By Phil Danielson

This book, along with a percentage of the other new vacuum books, bows to the perceived reality of the subject becoming too complex and widely applicable for a single author to handle with complete confidence. In this case, the book has a total of three editors and 31 contributing authors. Although there’s a strong argument for this approach, single author vacuum books can be adequate. Hablanian’s “High-Vacuum Technology, A Practical Guide” is a good example.

The multi-author approach, though, does allow this book to focus on areas that are still emerging in terms of commonality and acceptance by the use of authors who have acquired specific knowledge and experience in a particular area. This allows the best, to date, coverage of diaphragm pumps and the application of aluminum as a material of construction. Conversely, it also results in poor coverage of other specific areas, such as scroll pumps, which are only mentioned in passing.

The subject of what material should be covered and to what degree of detail is not only a function of available authors, but is also one of the difficult decisions an editor must make in a technology that is changing constantly. Is it more important to feature the latest technology or to provide a firm and solid background? Since the technology is evolving, the readership would need to gain this information, but the available readership reflects everyone from the novice to the experienced. Thus, and editor or single author needs to target a specific readership zone, since a totally complete book that would be useful to the entire possible readership would be too unwieldy to read or even carry.

This book does a good job of covering as much as possible within the parameters of the possible. A good example would be the fact that it includes more sealing information than is usual with newer books and even includes some history that is immensely useful to a novice’s need to understand sealing better. Conversely, such topics as oil-sealed mechanical pumps are largely ignored, probably because they have been covered in great detail in other, earlier books. This shows the need to bow to the problem of trying to be everything to everyone in a single book.

The editors here were also faced with the decision of whether to cover specific applications of vacuum technology and, if so, which ones of the myriad applications in the field today. Wisely, they stayed within some parameters of changing technology by sticking to thin film, accelerator, and fusion topics.

Although this new book is not for everyone, it does come pretty close, due to its carefully thought out content. It is useful to the average practitioner up, but it does leave something to be desired for the novice. In short, it belongs on the shelf of most vacuum users, and that’s about as close as a single book can get.

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Last Modified: May 25, 2004