
audiobook
This modest 96‑page catalogue, issued by Henry Carey Baird & Co. in Philadelphia, offers a fascinating snapshot of the practical and scientific literature circulating in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Its promise of free postage and a mailed copy for anyone who supplies an address reflects the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, Mathew Carey, who began the venture in 1785. The list reads like a workshop inventory, cataloguing everything from varnish formulas to steam‑boiler manuals for a readership of craftsmen, engineers, and ambitious amateurs.
The entries cover a wide range of trades: detailed treatises on wood and metal working, instructional guides for coach painting, comprehensive draughtsman’s books with steel plates, and chemistry handbooks brimming with thousands of recipes. Illustrated manuals on weaving, cotton spinning, railway bridge construction, and even clock‑making reveal how technical knowledge was shared before modern textbooks. For listeners, the catalogue opens a portal to an era when printed guides were the lifeline of industry and invention.
Language
en
Duration
~22 minutes (22K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Release date
2017-01-06
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

A pioneering Philadelphia publisher, this 19th-century figure helped make technical and industrial knowledge more widely available in the United States. He also stepped into public debates on economics, bringing the interests of manufacturing and industry into print.
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