Nutcrackers

by Robert Mills

Everybody has used a nutcracker, and this entertaining book describes the many ingenious methods employed and the numerous imaginative designs produced from the eighteenth century to the present day to carry out the apparently simple task of cracking a nut. Considering the heavy use to which they have been put, it is surprising that some of the earliest wooden nutcrackers still survive. Some of these are wonderful examples of folk art. While nutcrackers of such age and quality are scarce today and latter-day mass-produced metal ones are less individual, interesting figural brass and steel examples can still be found at accessible prices. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject, covering the history, development and variation of design and construction of nutcrackers around the world.

40 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Robert Laurence Mills (April 15, 1927 – October 27, 1999) was a physicist, specializing in quantum field theory, the theory of alloys, and many-body theory. While sharing an office at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in 1954, Chen Ning Yang and Mills proposed a tensor equation for what are now called Yang–Mills fields. This equation reduces to Maxwell's equations as a special case.