Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Clark Collection at Boston's Museum of Science

Clark Mechanical Movement ModelsClark Collection of Mechanical Movement Models is a set of working models designed by American engineer William M. Clark in the early 1900s.

Originally numbering over 200, these models were displayed as the Mechanical Wonderland in New York in 1928 and at the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago in 1933. Today, 120 of these mechanical models remain in working order and on display at the Museum in Boston.

Based in large measure on designs laid out in Henry T. Brown's 507 Mechanical Movements (1871), the Clark models include gear mechanisms, pulley systems, cutaways, and cross sections of a variety of machines. They illustrate methods of converting rotary to rectilinear motion and rectilinear to oscillating motion, as well as solutions to a variety of mechanical tasks. The models continue to be of interest to a range of Museum visitors, from young children to mechanical designers and tinkerers

Cornell University Library and Boston's Museum of Science are collaborating to integrate the entire Clark Collection into the Kinetic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL). For now a good sampling is available here.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the Blue stairwell at the Museum of Science and industry are some mechanisms that can be operated. I remember them from my youth in the 70's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMrkSzVqhQY

April 2, 2008 at 8:54 PM  

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