This YouTube video (in Dutch, but with English subs) is also fascinating: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ</a><p>You can browse Tatjana van Vark's personal website here: <a href="http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html</a>
Van Vark is an extreme hacker. Who else among us has a working telephone exchange in their basement? Or a military aircraft navigational system? Much less both. She honors the ancient hacker who made the Antikythera Mechanism with her own fine recreation of it.
I’ve been fascinated by van Vark’s work for years - her craftsmanship is incredible. Even submitted her website to HN a few years ago.<p>Her work is like transmissions from an alternate timeline where the transistor was never invented and electromechanical engineering was pushed as far as it could go.
This woman is amazing. Math, hardware, mechanics, engineering, metalworking, software, optics, etc. You name it she has the skills and has produced a lifetime's worth of stuff that would take you a long time just to review casually.
She's the real thing alright. Amazing! Cherry Hill is another one.<p>I wonder how many other women would be awesome machinists if it seemed a viable option. It's like anything else, potentially losing half of the talent available. I guess the US found this during WW II. I assume Germany did too.<p>I did a welding course and there were only two women in it, and even that surprised me. One lived on a farm so wanted to be able to fix things there but the other was an actual welding apprentice.<p>I'm seeing a push for women to take up trades but it looks like a long road still.
How many on earth can build those instruments from scratch ?
Even one of those instruments ?
What percentage of the global population ?<p>I am wondering if we are building a civilization weakness, where only few can recreate those things. As we produce at scale, and with more and more layers of automation, we need less and less craftsmen... and if those few at the top get hit by a bus, the setback could be huge.<p>Combined with technology that evolves faster than we can teach it, it feels like the number of experts is shrinking over time. Thoughts ?