Agreed. The probability that I would ever come across this while browsing elsewhere is trivially low, and yet it was interesting enough to read through and learn a bit about piston maintenance.
Some further searching reveals that there is a whole series of these with accompanying slide films:
http://www.imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Films/index47.htm#194...
Imagine if Tesla made booklets and videos like these for the technology in their cars... I guess 70 years ago companies were far more open with sharing such things, and willing to spend a lot more on it too.
Thanks for this post I upvoted a few of your comments. That said being a bit older and in business for many years (since college) I think it's the opposite actually. When I was 'growing up' in business you didn't share your secrets or give out any information whatever that would be helpful to your competition unless it was disinformation. So this didn't start with Steve Jobs and Apple it was pretty much status quo for all business. The internet changed that and I think at least one of the reasons was the involvement of academics who were more used to sharing what they knew.
[1] http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/psm
We are witnessing the end of ownership for anybody that isnt hyperich.