Talks to Watch

The Secret Life of Machines - Vacuum Cleaners 1/2

151K views · Feb 6, 2011 · 13:04 · 3 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2017–2020

Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends the series as an entertaining way to learn how everyday machines work, enough to start debugging them.

“These overviews give you just enough knowledge to start debugging a broken household machine.”HN comment, 2020

What Hacker News said 3

RecommendseuoiaJun 2017

“There is a great TV series called”

TV series on inventions that changed the world.

Full comment

There is a great TV series called "The Secret Life of Machines" that covered some inventions that changed the world: this video There is an episode on central heating: link

in “The far-reaching effects of air conditioning” · view on HN
RecommendseesmithNov 2017

“You might also be interested in”

Series explaining how household machines work.

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Thanks to both of you for the praise. You might also be interested in "The Secret Life of Machines". link and this video . Philip Morrison (from Ring of Truth) is perhaps best known for his powers-of-10 movie. link . He was also a columnist for Scientific American. The only column I remember is when he decided to make bread from scratch. Really from scratch. They grew wheat in a small plot of land near his home in Cambridge, Mass. He's part of the generation that developed the first atomic bomb. He carried the first core to the Trinity test site in the back seat of his car, and helped load the weapons on the planes that went to Japan.

in “America’s flat-Earth movement appears to be growing – Daily chart” · view on HN
Recommendsthrowaway829Apr 2020

“These overviews give you just enough knowledge to start debugging a broken household machine.”

Overviews of household machines enough to start debugging them.

Full comment

These overviews give you just enough knowledge to start debugging a broken household machine. I love it. If anyone's looking for more videos from this series here's a playlist of the complete series: this video

in “Connections Episode 1: The Trigger Effect (1978) [video]” · view on HN