I've slowly collected many of the books in the original Tom Swift series. It started with a few books that my father kept from his childhood. I discovered the Tom Swifts in a remote corner of the bookshelves and they immediately captured my imagination even though I was reading them in the 70s. Although I can't claim the series has much literary value, they're just plain fun, and an interesting glimpse into the past. Victor Appleton (Howard Garis) deserves much of the credit for my interest in both reading and science at a young age.

With the advent of ebay, I learned that many other people remember these books with fondness as well. I've filled in a few of the gaps in the series via ebay & other internet contacts, but most of my books don't have dust jackets. I'd like to be able to protect my books with copies of the original dust jackets, so I created this area of our web site to trade scans with others.

Here's how it works: I'll scan the dust jackets that I have & post them here. You are free to download them at will. I ask that in return, you scan in any dust jackets you have that are either missing from this set, or better than the image I have.

How do I donate a scan?

How do I make these print at the right size?

What about copyrights?

Some related links

Extra books for sale

Airship (#3) - 527 KB Donated by Peter Baker of Cambridge, Ontario (Thanks Peter!)

Submarine Boat (#4) - 418 KB

Wireless Message (#6) - 511 KB

Diamond Makers (#7) - 480 KB

Caves of Ice (#8)- 550 KB

City of Gold (#11) - 418 KB

In Captivity (#13)- 380 KB

Wizard Camera (#14) - 395 KB

Great Searchlight (#15) - 527 KB

Giant Cannon (#16)- 502 KB Donated by Peter Baker of Cambridge, Ontario (Thanks Peter!)

Photo Telephone (#17)- 375 KB

War Tank (#21) - 442 KB (Old doutone version)

Undersea Search (#23)- 618 KB

Among the Firefighters (#24) - 456 KB

Electric Locomotive (#25)- 408 KB

Flying Boat (#26)- 512 KB Donated by Peter Baker of Cambridge, Ontario (Thanks Peter!)

Great Oil Gusher (#27)- 560 KB Donated by Rodney Walker (Thanks Rodney!)

Chest of Secrets (#28)- 404 KB

The Back of Chest of Secrets - 338 KB -These don't vary much, and are not worth reproducing for every wrapper, so I only scanned the most intact one.

Circling the Globe (#30)- 617 KB

Talking Pictures (#31)- 451 KB

House on Wheels(#32) - 422 KB

Giant Magnet (#35) - 589KB Donated by Rodney Walker (Thanks Rodney!)

Whitman Tom Swift Reprints:

Airline Express (#29)- 573 KB

Circling the Globe (#30)- 442 KB

Big Dirigible (#33) - 850 KB Donated by Rodney Walker (Thanks Rodney!)

Giant Magnet (#35)- 436 KB

From the Andy Lane series:

The Plane Without a Pilot - 421 KB

Over the Polar Ice - 377 KB

From the Boy Inventors series:

Electric Hydroaeroplane - 410 KB

Still to be posted when I get around to it are:

Big Tunnel (G&D)

Sky Train (Whitman)

Giant Telescope (BLB)

Don Sturdy - Desert of Mystery (G&D)

Andy Lane - Racing Around the World (G&D)

Related Links:

Demco & Brodart (Where you can buy plastic covers to protect book jackets)

The Series Gallery An excellent site with information & DJ galleries for many series

The unofficial Tom Swift home page

Interesting article about the Stratemeyer Syndicate

To donate a scan, please scan the dustjacket carefully at 150 DPI resolution. If you scanner won't scan the entire image, it is OK to scan it in two pieces & send me both- I can assemble them in photoshop. If you use two scans, please be very careful to align the edge of the dust jacket with the edge of your scanner so the image isn't out of line when I reassemble them. If possible, make the scans overlap in a good place to join them, such as the spine. Send the scans as attachments to nick@fankhausers.com I'll take care of conversion to JPG format & such on my end & give you credit for donating the scan on the site. Let me know if you want your e-mail or web address included in the "credits".

To print them out at your end, you'll need a graphics program that will keep the correct aspect ratio & scaling when printing. Set the scale to 150 pixels per inch, and the image should print out to exactly the right size. They won't fit on one legal size sheet of paper so you'll either have to crop out some of the ads on the flaps or tape together two sheets of paper. I used Adobe Photoshop to make some test prints that came out perfectly sized. I couldn't get Paint Shop Pro to maintain the correct scaling. If anyone comes up with a method to print these using one of the less expensive graphics programs, send it to me & I'll post the instructions here. Please put a plastic dust jacket protector over your new cover so the ink won't ever bleed into the book & damage it! (See link to Demco above.)

Before starting this, I pondered about the copyrights & whether this is legal. I believe that unless the copyright has been renewed, these older series books should all be in the public domain. The University of North Carolina has a nice page explaining the rules for when works pass into the public domain.Since the Gutenberg Project has published many of the texts in digital form, I feel comfortable that the copyrights haven't been renewed. If you think I'm wrong, let me know.

I've accumulated a few extra juvenile series books that I'd be willing to trade or sell to a good home. They are listed below. Few have dustjackets, and most are not best quality (they're spares because I'm keeping the good copy!) If you are interested in any of them, email me (nick@fankhausers.com) and I'll send you details so we can work out a fair price or trade.

Don Sturdy:

• Desert of Mystery

Tom Swift Junior:

• Jetmarine (PC)
• Rocket Ship (PC)
• Outpost in Space (1 PC, 1 tweed)
• Ultrasonic Cycloplane (PC)
• Deep Sea Hydrodome (PC)
• Race to the Moon (PC)
• Electronic Retroscope (PC)

Rick Brant:

• Rocket's Shadow (tweed)
• Lost City (tweed)
• Smuggler's Reef (tweed)

Andy Lane:

• Over the Polar Ice
• Racing Around the World (Tattered reading copy)