JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
[Image source: Scientific American, September 15, 1902. This has nothing to do with the following, but it is a neat-looking bike, and I wanted to share...]
C. Vernon Boys (1855-1944) was a British physicist and fine experimentalist and contributed this exemplary article on the physics of bicycles. The article--"Bicycles and Tricycles in Theory and Practice"--appeared in the journal Nature (March 20, 1884), when the no-longer new-ish journal rapid-published the breaking and thoughtful science news of the day every week. Generally articles in the early decades would seldom range over two pages--of course, the pages were dense, and in two columns, with usually 80 lines per column and ten words per line, so each page could be filled with 1600 words, which is four times the general length of a novel. In any event Boys' article ran nine columns, or about 7,000 words, which is a fairly meaty article.
I should point out that in addition to much else, Boys' wrote a great classic of popular science, Soap Bubbles: Their Colours and the Forces Which Mould Them, in two editions of 1890 and 1911--and has stayed in print ever since. It is a great book. The full text can be found at the Internet Archive, here.