111–120 of 133 posts
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The author David Macaulay taught illustration at my college. His original series started with buildings like “Castle”. The way things work was a breakout hit.
I was also a childhood lover of Castle and Vikings :)
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> When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles. Edison did not build his stuff himself. Edison had people building stuff for him. More people as his career progressed. His lead machinist was John Kreusi.[1] Kruesi personally built the first Edison light bulb and the first phonograph. Krue…
Both your points hold. The distinction is rather that the device was made next door, from raw materials, with them possibly watching. Certainly acknowledging the craftsmanship, but still while understanding your tools. Today, labs are filled with expensive machines and you are not able to peek inside. You need something? Only from a catalog, made in a mystical factory, without you knowing what's inside. This abstract…
Those advanced lab tools were built by many very skilled people. We’re past the time where a single person could hold it all in their head. One man could build a modern lathe back when they were a new thing, one man can’t build a modern lithography machine today.
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China can do it. No car that leaves a factory there is the same. Everything automated and yet customizable.
Right but big robot arms do need to be reprogrammed. In short we traded higher throughput for less flexibility. Tooling and such is expensive and complicated. A sheet brake and a welder and a mill and lathe can produce a LOT of stuff without any expensive tooling.
The cost of that reprogramming goes down over time, no?
I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…
> When I was a kid I was amazed that people like Edison and Tesla had labs not filled with gear from some lab manufacturer, but stuff they built themselves from first principles. Edison did not build his stuff himself. Edison had people building stuff for him. More people as his career progressed. His lead machinist was John Kreusi.[1] Kruesi personally built the first Edison light bulb and the first phonograph. Krue…
Edison did not start his career as a successful businessman. He built things, he sold patents, and later in life he lead teams that did the same.
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Both your points hold. The distinction is rather that the device was made next door, from raw materials, with them possibly watching. Certainly acknowledging the craftsmanship, but still while understanding your tools. Today, labs are filled with expensive machines and you are not able to peek inside. You need something? Only from a catalog, made in a mystical factory, without you knowing what's inside. This abstract…
Taking apart modern day “advanced” objects is way less fulfilling than those from the past. Miniaturization/integration and the increased complexity puts things beyond what even an adult can easily and visually grasp, let alone a kid. It’s mostly “black box” chips now. Those advanced lab tools were built by many very skilled people. We’re past the time where a single person could hold it all in their head. One man co…
I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…
This is an incredibly impactful childhood. I'm from Honduras, a developing country where there is practically zero investment in science or the arts, and I was fortunate enough to also have gotten a similar book. One thing that struck me is how not a single person around me ever conceived of the things we use and consume on a daily basis as having been created by someone...another human being with our same physical f…
I find it interesting how far we've come so far from the mindset of "You can do that." There was a hilariously funny reddit post about someone who discovered that you could just blend peanuts and it would make peanut butter. But there was sadness there too. All of my kids spent hours pouring over a book we had called 'The Way Things Work' with a delightfully funny Mammoth and a good description of how things actually…
This is an incredibly impactful childhood. I'm from Honduras, a developing country where there is practically zero investment in science or the arts, and I was fortunate enough to also have gotten a similar book. One thing that struck me is how not a single person around me ever conceived of the things we use and consume on a daily basis as having been created by someone...another human being with our same physical f…
I kinda wish somebody made some study of how different ways societies acquire technology impacts the given society's making/tinkering culture. I wonder what patterns would emerge.
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Taking apart modern day “advanced” objects is way less fulfilling than those from the past. Miniaturization/integration and the increased complexity puts things beyond what even an adult can easily and visually grasp, let alone a kid. It’s mostly “black box” chips now. Those advanced lab tools were built by many very skilled people. We’re past the time where a single person could hold it all in their head. One man co…
One man could not make an ordinary #2 pencil. A modern lathe was already out of reach.
The advanced machines of today are no longer within reach for almost any single well trained man. Now it takes an army of people with non-overlapping skills and knowledge.
200 years ago a basic component was wire or a metal sheet, you’d get them “pre made”. Today the basic component is a chip with millions of transistors and thousands of lines of firmware code that do 99% of the job.
At least you can understand every part of a pencil even without having one in front of you, what it does, and a bit of experimentation would get you an absolutely terrible but technically functioning pencil. Make the tiny leap to a pen and you already lost everyone.
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Custom machine building is a very difficult business to be in. As you mentioned, it's hard to scale. I knew of a particular service provider (custom motion systems) whose philosophy was to break even on the first job and profit on any followups.
>of a particular service provider (custom motion systems) whose philosophy was to break even on the first job and profit on any followups. It's called Learning Curve Based Pricing / Experience Based Pricing First popularized by BCG (Boston Consulting Group) and Texas Instruments https://commoncog.com/c/cases/texas-instruments-learning-cur... Helped Texas Instrument become what it is, and dominate the decade that it i…