5 ms·

507 Mechanical Movements (1868)

291 points by devnull255 11y ago

spenczar5 11y ago
These are beautiful. It's a shame that the underlying drawing library is proprietary, though. Many animations are missing, and I'd love to contribute. Number 36 looks like it would have been fun.
- aerovistae 11y ago
  Yeah it's too bad most of the animations are absent. 5 out of 7 I clicked had no animation.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Start with the thumbnail view. If the thumbnail is in color, it has an animation.
- escherplex 11y ago
  Might be fun to animate one of the escapement gear images and include a pendulum. The tri-bevel-gear assemblies are useful for generating counter-rotating prop assemblies for propellers, drone blades in a gimbal, or ceiling fans by fixing a pair of middle gears to a hollow shaft and driving one of the other two. That's also an interesting mental exercise in topology since initially you're taught c cc c cc c when asked what is the direction of rotation for a particular gear in a series on a flat surface but here you must rotate the surface in mental space and analyze the results to determine direction from an outside perspective.
DanBC 11y ago
Some discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230363 and relevant here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770
vcarl 11y ago
Here's a Youtube channel with similar content. https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos I found it a while ago while deep in "related" videos, it's one of the few channels I'm subscribed too. As I understand it, he's retired with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and just likes making little mechanisms in Inventor.
p4bl0 11y ago
"507 Mechanical Movements" If it wasn't for the 1800s date after this title, I would have thought it to be a proposal for an additional HTTP status code. I still search the web by curiosity, turns out 507 already exists for WebDAV, and it means "Insufficient storage".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 11y ago
  The date just made me think it would be about watch/clock movements... which is a somewhat closer guess.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  507: Insufficient storage, mechanical movement of disk required
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Sounds like a great catch-all euphemism for human error. AKA the computer received faulty input from the keyboard/mouse movement.
  - vacri 11y ago
    'Layer 8 error' is a good one for that, based off the OSI 7-layer network model.
keehun 11y ago
It would be awesome if the original drawings could be reincorporated. I imagine once the animations are made, it would take a little additional work to decompose the original image into components that the animator could use. This way, designer/graphic artists (who don't know how to animate) could contribute to this!
wojciem 11y ago
It would be nice to have some toy-set for kids with this.
- chillydawg 11y ago
  Meccano?
- elihu 11y ago
  Or some nice svg templates that can be easily laser-cut...
  - bigiain 11y ago
    And/or stl files for 3D printing...
userbinator 11y ago
The book itself is available in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala
andyjohnson0 11y ago
A fascinating book. I have a paper copy published by Watchmaker Publishing and available on Amazon [1]. The drawings in the book are the original edchings, not re-drawn and coloured as on the web site. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1603863117 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1603863117
orangepenguin 11y ago
I guess I'm not going to be productive today. stares in fascination
johansch 11y ago
The title reminds me a lot of the Elektor series of electronics books from the 80s - "301 circuits - practical circuits for the home constructor". Probably mostly familiar to Europeans....
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ableal 11y ago
  Elektor, Omni, and Playboy. The last one was a bit repetitive. (... repetitive? Your Honor, totally unintended.)
ChuckMcM 11y ago
This has been here before (not surprisingly) I used it as a way to get better at mechanical CAD, building the movements as models and then trying to animate them. It was quite instructive.
bro-stick 11y ago
Folks whom like this might also be interested in the Ashley Book of Knots (ABoK). Since it should be public domain, here's a pdf magnet url: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:9777cb900abc65939b7d2cab9cc36c51ecb7a95a&dn=The+Ashley+Book++of+Knots&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969
douche 11y ago
This is fantastic. Reminds me of the better part of a morning I spent at the beginning of the summer at the Boston Science Museum, where, in a dark, neglected corner of the basement, they have a very old display with motorized versions of many of these mechanisms. I think I was the only person there the whole time. There's a lot of buzz about "learn-to-code" movements, but people are generally just as illiterate about mechanics, electronics, and other basic science. I think we may have covered 5% of these mechanisms in one unit of my HS freshman science class. We do a terrible job teaching science in the US...
- lukev 11y ago
  I actually don't think that's true. Sure, our curriculum doesn't cover each of these mechanics. But they do cover the basic properties of levers, pendulums, pulleys, gears, cams, chains/belts, levers, etc. Every single one of these mechanisms is a recombination of those ideas. I would argue that for fields that don't actually require designing or building mechanical objects, an understanding of what the primitives are is enough. The analogous features in computer science would be things like functions, values, loops, etc, that it's certainly possible to understand without being a good programmer. You can know (at a high level) what sausage is made of, without actually being a sausage-maker.
  - douche 11y ago
    Maybe I just had some substandard science curriculum. We got pretty much the 10000, or 100000 foot view of most topics. I think the bigger problem is that US education is so overwhelmingly aligned with teaching to what is on the SAT. There are a hundred basic life skills that are scandalously neglected in favor of pushing everybody up to calculus (ignoring a lot of the geometry and trig that is useful to know if you end up working in trades) and finely tuning our abilities to churn out five paragraph SAT essays. Shop and Home-ec classes have been slashed. Everybody should be able to bake a cake, hem a pair of pants, balance a checkbook, change their oil, replace a lawn-mower belt, understand a loan agreement or lease, hang a shelf, etc.
vinchuco 11y ago
It would be really graet to see this combined with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ

291 points by devnull255 11y ago

These are beautiful. It's a shame that the underlying drawing library is proprietary, though. Many animations are missing, and I'd love to contribute. Number 36 looks like it would have been fun.

aerovistae 11y ago
Yeah it's too bad most of the animations are absent. 5 out of 7 I clicked had no animation.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Start with the thumbnail view. If the thumbnail is in color, it has an animation.
escherplex 11y ago
Might be fun to animate one of the escapement gear images and include a pendulum. The tri-bevel-gear assemblies are useful for generating counter-rotating prop assemblies for propellers, drone blades in a gimbal, or ceiling fans by fixing a pair of middle gears to a hollow shaft and driving one of the other two. That's also an interesting mental exercise in topology since initially you're taught c cc c cc c when asked what is the direction of rotation for a particular gear in a series on a flat surface but here you must rotate the surface in mental space and analyze the results to determine direction from an outside perspective.

DanBC 11y ago

Some discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230363 and relevant here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770

vcarl 11y ago

Here's a Youtube channel with similar content. https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos I found it a while ago while deep in "related" videos, it's one of the few channels I'm subscribed too. As I understand it, he's retired with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and just likes making little mechanisms in Inventor.

p4bl0 11y ago

"507 Mechanical Movements" If it wasn't for the 1800s date after this title, I would have thought it to be a proposal for an additional HTTP status code. I still search the web by curiosity, turns out 507 already exists for WebDAV, and it means "Insufficient storage".

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 11y ago
The date just made me think it would be about watch/clock movements... which is a somewhat closer guess.
gherkin0 11y ago
507: Insufficient storage, mechanical movement of disk required
TrevorJ 11y ago
Sounds like a great catch-all euphemism for human error. AKA the computer received faulty input from the keyboard/mouse movement.
- vacri 11y ago
  'Layer 8 error' is a good one for that, based off the OSI 7-layer network model.

keehun 11y ago

It would be awesome if the original drawings could be reincorporated. I imagine once the animations are made, it would take a little additional work to decompose the original image into components that the animator could use. This way, designer/graphic artists (who don't know how to animate) could contribute to this!

wojciem 11y ago

It would be nice to have some toy-set for kids with this.

chillydawg 11y ago
Meccano?
elihu 11y ago
Or some nice svg templates that can be easily laser-cut...
- bigiain 11y ago
  And/or stl files for 3D printing...

userbinator 11y ago

The book itself is available in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala

andyjohnson0 11y ago

A fascinating book. I have a paper copy published by Watchmaker Publishing and available on Amazon [1]. The drawings in the book are the original edchings, not re-drawn and coloured as on the web site. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1603863117 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1603863117

orangepenguin 11y ago

I guess I'm not going to be productive today. stares in fascination

johansch 11y ago

The title reminds me a lot of the Elektor series of electronics books from the 80s - "301 circuits - practical circuits for the home constructor". Probably mostly familiar to Europeans....

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ableal 11y ago
Elektor, Omni, and Playboy. The last one was a bit repetitive. (... repetitive? Your Honor, totally unintended.)

ChuckMcM 11y ago

This has been here before (not surprisingly) I used it as a way to get better at mechanical CAD, building the movements as models and then trying to animate them. It was quite instructive.

bro-stick 11y ago

Folks whom like this might also be interested in the Ashley Book of Knots (ABoK). Since it should be public domain, here's a pdf magnet url: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:9777cb900abc65939b7d2cab9cc36c51ecb7a95a&dn=The+Ashley+Book++of+Knots&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969

douche 11y ago

This is fantastic. Reminds me of the better part of a morning I spent at the beginning of the summer at the Boston Science Museum, where, in a dark, neglected corner of the basement, they have a very old display with motorized versions of many of these mechanisms. I think I was the only person there the whole time. There's a lot of buzz about "learn-to-code" movements, but people are generally just as illiterate about mechanics, electronics, and other basic science. I think we may have covered 5% of these mechanisms in one unit of my HS freshman science class. We do a terrible job teaching science in the US...

lukev 11y ago
I actually don't think that's true. Sure, our curriculum doesn't cover each of these mechanics. But they do cover the basic properties of levers, pendulums, pulleys, gears, cams, chains/belts, levers, etc. Every single one of these mechanisms is a recombination of those ideas. I would argue that for fields that don't actually require designing or building mechanical objects, an understanding of what the primitives are is enough. The analogous features in computer science would be things like functions, values, loops, etc, that it's certainly possible to understand without being a good programmer. You can know (at a high level) what sausage is made of, without actually being a sausage-maker.
- douche 11y ago
  Maybe I just had some substandard science curriculum. We got pretty much the 10000, or 100000 foot view of most topics. I think the bigger problem is that US education is so overwhelmingly aligned with teaching to what is on the SAT. There are a hundred basic life skills that are scandalously neglected in favor of pushing everybody up to calculus (ignoring a lot of the geometry and trig that is useful to know if you end up working in trades) and finely tuning our abilities to churn out five paragraph SAT essays. Shop and Home-ec classes have been slashed. Everybody should be able to bake a cake, hem a pair of pants, balance a checkbook, change their oil, replace a lawn-mower belt, understand a loan agreement or lease, hang a shelf, etc.

vinchuco 11y ago

It would be really graet to see this combined with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ