The Secret Life of Machines

Long ago, in the 1980s, my dad and I used to watch a show on PBS called "The Secret Life of Machines." It was actually a British show ported over to the States. Recently, I had a hankering to see if I could purchase a set of DVDs of the show. Lo and behold! I came across the Secret Life of Machines website!

The show is written and hosted by Tim Hunkin, who also supports other websites of his cartoons called The Rudiments of Wisdom, an encyclopaedia of various topics, presented in cartoon form, and a site with fun experiments you can do at home called Hunkin's Experiments.

Tim (pictured right) is actually a very nice man who answers random fan mail from silly Americans like me. I was delighted to get a response as his show really struck a chord with me in my younger years. If you go to the Secret Life of Machines website, they have a link where you can download ALL of the shows for free, and the quality is quite good, considering. I downloaded all of them, and since we have a digital cable converter in our server, then I could upload them and watch them on the TV, just as if it were being broadcast (but with no commercials of course). I never did get to see all of the originals, mostly the ones from the first season, so it is nice to be able to watch the rest. Also, rewatching the shows I remember, particularly the ones about the vacuum and the television, has been rewarding because I didn't remember a lot of the technical information, just the cute, and funny, cartoons.

If you are at all a fan of history, machines, or the history of machines, you should definitely watch this show. For me, they have given me an opportunity to learn how the various machines I use work, and that allows me to understand better what is really going on around me. As well, the humor in the shows makes them quite fun to watch and even older children would be entertained, even if some of the information may be beyond them.