first volume, we made a few changes to the design. This volume has more images and they are now located in the middle and not at the end of each article. None of the images is dithered. The cover is almost identical to that of the first book, but the spine has a different color. 

For most of the period covered in this volume, Low-tech Magazine did not make use of footnotes, but rather hyperlinks in the text. For the book, these links have been converted to references, and dead links have been replaced by links to copies of pages recorded by the Internet Archive. Ironically, the references in the book are now more up-to-date than those on the website.

This book is printed on demand, meaning that a copy is only printed when someone orders it. It takes a bit longer to receive the book, and because each copy goes straight from printer to client, there is no way for us to control the print quality. If you receive a copy that is badly printed, you should notify Lulu to get a replacement. It’s a very smooth process and there’s no need to return the damaged copy.

More Books? 

With the availability of this second book, the most important articles from the first twelve years of Low-tech Magazine are now available on paper. A third volume containing all articles published after September 2018 is anticipated but unconfirmed as yet. We are considering waiting until there is sufficient material to fill another 600-700 pages; alternatively, we could publish more often.

We also plan to bring out a print version of No Tech Magazine, Low-tech Magazine’s sister blog that has been curating shorter posts since 2009. But for now, the focus is back on writing.

Contents

• How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow
• Medieval smokestacks: fossil fuels in pre-industrial times
• The bright future of solar powered factories
• Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle
• Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable
• The short history of early pedal powered machines
• Insulation: first the body, then the home
• Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain
• Hand powered drilling tools and machines
• Boat mills: water powered, floating factories
• Recycling animal and human dung is the key to sustainable farming
• The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range
• The sky is the limit: human powered cranes and lifting devices
• Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank
• Gas bag vehicles
• Trolley canal boats
• How (not) to resolve the energy crisis
• Hoffmann kilns
• Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills
• Water powered cable trains
• Get wired (again): Trolleybuses and Trolleytrucks
• Electric road trains in Germany, 1901 - 1950
• The monster footprint of digital technology
• Cargo ships, then and now
• Moonlight towers: light pollution in the 1800s
• Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault
• A steam powered submarine: the Ictíneo
• The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s
• Life without airplanes: from London to New York in 3 days and 12 hours
• Satellite navigation in the 18th century
• Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph

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• Low-tech Magazine 2007-2012, Kris De Decker, ISBN 9781794711525,  618 pp., December 2019. [Kindle version]
• Low-tech Magazine 2012-2018, Kris De Decker, ISBN 9780359478330, 710 pp., March 2019. [Kindle version]

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Images: Jordi Parra.

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Comments

[Lars Knudsen]

(1)

Sounds like a good bargain.
But is there an option for european buyers? I'm from Denmark and when buying from the US I have to pay customs handling fees of up to 40 USD per purchase.

[kris de decker]

(2)

@ Lars

You can select European online Lulu stores once you arrive on the page.

[Juraj]

(3)

E-book will be also an option?

[kris de decker]

(4)

@ Juraj

Will be, yes. The other volume (2012-2018) is already available as an ebook (only kindle for now):

https://www.amazon.com/Low-Tech-Magazine-2012-2018-Kris-Decker-ebook/dp/B0816Z8ZTL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1575653694&sr=8-1

[Paul]

(5)

Still not in full color.

[kris de decker]

(6)

@ Paul

The e-book has color.

As I explained earlier this year, printing this book in color would cost more than $100, which is obviously too much.

We could publish a separate volume in color with only the images from both books. That would be much more affordable. Would that interest you?

By the way I think about half of the images on Low-tech Magazine are originally in black and white.

[Glombart]

(7)

Are there any plans to release an updated version of the first volume (2012-2018) to include the new design changes?

[kris de decker]

(8)

@ Glombart

Yes. But for now I don't know when that will happen.

[Peter Uithoven]

(9)

Please also make the ebook available for other platforms. I'd love to read it on my Kindle which can handle general epub's and pdf's. (It also downloads purchages directly from Bol.com)

[MCH]

(10)

KDD : Makes a lower tech, paper version of his low tech website
Readers : Please make an e-book to read on my high tech device...
KDD : ...

[Sonya]

(11)

What a lovely idea ! I live in France and would love to order a French version to share with my French friends. Any chance of that being published one day ?

[kris de decker]

(12)

@ Sonya

Yes, probably early next year