When i worked at "Ruhr Nachrichten" in Dortmund, Germany in 2001, i saw one of those Linotype machines in person. It was not connected anymore but more of a museum piece installed in a random hallway somewhere in the back of the building. It is really a beast of a machine. The middle of the building was bombed in WW2 and was hurriedly rebuilt. This resulted in a lot of strange hallways, random steps and rooms with crooked walls. A lot of space was stuffed with old 'junk'. The electrical cabling was a nightmare. When we searched for a problem on the network, we found out that one rack had over 50V AC on the ground plane. touching the rack could actually have been dangerous. Fun times :-)
First we learned to set type with a typesetting box, and then on the typesetting machine, the Linotype machine. That was indeed one of the most beautiful developments in history. Certainly a favorite invention indeed!!
Regarding museums and machine exhibits, for me _nothing_ compares to the joy and wonder of stationary steam museums. There are a few around Nottingham (Papplewick and Nottingham Industrial Museum are the two I've been to most) as well as elsewhere, and there is honestly no better feeling than sitting in a building with an enormous steam machine running above, below, and around you. Tons upon tons of iron moving with an eerie quietness while the floor thrums with its power, truly wonderful.
There is a stationary steam engine in the Central Textile Museum in Lodz, Poland - but it's not operational :( Having an exhibit is one thing, but seeing technology come to life... now that's fascinating!
I'll visit both next time I'm up north. I thoroughly recommend Crossness Pumping Station, and even more ridiculous, the Museum of Water and Steam at Kew. They have a 250-ton beam engine with a 90 inch bore described by Charles Dickens as "a monster" - and then next door to it, there's an even bigger beam engine with a 100 inch bore. Also, across the road from it is the Musical Museum, which is filled with player pianos and orchestrions and is also excellent.
As much as I love creating, and as much as my parents always supported me to be "an inventor" growing up, the one thing I wish I was told was how much effort goes into everyday objects. Like, listen kid, be creative, but just know that it takes a lot of hard work and you'll either need to work for a very very long time or get people to help you. Which it great! Collaboration is great! Make things with people. Everything you see around you was a team effort.
Back in the 90s I learned to type on an electromechanical wonder called the _IBM Selectric III_ and even without understanding any of the technological witchcraft and wiffletree wizardry going on inside it was love at first sight. Thirty years later I managed to collect four of them and I'm still baffled by the ingenuity and engineering that made this iconic typewriter what it was in its day. I feel you.
Yes!! One of my own favorite inventions, the APL language, was close-knit with the Selectric! The "APL demonstration 1975" of the language being typed interactively on paper using a Selectric that types the responses back is a marvel! Such a marriage between two well thought out systems that presents such an approachable machine to work with.
As much as i enjoy mechanical contraptions (is a mechanical engineer), but in my opinion the two most important inventions are accurate timekeeping and the fast fourier transform
Just came across this channel. I don't know how to explain it, but I just really love the vibe. Just a dude inventing things. Really hits different than the attention focused world. Just chill. Straightforward.
My favourite exhibit - sadly, long ago removed - in London's Science Museum was the Marx Impulse Generator. It stood in the corner of what is now the Space Travel gallery, but back then it was dedicated to Electric Power. The generator worked by charging a column of capacitors in parallel, then discharging in series once a critical voltage had been reached. Twice a day, a chap would come down and power it up - a couple of massive, loud million volt sparks. Brilliant stuff. ♥
In the 1970's in the USA I was required to take a Print Shop class that included manually setting lead type and wetting toxic ink for printing. The presses were from the 1930's. We had to return the letters to the type drawer, and a Dickensian-type teacher (Mr. Jaffey) would come around and examine our drawers after each lesson. Woe to the student whose drawer was mis-arranged!
If it wasn't for the invention of the camera, there would be no video of you telling us about inventions. Someone did patent the equivalent of a bicycle for horses. It was a four-wheeled platform, with attachments to the horse's feet, and was claimed to be able to let a horse gallop at more than 70 mph. The name, 'Linotype' comes from 'line of type'. Printing has really transformed over the past century. One very useful tool is called MEPS, 'Multilingual Electronic Phototypesetting System', which justifies and formats type in any font on pages and around images and tables, and it can be used to create documents in any written language. It enables the publishing of printed and online material in hundreds of languages simultaneously. One website using it contains pages and literature in over 1,000 languages so far.
I'm very much with you on cameras! They've been such fascinating devices; the way they work, how many types of technology and science are involved, how they continued to improve and progress. And having recently found and repaired a Minolta XG-1(n) from 1982, I finally experienced the joys of using something so mechanically complex. I love the array of sounds it makes during use. It's so satisfying!
only the best kind of people understand and love the incredible innovation behind cameras, and the mechanical beauty of film cameras. Have a look at the leica R6, it was fully automatic and used only battery for the light meter, there are some explosive diagrams that are super interesting.
Midway through watching this I just had the thought "I hope he's watched Secret Life of Machine's or seen Tim Hunkin's exhibits" and then you mentioned it :) When we encounter dust in the house my wife or I will do a little squeal and say "dust!" referencing the vacuum cleaner episode :) Anyway thanks for the great content and keen making whatever things your interests take you to.
1:03 Yes, there is still room for an individual to make a new great invention. As a wise guy once said, "Man went to the moon before he figured out how to put wheels on suitcases." 1:28 I'd like to nominate the quartz crystal oscillator as a great invention. Before that (in the 1920's), the world's most accurate clock still used a pendulum. Quartz oscillators are now built into every radio, every computer, and just about anything that has digital electronics. I am also impressed with Graph Paper. No one drew a chart with X and Y values until sometime after Rene Descartes. Mathematicians studied polynomial functions for more than a thousand years before anybody plotted one on graph paper. People sometimes refer to an invention as "before its time", but graphs arrived really late. I don't see why they were not invented a thousand years earlier.
Here's a thought, related to the camera: the "analog principle" as an invention. Sure, everything is digital now, and analog is considered dumb, inefficient, and lots of other things. But analog was a huge leap over the *nothing at all* that came before it. By the analog principle I mean the idea that we can capture some sensible part of the outside world in a microcosm, creating a direct relation - between the intensity of light coming from a given direction and the density of a certain chemical on a piece of paper - between the intensity of sound at an instant and the depth of a cut in a wax cylinder - between the volume of one sound and the frequency of another - between the deflection of a control stick and the voltage in a circuit - that we can reverse those processes, turning chemical imprints into light, indentations into sound, voltage into motion - or mix things up, and turn one phenomenon into a completely different one (like sound into light for a motion picture film) and still bring it back at the end of the day. And all of these processes proceed with a kind of elegance of nature, almost unsupervised. A live analog television broadcast can go from being light on a set, to voltage, to radio, back to voltage, to light in your home, literally at the speed of light, without the mediation of microprocessors to encode, interleave, packetize, etc. etc. and there's something wonderfully magic about the fact that it truly worked.
The job of the inventor is to dream or, at least, imagine of the future, or one possible future. Thinking of James Burke's 'Connections' TV series really inspired me as a child, My top three inventions are (in no particular order):- The invention of vaccination by Edward Jenner, The invention of the semiconductor transistor (By lots of people, and the horrible William Shockley ) The Haber process of extracting Nitrogen from air (Helping to feed the world, enabled cheap explosives, by the man who invented the first poison gas during WW1)
Please please please make some videos on the engineering or mechanics of cameras. Love your voice and presentation style and it would be awesome to watch you present camera stuff.
So I just watched the videos on the Linotype machine and it's pretty amazing how it all works, especially the casting of the type, that bit is really top level problem solving. Then the video introduced the teletype setter hooked up to the linotype. Now that idea should be number 1 on your list - being able to store information offline for later use. I'm guessing the cast type is recycled for future prints, but a reel of tape could be stored for future printing again. Also I might now be imagining a UNIX machine hooked up to one as its terminal...
The teletype and paper tape at the end really are the icing on the cake, that makes it one of my favourite videos ever. I'd like to print some text... OK, here's a machine that reads in punched tape and, in a purely mechanical fashion, turns it into injection-moulded lead alloy type.
The linotype is pretty cool. Never thought about my favorite inventions. I have thought the "best" inventions of all time, a little bit. I'll define best as (difficulty to conceive of)*(difficulty to create)*(usefulness for species)*(years in active usage) 2. the loom 1. the screw More obvious ones like fire, language, and the printing press, lose out because they're easier, even though highly useful. It's obvious to form a system of communicating ideas once you reach the ability to do it. Once you have written language, it's obvious to mechanize it. And fire was surely stumbled upon, not thought about through first principles. But the screw, man, that is pure genius to me. It seems like I never would have conceived of that shape, let alone the endless usefulness of it. And not only is a loom a very amazing machine, the concept and processes of automating intertwining threads to make cloth, is definitely next level thinking. As for my favorite invention, what first comes to mind is the hand plane. Not only because the simple elegance of the design, but how it build the modern home interior for thousands of years, and it's just magical to sharpen a hand-powered device be able to take wispy shavings that hold together and are thinner than 1/1000th of an inch, off a piece of a wood, and make a board visually perfectly flat. The saw and chisel is probably more useful, but it's kind of boring and obvious. Anyway, you should do more of these. I love this kind of stuff. Once you get more comfortable, I think they would be popular.
re: your comment on the term "engineer", it's largely due to the etymology of the word. The original Latin ingeniare, meant inventor or designer. (It's also the root of the word ingenious. And the French term for engineer is still ingénieur, which I personally like as it seems closer to that root). In middle English it became "ingineer" and was used to describe folks who designed fortifications and weapons, i.e. "war-engines" and military engines. It expanded in reference to public works (bridges, aquaducts, canals) in the1600s hence "civil engineer". With the industrial revolution, the term was again expanded to cover all of the areas designing and using machines and equipment, especially steam or water powered "engines" (stationary engineers and railroad engineers). In the modern era its been diluted further by terms like software or network engineer etc to mean an expert in a particular IT area rather than someone actually practicing engineering. The term Professional Engineer is regulated in most(?) jurisdictions and can only be applied to those who have a licence to practice engineering. At least in Canada, The “practice of engineering” means any act of planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising, or managing any of the foregoing, that requires the application of engineering principles, and that concerns the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment.
I'm going on a rabbit hole of recommendations now. Also can't wait for the F3 video. I have an F4 and it's incredible how much of the feature set of that camera has been standardised across modern cameras.
Excellent take, I agree on almost all points, also its funny that there is a saying - don't invent a bicycle - yet we need better bicycles, for example recumbent ones, it is an example how regulations stifle innovation.
I really like the ideas you share in the beginning. About being ready. I would call it invention as kung-fu. You practice it every day, until you you reach zen.
Wonderful video. Just as an aside, you mentioned in the blog post that you struggled to keep the time down as you could talk about these things for hours. I for one would be very happy to hear you talk at brutal, completely impolite-in-normal-circumstances length about these things. Even if you 'released' that kind of thing as an unlisted video or even an mp3 to get from your site I'd be interested in it. There are many wonderful voices talking about interesting things on youtube and podcasts and all that, but it's hard to beat informal waffling from the highly enthusiastic. Also, an interesting if slightly sad story: An old neighbor of ours had what I am reasonably sure was the very Nikon SP you mention in the blog, along with a wealth of amazing old tech he'd collected from many years of being stationed abroad as a soldier and amateur photographer. When he passed away, there was a massive auction of a lot of his stuff which made the local papers here. As far as we can tell, his other family members had no idea of the value of some of the stuff, and they may have been a bit cheated out of some money by the auction house - which would later be closed after an investigation into similar dodgy dealings. I like to hope that despite the situation, someone still uses and loves these old cameras to this day.
I was literally thinking about horse powered bicycle/quadcycles yesterday and whether they would be more efficient than just just trotting around. The driver could be in control of the brakes, gearing and steering, just not the , uh, horsepower.
Awh, I wish the promotional film with Frank Whittle (sp?) appears was linked in the description here. I'm sure I could find it, but UA-cam search has gotten almost as bad as Google search now... Edit: is it the GE one from 1952? That seems to be the only one I can find that's actually from that time, rather than a more-modern production.
...and the Linotype de facto used 7-bit encoding for the matrix magazines. A row of matrices after the casting process was elevated and moved to the distribution mechanism where little notches on the sides of a big triangular notch engaged with the cutouts on the distribution rail, making the matrix fall into its distinctive channel, to be reused in next lines. It's a first-in-first-out magazine that ensures even wear of the matrices - no "favorites". Damn nice museum that is! I worked for five years at the Book Art Museum in Lodz, Poland... and probably made the world's first Monotype composition caster control device that uses an embedded system (in this case, Raspberry Pi) rather than a PC connected via a wired interface.
There where at least two operating Linotypes in the late 90's and 2000's in the province here. One in a museum that is now unfortunately closed (the graphic museum of Groningen, which was also housed in a beautiful example of the Amsterdamse School style). The other one was (or is) in a printing house where I did an internship in something like 2001. There were only two people there who could work that thing.
It's not about the creation; an engineer *analyzes* things. An engineer looks at an object and asks: what is this meant to do? Will it do that reliably? What are the margins of safety? Which part will fail first? If we ask it to do more, which parts need to be beefed up? What tradeoffs exist between different aspects or capabilities of the thing? Can we make it better/stronger/faster/cheaper with new materials or techniques? Et cetera, on and on. A technician should be able to competently follow instructions to build something, or competently follow a troubleshooting procedure, but it's not required that they *understand* at a deeper level. The engineering mindset makes a successful invention more likely, but I think that every now and then, pure creativity does come up with something so obviously good and new that the inventor really can sell the idea and then go "okay, now we figure out how to make this work".
For me, I feel like the integrated circuit may be the best invention. It could just be my bias towards computers and programming, but it has simultaneously brought us some of the best things and some of the worst. However, I definitely prefer to think of the good things, like video games and robots and having the entire world of information at your fingertips. Although, I would really like to build my own jet engine, so we'll see.
Somehow this video didn't get proper notifications. I didn't see it, and from the ratio of subscribers to viewers here, it seems a lot of other people also did not.
Your style of talking reminds that of Ted Nelson, who invented Xanadu. But somehow a simpler invention of HTML over HTTP turned out to be more impactful
I love thoughts like this. Helps to prevent us from falling into the trap of finding one categorisation for something and being lazy such as to think it is the only category that is "correct." I'd love to think of myself as an inventor as much as I consider myself an (software) engineer!
Very cool choices. Cameras are a very interesting technology as is the Linotypes sound very cool and thanks to watching the new musical marble machine being designed I have some ideas on how the Linotypes might function. I hope it's not rude of me to say but I like your look and style.
@@groowy Yeah, but my love of A/C has deep roots. I’m a ginger bloke living in Charlotte, NC. It’s as vital to my existence as water. The humidity here is absurd.
I always find difficult to see were the invention or the discovery is the thing that makes me like a specific object. But microphones are just the best combination. Sound is just wobbly air? How do we store that? And then boom, from the most mechanical original version of membrane to the piezoelectric funny material for the electronic systems. Just a wonderful neat idea. Bicycles rule way too much tho.
I should visit the Science Museum again before it's ruined further. I'm only been twice, 20 years ago, but I live on the other side of the world, so it's not a small trip.
When you asked about greatest inventions, my first thought was Singer type sewing machine. But of course all the other ones are valid as well. Random book recommendation: The Inventions of Deadalus - A Compendium of Plausible Schemes. It's a humorous book which presents inventions that couldn't possibly work, and it's left as an exercise to the reader to figure out where they went wrong.
As an electrician, I feel useless; Anybody could do my work and if you boil it down you only need generators and motors. Fuck transistors and 4k rectangle light bulbs.
Typesetting: Linotype (link for the lazy or who don't want to seek through to find the title of the docu you mentioned) ua-cam.com/video/nC-kKtWmujg/v-deo.html
This sounds like you took a rhetoric class and got a homework assignment to make a video where you argue why 3 random words are the greatest inventions of all time. And you had to bs your way to make it sound as convincing as possible.
When i worked at "Ruhr Nachrichten" in Dortmund, Germany in 2001, i saw one of those Linotype machines in person. It was not connected anymore but more of a museum piece installed in a random hallway somewhere in the back of the building. It is really a beast of a machine. The middle of the building was bombed in WW2 and was hurriedly rebuilt. This resulted in a lot of strange hallways, random steps and rooms with crooked walls. A lot of space was stuffed with old 'junk'. The electrical cabling was a nightmare. When we searched for a problem on the network, we found out that one rack had over 50V AC on the ground plane. touching the rack could actually have been dangerous. Fun times :-)
First we learned to set type with a typesetting box, and then on the typesetting machine, the Linotype machine. That was indeed one of the most beautiful developments in history.
Certainly a favorite invention indeed!!
Regarding museums and machine exhibits, for me _nothing_ compares to the joy and wonder of stationary steam museums. There are a few around Nottingham (Papplewick and Nottingham Industrial Museum are the two I've been to most) as well as elsewhere, and there is honestly no better feeling than sitting in a building with an enormous steam machine running above, below, and around you. Tons upon tons of iron moving with an eerie quietness while the floor thrums with its power, truly wonderful.
There is a stationary steam engine in the Central Textile Museum in Lodz, Poland - but it's not operational :(
Having an exhibit is one thing, but seeing technology come to life... now that's fascinating!
I'll visit both next time I'm up north.
I thoroughly recommend Crossness Pumping Station, and even more ridiculous, the Museum of Water and Steam at Kew. They have a 250-ton beam engine with a 90 inch bore described by Charles Dickens as "a monster" - and then next door to it, there's an even bigger beam engine with a 100 inch bore. Also, across the road from it is the Musical Museum, which is filled with player pianos and orchestrions and is also excellent.
As much as I love creating, and as much as my parents always supported me to be "an inventor" growing up, the one thing I wish I was told was how much effort goes into everyday objects.
Like, listen kid, be creative, but just know that it takes a lot of hard work and you'll either need to work for a very very long time or get people to help you. Which it great! Collaboration is great! Make things with people. Everything you see around you was a team effort.
Back in the 90s I learned to type on an electromechanical wonder called the _IBM Selectric III_ and even without understanding any of the technological witchcraft and wiffletree wizardry going on inside it was love at first sight.
Thirty years later I managed to collect four of them and I'm still baffled by the ingenuity and engineering that made this iconic typewriter what it was in its day.
I feel you.
Yes!! One of my own favorite inventions, the APL language, was close-knit with the Selectric! The "APL demonstration 1975" of the language being typed interactively on paper using a Selectric that types the responses back is a marvel! Such a marriage between two well thought out systems that presents such an approachable machine to work with.
bro you got to be lying with that profile picture
The lathe has to be my favorite, I found it poetic how it all cascades down. Not revolutionary, but incrementally.
As much as i enjoy mechanical contraptions (is a mechanical engineer), but in my opinion the two most important inventions are accurate timekeeping and the fast fourier transform
great video! as someone who recently got into film photography, i would love to see a full breakdown video of the camera!
Just came across this channel. I don't know how to explain it, but I just really love the vibe. Just a dude inventing things. Really hits different than the attention focused world. Just chill. Straightforward.
My favourite exhibit - sadly, long ago removed - in London's Science Museum was the Marx Impulse Generator. It stood in the corner of what is now the Space Travel gallery, but back then it was dedicated to Electric Power. The generator worked by charging a column of capacitors in parallel, then discharging in series once a critical voltage had been reached. Twice a day, a chap would come down and power it up - a couple of massive, loud million volt sparks. Brilliant stuff. ♥
In the 1970's in the USA I was required to take a Print Shop class that included manually setting lead type and wetting toxic ink for printing. The presses were from the 1930's. We had to return the letters to the type drawer, and a Dickensian-type teacher (Mr. Jaffey) would come around and examine our drawers after each lesson. Woe to the student whose drawer was mis-arranged!
I love the way that Tim Hunkin keeps cropping up in one way or another, in the vids by my favourite UA-camrs 😁
If it wasn't for the invention of the camera, there would be no video of you telling us about inventions.
Someone did patent the equivalent of a bicycle for horses. It was a four-wheeled platform, with attachments to the horse's feet, and was claimed to be able to let a horse gallop at more than 70 mph.
The name, 'Linotype' comes from 'line of type'. Printing has really transformed over the past century. One very useful tool is called MEPS, 'Multilingual Electronic Phototypesetting System', which justifies and formats type in any font on pages and around images and tables, and it can be used to create documents in any written language. It enables the publishing of printed and online material in hundreds of languages simultaneously. One website using it contains pages and literature in over 1,000 languages so far.
i have only now just learnt about Linotype machines and they are already one of my favourite machines i've ever seen
Your audio is soooooo good!!! It’s so soothing to listen to
Holy shit horse on a bicycle I’ve never thought about that, my mind is blown. We could call it the horsycle
In for the solo-tandem horse bicycle. Notifications are on and I’ve never been more excited. 🤩
I'm very much with you on cameras! They've been such fascinating devices; the way they work, how many types of technology and science are involved, how they continued to improve and progress.
And having recently found and repaired a Minolta XG-1(n) from 1982, I finally experienced the joys of using something so mechanically complex. I love the array of sounds it makes during use. It's so satisfying!
only the best kind of people understand and love the incredible innovation behind cameras, and the mechanical beauty of film cameras. Have a look at the leica R6, it was fully automatic and used only battery for the light meter, there are some explosive diagrams that are super interesting.
Your videos are like a journey through the genius|madness mind. Absolutely fascinating and I love every moment!
great video as always, my favorite invention is "the limitless, modular toy", lego
Midway through watching this I just had the thought "I hope he's watched Secret Life of Machine's or seen Tim Hunkin's exhibits" and then you mentioned it :) When we encounter dust in the house my wife or I will do a little squeal and say "dust!" referencing the vacuum cleaner episode :) Anyway thanks for the great content and keen making whatever things your interests take you to.
1:03 Yes, there is still room for an individual to make a new great invention. As a wise guy once said, "Man went to the moon before he figured out how to put wheels on suitcases."
1:28 I'd like to nominate the quartz crystal oscillator as a great invention. Before that (in the 1920's), the world's most accurate clock still used a pendulum. Quartz oscillators are now built into every radio, every computer, and just about anything that has digital electronics.
I am also impressed with Graph Paper. No one drew a chart with X and Y values until sometime after Rene Descartes. Mathematicians studied polynomial functions for more than a thousand years before anybody plotted one on graph paper. People sometimes refer to an invention as "before its time", but graphs arrived really late. I don't see why they were not invented a thousand years earlier.
Here's a thought, related to the camera: the "analog principle" as an invention. Sure, everything is digital now, and analog is considered dumb, inefficient, and lots of other things. But analog was a huge leap over the *nothing at all* that came before it. By the analog principle I mean the idea that we can capture some sensible part of the outside world in a microcosm, creating a direct relation - between the intensity of light coming from a given direction and the density of a certain chemical on a piece of paper - between the intensity of sound at an instant and the depth of a cut in a wax cylinder - between the volume of one sound and the frequency of another - between the deflection of a control stick and the voltage in a circuit - that we can reverse those processes, turning chemical imprints into light, indentations into sound, voltage into motion - or mix things up, and turn one phenomenon into a completely different one (like sound into light for a motion picture film) and still bring it back at the end of the day. And all of these processes proceed with a kind of elegance of nature, almost unsupervised. A live analog television broadcast can go from being light on a set, to voltage, to radio, back to voltage, to light in your home, literally at the speed of light, without the mediation of microprocessors to encode, interleave, packetize, etc. etc. and there's something wonderfully magic about the fact that it truly worked.
The job of the inventor is to dream or, at least, imagine of the future, or one possible future.
Thinking of James Burke's 'Connections' TV series really inspired me as a child,
My top three inventions are (in no particular order):-
The invention of vaccination by Edward Jenner,
The invention of the semiconductor transistor (By lots of people, and the horrible William Shockley )
The Haber process of extracting Nitrogen from air
(Helping to feed the world, enabled cheap explosives, by the man who invented the first poison gas during WW1)
Please please please make some videos on the engineering or mechanics of cameras. Love your voice and presentation style and it would be awesome to watch you present camera stuff.
Your gestures are soothing. Lookin good mate
So I just watched the videos on the Linotype machine and it's pretty amazing how it all works, especially the casting of the type, that bit is really top level problem solving. Then the video introduced the teletype setter hooked up to the linotype. Now that idea should be number 1 on your list - being able to store information offline for later use. I'm guessing the cast type is recycled for future prints, but a reel of tape could be stored for future printing again.
Also I might now be imagining a UNIX machine hooked up to one as its terminal...
The teletype and paper tape at the end really are the icing on the cake, that makes it one of my favourite videos ever.
I'd like to print some text... OK, here's a machine that reads in punched tape and, in a purely mechanical fashion, turns it into injection-moulded lead alloy type.
every time this guy uploads is like a holiday
My favorites: 1. The battery 2. Satellites 3. Fridges
Coffee machines, audio amplifiers, compilers.
My favorites, not saying they're the most important.
The linotype is pretty cool. Never thought about my favorite inventions. I have thought the "best" inventions of all time, a little bit. I'll define best as (difficulty to conceive of)*(difficulty to create)*(usefulness for species)*(years in active usage)
2. the loom
1. the screw
More obvious ones like fire, language, and the printing press, lose out because they're easier, even though highly useful. It's obvious to form a system of communicating ideas once you reach the ability to do it. Once you have written language, it's obvious to mechanize it. And fire was surely stumbled upon, not thought about through first principles.
But the screw, man, that is pure genius to me. It seems like I never would have conceived of that shape, let alone the endless usefulness of it. And not only is a loom a very amazing machine, the concept and processes of automating intertwining threads to make cloth, is definitely next level thinking.
As for my favorite invention, what first comes to mind is the hand plane. Not only because the simple elegance of the design, but how it build the modern home interior for thousands of years, and it's just magical to sharpen a hand-powered device be able to take wispy shavings that hold together and are thinner than 1/1000th of an inch, off a piece of a wood, and make a board visually perfectly flat. The saw and chisel is probably more useful, but it's kind of boring and obvious.
Anyway, you should do more of these. I love this kind of stuff. Once you get more comfortable, I think they would be popular.
The bimetallic strip.
The world is built on bimetallic strips
I just discovered your channel. You are such an amazing storyteller, it truly blows my mind.
If I were to make a list purely about the greatest electronic inventions:
1. Transistor
2. LED
3. Photovoltaic cell
Very enjoyable video. Thank you!
I think my favourite invention was/is the ability to construct accurate right angles
I've just realised that your profile image is the basically a brown M&M... that must be intentional!
Lovely video. A video about why you like the Nikon F3 so much sure sounds interesting, looking forward!
I think we need to crowdfund a linotype machine for mitxela
re: your comment on the term "engineer", it's largely due to the etymology of the word. The original Latin ingeniare, meant inventor or designer. (It's also the root of the word ingenious. And the French term for engineer is still ingénieur, which I personally like as it seems closer to that root). In middle English it became "ingineer" and was used to describe folks who designed fortifications and weapons, i.e. "war-engines" and military engines. It expanded in reference to public works (bridges, aquaducts, canals) in the1600s hence "civil engineer". With the industrial revolution, the term was again expanded to cover all of the areas designing and using machines and equipment, especially steam or water powered "engines" (stationary engineers and railroad engineers). In the modern era its been diluted further by terms like software or network engineer etc to mean an expert in a particular IT area rather than someone actually practicing engineering. The term Professional Engineer is regulated in most(?) jurisdictions and can only be applied to those who have a licence to practice engineering. At least in Canada, The “practice of engineering” means any act of planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising, or managing any of the foregoing, that requires the application of engineering principles, and that concerns the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment.
My favorite great invention is the mechanical hard disk, they way it works is just simply witchcraft
I'm going on a rabbit hole of recommendations now. Also can't wait for the F3 video. I have an F4 and it's incredible how much of the feature set of that camera has been standardised across modern cameras.
Excellent take, I agree on almost all points, also its funny that there is a saying - don't invent a bicycle - yet we need better bicycles, for example recumbent ones, it is an example how regulations stifle innovation.
what's on the wall behind you? really interesting
5:45 It's giving Wintergatan vibes
Inventor that is. I like the way you cover your inventions. I must try the format of narration of making.
I really like the ideas you share in the beginning. About being ready. I would call it invention as kung-fu. You practice it every day, until you you reach zen.
Nice video! A few book recommendations: The Gutenberg Galaxy, Most Secret War (WW2 radar), Soul of a New Machine, The Dream Machine
Wonderful video. Just as an aside, you mentioned in the blog post that you struggled to keep the time down as you could talk about these things for hours. I for one would be very happy to hear you talk at brutal, completely impolite-in-normal-circumstances length about these things. Even if you 'released' that kind of thing as an unlisted video or even an mp3 to get from your site I'd be interested in it. There are many wonderful voices talking about interesting things on youtube and podcasts and all that, but it's hard to beat informal waffling from the highly enthusiastic.
Also, an interesting if slightly sad story: An old neighbor of ours had what I am reasonably sure was the very Nikon SP you mention in the blog, along with a wealth of amazing old tech he'd collected from many years of being stationed abroad as a soldier and amateur photographer. When he passed away, there was a massive auction of a lot of his stuff which made the local papers here. As far as we can tell, his other family members had no idea of the value of some of the stuff, and they may have been a bit cheated out of some money by the auction house - which would later be closed after an investigation into similar dodgy dealings.
I like to hope that despite the situation, someone still uses and loves these old cameras to this day.
I was literally thinking about horse powered bicycle/quadcycles yesterday and whether they would be more efficient than just just trotting around. The driver could be in control of the brakes, gearing and steering, just not the , uh, horsepower.
Steve Gibson came up with SQRL auth, which is really great, and is in great majority designed by him
SQRL is awesome
Awh, I wish the promotional film with Frank Whittle (sp?) appears was linked in the description here. I'm sure I could find it, but UA-cam search has gotten almost as bad as Google search now...
Edit: is it the GE one from 1952? That seems to be the only one I can find that's actually from that time, rather than a more-modern production.
Great vid alex, hoping to see more of your thoughts and inventions this year!
...and the Linotype de facto used 7-bit encoding for the matrix magazines. A row of matrices after the casting process was elevated and moved to the distribution mechanism where little notches on the sides of a big triangular notch engaged with the cutouts on the distribution rail, making the matrix fall into its distinctive channel, to be reused in next lines. It's a first-in-first-out magazine that ensures even wear of the matrices - no "favorites".
Damn nice museum that is!
I worked for five years at the Book Art Museum in Lodz, Poland... and probably made the world's first Monotype composition caster control device that uses an embedded system (in this case, Raspberry Pi) rather than a PC connected via a wired interface.
There where at least two operating Linotypes in the late 90's and 2000's in the province here. One in a museum that is now unfortunately closed (the graphic museum of Groningen, which was also housed in a beautiful example of the Amsterdamse School style). The other one was (or is) in a printing house where I did an internship in something like 2001. There were only two people there who could work that thing.
It's not about the creation; an engineer *analyzes* things. An engineer looks at an object and asks: what is this meant to do? Will it do that reliably? What are the margins of safety? Which part will fail first? If we ask it to do more, which parts need to be beefed up? What tradeoffs exist between different aspects or capabilities of the thing? Can we make it better/stronger/faster/cheaper with new materials or techniques? Et cetera, on and on.
A technician should be able to competently follow instructions to build something, or competently follow a troubleshooting procedure, but it's not required that they *understand* at a deeper level.
The engineering mindset makes a successful invention more likely, but I think that every now and then, pure creativity does come up with something so obviously good and new that the inventor really can sell the idea and then go "okay, now we figure out how to make this work".
For me, I feel like the integrated circuit may be the best invention. It could just be my bias towards computers and programming, but it has simultaneously brought us some of the best things and some of the worst. However, I definitely prefer to think of the good things, like video games and robots and having the entire world of information at your fingertips. Although, I would really like to build my own jet engine, so we'll see.
Somehow this video didn't get proper notifications. I didn't see it, and from the ratio of subscribers to viewers here, it seems a lot of other people also did not.
Love this ! you rock mitxela!
Your style of talking reminds that of Ted Nelson, who invented Xanadu.
But somehow a simpler invention of HTML over HTTP turned out to be more impactful
For me it's brick. Some guy found out burning dirt makes it hard and we've been burning dirt ever since
Awesome 😎 where can I buy your 3D print files ?
I think the train deserves a place as well.
If you want to know more about lathe history and related topics, I recommend the Machine Thinking UA-cam channel.
I love thoughts like this. Helps to prevent us from falling into the trap of finding one categorisation for something and being lazy such as to think it is the only category that is "correct." I'd love to think of myself as an inventor as much as I consider myself an (software) engineer!
I've seen the linotype doc, and its awesome. Need to check the sewing machine one as well. Thanks for the recommendations!
I've seen a working Linotype in the "Spielkartenfabrik" in Stralsund, Germany. It was pretty cool.
Very cool choices. Cameras are a very interesting technology as is the Linotypes sound very cool and thanks to watching the new musical marble machine being designed I have some ideas on how the Linotypes might function.
I hope it's not rude of me to say but I like your look and style.
Air conditioning. Or more generally, the thermodynamics involved in refrigeration.
Technology Connections fan? 😄
@@groowy Yeah, but my love of A/C has deep roots. I’m a ginger bloke living in Charlotte, NC. It’s as vital to my existence as water. The humidity here is absurd.
i think my list of top inventiosn would have to include like. every loom? and also sewing machines
Nikon F3 owner here, yeah it’s a dope camera
One weird question what hold you back to have profile pic & banner, it bothers me a little you an big enough youtuber doesnt have a pic in it
that museum reminds me of the volvo museum in göteborg here in sweden. i bet you'd like that.
I think my favourite is still "Ракета Семёрка"
Great video yet again! Thank you m :)
amazed you dont have a scanner camera video yet!
I always find difficult to see were the invention or the discovery is the thing that makes me like a specific object.
But microphones are just the best combination. Sound is just wobbly air? How do we store that? And then boom, from the most mechanical original version of membrane to the piezoelectric funny material for the electronic systems. Just a wonderful neat idea.
Bicycles rule way too much tho.
Love this!
Love your content!
I should visit the Science Museum again before it's ruined further. I'm only been twice, 20 years ago, but I live on the other side of the world, so it's not a small trip.
Wonderful video! Soo many to choose from!
Do you have a degree or are you completely self taught?
Man, linotypes sound awesome
When you asked about greatest inventions, my first thought was Singer type sewing machine. But of course all the other ones are valid as well.
Random book recommendation: The Inventions of Deadalus - A Compendium of Plausible Schemes. It's a humorous book which presents inventions that couldn't possibly work, and it's left as an exercise to the reader to figure out where they went wrong.
Love this format!
Loved it
tom scott vibes in this one
great vid
fuuuuuuuck i love your voice
As an electrician, I feel useless; Anybody could do my work and if you boil it down you only need generators and motors. Fuck transistors and 4k rectangle light bulbs.
True mix-tella fashion.
Great video and interesting opinion :)
the referenced docs: ua-cam.com/video/nC-kKtWmujg/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/1MGjFKs9bnU/v-deo.html
I've uploaded an HD upscale of the full "Typesetting: Linotype" documentary here: ua-cam.com/video/LPt4xnJLqGc/v-deo.html
Typesetting: Linotype (link for the lazy or who don't want to seek through to find the title of the docu you mentioned)
ua-cam.com/video/nC-kKtWmujg/v-deo.html
Why does that "person" have such a small adams apple? It's like a pimple. Methinks there is something afoot.
I think one of the greatest inventions of all time is a shelve. Just imagine a world without shelves.
a bicycle is NOT cheap... it is inexpensive... affordable... etc... vs ect...
Semiconductor
This sounds like you took a rhetoric class and got a homework assignment to make a video where you argue why 3 random words are the greatest inventions of all time. And you had to bs your way to make it sound as convincing as possible.