For the purposes of this question, lets assume all future computers are gonna become locked down and you’d need corporate approval to run things… so with such a hypothetical dark future in mind: How to hoard as much as info as possible?
Sounds like you’re talking about an old-school encyclopedia book collection. Like Encyclopedia Britannica. They take up a lot of physical space and sing if the information becomes outdated quickly. But they are a great source for history, geography, science, etc. And you might be able to find them second-hand from an online seller for a relatively reasonable price.
Encyclopedia Britannica
They stopped printing in 2010 :/
Edit: also jeez an entire set of encryclopedias are kinda pricy ngl 👀
Oh okay. Looks like World Book is still printing encyclopedias though.
Other than a set of encyclopedias, a good book is Pocket Ref by Thomas J Glover. It has all sorts of useful information (conversion charts, formulas, reference tables, etc.) You can also look at Desk Ref
Another are any of the Ugly’s electrical reference books. Handy to keep with you if you do any electrical work or need to quickly reference some information. The Pocket Ref has pretty much the same stuff but Ugly’s is more focused and less broad.
And of course a dictionary and thesaurus are good to have too.
Chemistry, math, physics, optics, metallurgy… The thing that is hard is how your needs for knowledge will change over time and what is accessible to you at each stage.
For general electronics, The Art of Electronics is the goto book. For actually understanding practical stuff, you need to build a knowledge of the industrial revolution and how it evolved. The inventions of James Watt opened up steam. The Bessemer process scaled iron. Large heavy castings drove the potential for large lathes, but lathes are the key to everything. A lathe is capable of cutting a more precise screw than the one used to operate it. That old screw can be replaced with the new, until you achieve your desired precision.
A reference flat is made using two granite stones rubbed together with water in between until the top one creates suction that can lift the other.
Prussian blue and hand scraping are used to make machine flat surfaces.
Automotive suspension components like springs and torsion bars are a good source of cheap tool steel. Engine heads are a good source of casting scrap and quality hardware. Wipers, window motors, and starters are great for building machines. Understanding how to repair and diagnose this stuff is a major skill. Knowing how to make real controlled heat is fundamentally important.
I’ve never encountered single sources for this stuff.
Engineering textbooks and presumably chemistry and medical textbooks. But you then have to be careful to select one that’s not massively confusing and a slog to read
