The Quest for Power is dedicated to Hubert Cecil Booth, inventor of the vacuum cleaner.
who by the invention and subsequent development of the vacuum cleaner has created a new industry, lightened the burden of human toil, and increased the health and happiness of innumberable homes".
The flier advertising the book contained the following quotation: "Eighty British, American and European journals - representative of all that is best in the periodical literature of Science, Engineering, Arts and Industry, besides literary "weeklies" and the daily press - have devoted over five hundred single column inches of their space to reviews of The Quest for Power.
A few typical comments are quoted overleaf" "A miracle of consisement and comprehensiveness combined" Morning Post (E.B.Osborn) 4 September 1931 "The book deserves to become a standard work for the general educated reader, especially for arts mentaking a degree in history, for students in technical colleges and schools".
"Gives the layman admirable lucid accounts of the major machines and processes which have given modern man such colossal power".