this was written before the internet, the majority of information in this book is available online or in basic brewing books, the gadgets described are mostly widely manufactured and / or easily available.

This book does a great job describing the mechanical part of homebrewing. It's well written and well illustrated, but is it useful? Most of this information is avaible somewhere online - in home brew forums - drawings and all - For Free. It's a good book - but it was origninally written in 1961 !! My reprint is from 1996 - `96 is the begining of the internet - when you still had to buy books to get most info.? Simple research on the internet will save you some money.

Easy to read and understand. Nice ideas and designs with good enough detail.

This book does a great job capturing the mechanical part of the essence of homebrewing. It's well written and well illustrated, but is it useful? Some of the gadgets are too simple to warrant inclusion and a few are unnecessarily elaborate. But, by and large, it includes a lot of gadgets that you could develop, with a little creativity, on your own (and Homebrewing is all about being creative). You might not make/use the gadgets, but it makes you think about the process.

So, yes, it's useful, especially if you use that saved creativity for tinkering with hops, malts and yeasts.