I wonder if anyone knows if there is a comparable reference for mechanical engineering? Something that someone in a different discipline could use to get at least conversant in. I'm a EE who has been interested in building more mechanical things (especially how to compute things mechanically), but some of my biggest problems are know what search terms to use when trying to look things up. Like for instance I've been wanting something like a mechanical multiplier/mixer. There would be one rotating input shaft, two rotating output shafts (call them X and Y), and a "control" input which would direct the input shaft motion to the output shafts in proportion to the control. So if the control were at say the "zero" position, all the input motion would be transmitted to the X shaft, and Y would be motionless. When the control was at the "one" position, all the motion would be transmitted to the Y shaft, and X would be stationary. The control would be continuously variable, and it would be great if it also performed the sinusoidal conversion at the same time, essentially:

    X = Input * sin(control)
    Y = Input * cos(control)

...I imagine something like this must exist, and deriving it from first principles probably isn't exceedingly difficult, but knowing what it is called is another matter.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I suppose the book I'm dreaming of would cover things like gears/pulleys and their common/interesting combinations (like a differential), springs, thermodynamics, hydraulics, linkages, heat engines, etc.. And as long as I'm dreaming if there are also similar texts for chemistry and cellular biology/DNA/genetic engineering, I'd also purchase those.