Simple Working Models Of Historic Machines

35 machines are divided into six general groups: ancient machine tools, lifting devices, mechanisms, machines for pumping and water raising, blowing machines, and heat engines.

Designed for the mechanically curious and venturesome, this book presents descriptions and model plans for a great variety of ingenious tools, devices, and engines invented over a span of history ranging from prehistory and antiquity to the Renaissance and recent centuries. The author writes that his book "is intended for all those who like to experiment and make things work, from the schoolboy upwards. It will help them to experience the pleasure and satisfaction of making things with their own hands. "Simple instructions are given for making and putting to work models of scientific and historic significance, while suggesting their place in the advance of technical progress through the ages." Photographs of built models and drawings of historical examples animate the descriptions of some of the machines, while for each of the 35 machines a full-page scaled drawing of the model to be built is provided. Although fully adequate, these plans purposely do not specify dimensions and materials in such detail as to prelude inventiveness and machine-shop ingenuity on the part of the builder. The models are not meant to be exact, scaled duplicates of particular historical examples, but rather abstractions of their working essence. In the process of learning from experience the techniques of good mechanical craftsmanship, the model builder principles of the science of mechanics. Because they embody these basic principles in the simplest ways, most of the mechanisms described in the book are still in use, either unchanged in primitive hands, or refined and incorporated into sophisticated devices. The 35 machines are divided into six general groups: ancient machine tools, lifting devices, mechanisms, machines for pumping and water raising, blowing machines, and heat engines. Among the more famous of the machines are Leonardo's lathe, the screw generating device, the coin-in-the-slot machine, Foliot and verge escapement, the Archimedean snail, the Ctesibian pump. Hero whirling Aeolipile, and the Arabian grappling device.

Machines have always gone hand-in-hand with the cultural development of m- kind throughout time. A book on the history of machines is nothing more than a specific way of bringing light to human events as a whole in order to highlight some significant milestones in the progress of knowledge by a complementary persp- tive into a general historical overview. This book is the result of common efforts and interests by several scholars, teachers, and students on subjects that are connected with the theory of machines and mechanisms. In fact, in this book there is a certain teaching aim in addition to a general historical view that is more addressed to the achievements by “homo faber” than to those by “homo sapiens”, since the proposed history survey has been developed with an engineering approach. The brevity of the text added to the fact that the authors are probably not com- tent to tackle historical studies with the necessary rigor, means the content of the book is inevitably incomplete, but it nevertheless attempts to fulfil three basic aims: First, it is hoped that this book may provide a stimulus to promote interest in the study of technical history within a mechanical engineering context. Few are the co- tries where anything significant is done in this area, which means there is a general lack of knowledge of this common cultural heritage.

This book is intended for all those who like to experiment and make things work, from the schoolboy upwards. It will help them to experience the pleasure and satisfaction of making things with their own hands.

The most complicated machines often rely on a few simple principles of technology, such as wheels, springs, screws, ramps, and wedges. This series explores these technologies by relating them to common machines in our everyday world from bedsprings to skateboards to zippers. Numerous fact files offer readers fast facts and other pertinent information.

Designing and making successful automata involves combining materials, mechanisms and magic. Making Simple Automata explains how to design and construct small scale, simple mechanical devices made for fun. Materials such as paper and card, wood, wire, tinplate and plastics are covered along with mechanisms - levers and linkages, cranks and cams, wheels, gears, pulleys, springs, ratchets and pawls. This wonderful book is illustrated with examples throughout and explains the six golden rules for making automata alongside detailed step-by-step projects. Magic - an unanalyzable charm, a strong fascination so that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Superbly illustrated with 110 colour photographs with examples and detailed step-by-step projects.

This fascinating book will be of as much interest to engineers as to art historians, examining as it does the evolution of machine design methodology from the Renaissance to the Age of Machines in the 19th century. It provides detailed analysis, comparing design concepts of engineers of the 15th century Renaissance and the 19th century age of machines from a workshop tradition to the rational scientific discipline used today.

This work was originally published as four separate books; their titles, and reviewers' comments, are given below: History of the Gear-Cutting Machine: A Historical Study in Geometry and Machines "The book represents an overwhelmingly well-done job of reducing a great mass of material—scholarly references, patents, catalogs, engineering and trade journals, and machines themselves—into a logical story of development. Written with zest and relish, this vivid account presents a wealth of unusual information. The illustrations are particularly good, for many of them come from previously untapped sources." —Technology and Culture History of the Grinding Machine: A Historical Study in Tools and Precision Production "From the polished artifacts of prehistoric times Mr. Woodbury traces the development of methods, abrasives, and the machine tools which interdependently contributed to the advanced grinding techniques used today. Many fine illustrations." —The Tool Engineer History of the Milling Machine: A Study in Technical Development "Mr. Woodbury traces the evolution of milling machines from Eli Whitney's machine (circa 1820), the first miller ever built, to numerical controlled milling machines.... presented cleanly with ample detail. Fine illustration and complete bibliography are provided." —The Tool Engineer History of the Lathe to 1850: A Study in the Growth of a Technical Element of an Industrial Economy "Woodbury, who teaches the history of technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is at work on a history of machine design which promises to alter our perspectives not only in his special field but in general cultural history.... His present history of the lathe (to about 1850) absorbs the entire previous literature and goes far beyond it." —Lynn White, Jr.