I also remember the joy of reading various random entries in the encyclopedia. My grandfather had a wonderful book series “Ingenious Mechanisms for Inventors and Designers” originally published in 1930. I remember pursuing that endlessly when I was about 12 years old back in 1962.
The simple joys of opening books and exploring and discovering things is long gone, I’m afraid. Those were good days. You’ll never get that browsing the web.
> My grandfather had a wonderful book series “Ingenious Mechanisms for Inventors and Designers”
Looked interesting so I did a little digging and found the set here...
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org/archive-manuals/Ingenious_Mechanisms_Vol.1_Jones_1930.pdf
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org/archive-manuals/Ingenious_Mechanisms_Vol.2_Jones_1930.pdf
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org/archive-manuals/Ingenious_Mechanisms_Vol.3_Jones_1930.pdf
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org/archive-manuals/Ingenious_Mechanisms_Vol.4_Jones_1930.pdf
Please note - I kept getting a “The connection was reset” message from Cyberfox but Chrome let me download the .pdf with no problems.
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org looks like an interesting site.