Such an engaging read. Someone recently posted how utterly maddening it was as a physicist to identify and fix leaks. Wish I could find that comment again.
As an aging experimenter, I wish I had known about this article decades ago. Leaks are a fine metaphor for the endless detail work that accompanies and often overwhelms the life.
Freeman Dyson had great respect for Blackett saying that Bomber Command would not let Blackett anywhere near the place because he could and would speak facts to them about their failing policies.
"We had absolutely no communication with Blackett, and that was clearly not accidental, because Blackett had started Operations Research in the Navy and been extremely successful and done all sorts of good things for the Navy, and then it spread from there to Coastal Command, where they also did very well. In both places they were highly critical of what Bomber Command was doing. Blackett, of course, was a man of great character and he had no hesitations in speaking the truth, no matter how unpleasant the truth might be. And in Bomber Command it was totally different and it was clear that people of Blackett's calibre were just not going to get their nose in the door..."
I'm not able to find a copy online but the 1933 book this article discusses is truly amazing. Full of techniques for fabricating all sorts of things. If you consider yourself a maker you want to read the book.
If you like making things by hand, the old Machinist's Handbooks are also really good to have, with lots of old but still fascinating, and even occasionally useful stuff in 'em.
I love these, old books on engineering design, and historical technical drawings. The cost of errors must have been astronomical before CAD and Ctrl-Z. I can only imagine how much focus was required to do the complex shadings and exploded diagrams we now take for granted.
(Contents: Introduction, by Harold Wright;
Philosophy, by R.B. Braithwaite;
Mathematics, by M.H.A. Newman;
The craft of experimental physics, by P.M.S. Blackett;
Chemistry, by C.P. Snow;
Physiological research, by R.K. Matthews;
Biology, by C.H. Waddington;
History, by R.E. Balfour;
The study of the classics at Cambridge, by B.L. Hallward;
English literature, by F.L. Lucas)
