The Secret Life of Machines‘ Tim Hunkin announced a new series consisting of eight episodes about components for making things. In the announcement video above Hunkin lets us know that he has been inspired by online crafters showing how they do things, and offers to show us his processes for working with glue, switches, connectors, springs, bearings, hinges, LEDs, and chain and belt mechanisms when the show premiers on March 4th.
Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod’s The Secret Life of Machines is very important for so many other people who have left comments on Tim’s videos about how it inspired them to become engineers or just make things for fun. The show crossed borders to demystify and let people know how the machines in our lives work. Washing machines, cars, fax machines, there was no topic too simple for Tim & Rex and at some point during every episode they would risk Rex’s life by doing something extremely silly with the parts from inside the machines like flipping Rex over in a moving vehicle using parts from a washing machine for some reason. That was in 1988 through 1993 and since then Hunkin has been creating ridiculous arcade machines that make a hilarious mockery of real life like this machine that teaches you how to work at an Amazon warehouse:
The entire Secret Life of Machines is available online via Tim Hunkin and oddly enough San Francisco’s Exploratorium here if you’d like something to watch while you’re waiting for the The Secret Life of Components to premier on March 4th at Tim Hunkin’s website. If you’re in the United Kingdom and somehow there isn’t a pandemic anymore, I wish I could be there and visit Tim Hunkin’s arcades in London and Suffolk.
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