In a similar vein, here is a video from the US Navy in the 1950s which describes how mechanical computers work (for calculating trajectories of missiles being shot from ships.)<p>Utterly fascinating to see how very simple mechanical devices, like differing gear ratios, can be used to calculate things like logarithms.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpkTHyfr0pM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpkTHyfr0pM</a>
Okay, stupid questions.
- To what extent are mechanical engineers using these sorts of things?
- Are there texts discussing the design / selection / integration of movements to perform particular tasks?
- Are there are texts like that targeting application to Arduino driven robotics? Mindstorms?
For those who like printed books, Dover has an inexpensive edition of the underlying book [1].<p>There are many similar books, such as "A Victorian Handbook of Mechanical Movements" [2], and "1800 Mechanical Movements, Devices and Appliances" [3].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/507-Mechanical-Movements-Mechanisms-Devices/dp/0486443604/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/507-Mechanical-Movements-Mechanisms-De...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0486498123" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/dp/0486498123</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Movements-Devices-Appliances-Science/dp/0486457435/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_6" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Movements-Devices-Appliance...</a>
If you like this kind of thing and you haven't run across the Equation of Time cam from the clock of the long now, take a moment and check it out:<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10000718-7.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10000718-7.html</a>
Really cute mechanism in <a href="http://507movements.com/mm_123.html" rel="nofollow">http://507movements.com/mm_123.html</a><p>The little pins hit the V in the center gear and cause it to shift to the other gear. Neat!
That kind of stuff, is why I've always wanted to be an engineer. In my mind, I visualize arrangements of systems and networks exactly the same way as these.<p>Building stuff, pressing the "On' button, and seeing it all work is just the best feeling in the world.
Here's a YouTube video that shows some of these: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkQ2pXkYjRM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkQ2pXkYjRM</a>
This reminded me of a recent paper on automatically designing animated mechanical characters. Some of these movements could be used to incorporate different kinds of animations into these characters.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfznnKUwywQ</a>
Some of these I had to see animated to even grasp what it might do. Even then I couldn't figure out what use it might be.<p>A couple of them describe stuff that used it but most were just technical details. It would be nice if there was a link to something that used it so you could see why it was ever made (or maybe some of these are just for fun).<p>I couldn't get through them all but will come back because it's fun to watch. More fun than it should be really.<p>edit:
example of one that has me guessing why it exists:
<a href="http://507movements.com/mm_115.html" rel="nofollow">http://507movements.com/mm_115.html</a>
Back in the early 1900s there were a handful of people making physical models of a number of these movements (and some that went beyond this incredible collection). They occasionally tour, Boston's Museum of Science had a big show of William M. Clark's collection back in 2006, I think. Anyway, Cornell has "The Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library" where they try to keep track of all of these physical models:<p><a href="http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/collection-toc.php" rel="nofollow">http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/collection-toc.php</a>
This looks like a wonderful thing. But I can't see any animations! What am I missing?<p>Edit: ah, only the color diagrams are animated. The top of the page links to a blurb about that.
The animation for <a href="http://507movements.com/mm_349.html" rel="nofollow">http://507movements.com/mm_349.html</a> is actually a bit misleading, since there are two degrees of freedom: the lateral movements of the lower and upper halves are independent.