John Hannavy is a writer and photographer with a passion for engineering history. His work regularly appears in heritage magazines. A retired academic, he has written extensively on railways and other forms of transport, steam-powered machines, the history of photography, and the industrial development of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. This is his fiftieth book. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and was Centenary President of the British Institute of Professional Photography. The award of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 2002 allowed him to travel the world in the footsteps of pioneer British photographers.

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This book, the first to deal with the subject, tells the story of the evolution of the original 'spinning-ball' governor from its first appearance to the point where it became a small device entirely enclosed in a housing to keep it clean, and thus hidden from view.

Résumé
THE FIRST BOOK TO EXPLORE THE HISTORY OF THE CENTRIFUGAL GOVERNOR -AN EARLY ENGINE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMILLUSTRATED WITH OVER 200 PHOTOGRAPHS, ENGRAVINGS, PLANS AND DIAGRAMSFROM CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS' FIRST ESSAYS ON CENTRIFUGAL FORCE IN 1673, THE BOOK SPANS MORE THAN 250 YEARS OF THE SPINNING BALLS'