When I mentioned bookbinding by libraries or individuals I didn't mean amateur bookbinding. I meant the books might have been sent to a commercial bookbinder, as was the case with some libraries I worked at in my younger days. It was common for libraries to have paperback books or other types of bindings hardbound for purposes of circulation or long-term reference use. Individuals could also send their books to a commercial bookbinder; I did that several times myself. The bookbinder would apply the gold stamping. I am not saying no books were originally bound, only that possibly the existing bound copies may not have originally been bound.

I suppose the only way to tell if the binding was original would be to see whether the binding reveals the book was printed in quarto (less likely, octavo) rather than by individual sheets. I think that's highly unlikely given the nature of the material and the probable urgency of its production under wartime shortage of trained firemen.

As to the copyright stamp, my copy has one also; though, as I recall, it does not impress the page (the book is currently stored). Under copyright law at the time, the book would have gone out of copyright many years ago unless someone in the New York State bureaucracy remembered to renew the copyright, which I seriously doubt.

Richard, thanks for that information. The hard bound volume is not individual pages. Looking at the binding method, there are eight pages to each page set, in looking through the book you can just see a glance of the fabric backing at the root every eighth page, and you can see where the sheet making up the first and eighth page in each set makes the turn against the backing. Second and Seventh are same sheet of paper, etc.

PC

That clears up the matter. Probably all copies were printed in octavo and then those for the students were sliced apart for the spiral version, while others were hardbound. Thanks for looking into it.

My experience has been that the old ICS also supplied "binders," or hard-case covers, into which selected course materials/chapters could be compiled into separate "books" for use by the student/purchaser, with screw posts holding the sets together as a volume. I have run across a couple of these in my day, and even disassembled one that was a total mish-mash of mathematics, electrical stuff, and railroad engineering.

And the ICS books are very excellent references. One of the blue bound library of technology books, "Firing the Locomotive", printed in 1949, went for $8 in an eBay auction three nights ago.

PC

Can you get a copy of A Suggested Unit Course in Locomotive Firing by the University of the State of New York Education Department. If not can you email me as I have an electronic copy and I will burn and send you one