There is was a rather thick hardcover sci-fi book I remember reading in the early 80s or so. Tons of nice illustrations and drawings.
It was a story or anything, more like an encyclopedia of various races, technologies, and wars.
Without deep regression hypnosis, I can’t remember the title. I looked at it often in the little public library back then.
About the only bit from the few hundred pages was “split beam violators”. Google wasn’t a lot of help when I bothered to check.
It wasn’t very important anyway.