author
David R. Cooper
A practical early-20th-century engineering writer, he focused on how farms and country homes could make use of small-scale water power. His best-known work turns overlooked streams and brooks into a source of useful energy with clear, hands-on advice.
1 Audiobook
Water Power for the Farm and Country Home
by David R. Cooper
About the author
Little biographical information about David R. Cooper is easy to confirm, but his surviving work shows him writing for readers who wanted practical results rather than theory alone.
He is credited as the author of Water Power for the Farm and Country Home, a 1911 book printed for the New York State Water Supply Commission. In that book he is identified as an engineer-secretary of the commission, and the text concentrates on small water-power development for farms, rural homes, and summer properties.
That makes him an interesting figure for listeners who enjoy older nonfiction: a writer working at the meeting point of public engineering, rural life, and early renewable power ideas. Even now, his book offers a window into how people in the early 1900s imagined making local natural resources do everyday work.