This is awesome. I love a lot of the maker stuff on YouTube these days. It’s content dense in the same way that secret life of machines and This Old House were.
As a kid this was one of my favourite programs ever, but I could never figure out when it was on and only ever seemed to catch bits of it here and there.
"The Secret Life Of Machines" was a very bright spot in my childhood. My mother recorded the episodes on VHS cassettes and I wore those things out playing them. I've been rewatching them as Tim posts them on YT and I'm delighted to find that they're as brilliant and hilarious now as they were 30 years ago.
Precisely the sequence I had in mind. I wowed a news.ycombinator commenter with this a couple of weeks ago in a thread about how spinning drives store data.
I was struck by this passage on Tim Hunkin's website:
"...making things had made me realise just how much clever human activity in the world can not be explained in words or suit the format of a book, let alone fit with the publishing fashion of the day."
I think this is one of the reasons why posters here have fond memories of this series - it's full of inventive ways to explain technology (with a dash of humour).
The Word Processor episode (1991) is excellent for anyone looking for something computer-related. It's broader than just looking at word processors but also explains how computers developed.
This is a nice description of Word Processing from the TV programme:
"It's an extraordinary elaborate way to write something with a separate keyboard, monitor, computer and printer. But the ease of trying sentences out and moving them about does give writing a whole new freedom."
I have been looking for a documentary I saw maybe 10 years ago. I think it was called the History of the VTR.
It focused on the VTR as part of broadcast television. And I vaguely remember a section talking about the kind of errors and how they would present themselves in the broadcast.
If anyone know about / remembers / knows where to find this documentary, I would be thankful!
It is really great stuff if you enjoy building things.