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John Peralta Explodes Historic Technology into Three-Dimensional Diagrams (thisiscolossal.com)
104 points by surprisetalk 5 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 12 comments



If an article ever needed more, larger photographs it'd be this one.

On a related topic, I have a really cool book from the 1970s which contains beautiful cutaway drawings of high technology from the era (everything from telephones to Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors). Edit: How Things Work, Volumes I & II published by Paladdin. There's a borrowable copy of Vol II at the IA: https://archive.org/details/howthingsworkuni00vana/page/n595... (can't find if they have Vol I).


As a child I had the book "What makes it go?" which was full of illustrations of how machines work: https://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-Go-Joe-Kaufman/dp/06003926...


Anybody here have "The Way Things Work" or "The New Way Things Work"?

Haven't opened it in 20 years, but I don't think I've poured over a book the same way since.

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Things-Work-David-Macaulay/dp/039...

https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Things-Work/dp/0395938473


There's a blast from the past - I had that book too and absolutely loved it. I'm glad I grew up in an era when a child had some hope of thinking they could understand all the technology around them (even though with hindsight, I know that knowledge was extremely superficial).


How Things Work was published in the US by Simon & Schuster as The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology, which is on the IA:

vol 1: https://archive.org/details/waythingsworki00cvan

vol 2: https://archive.org/details/waythingsworki02cvan


Better photos on his website: http://www.johnperaltafineart.com/


these are amazing and beautiful. the singer sewing machine is particularly useful as I use a standing one as a modular synth workstation, but there is a full sewing machine inside it I've never used.


Mercedes World have a Formula 1 car exploded like this. It's fab.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyAWi1dh8Fs


What a great use case for a 3D representation


I'm kind of disappointed that it's only broken into major components.

They're still super cool, but to see every little spring and cog and switch represented by their own monofilament would be pretty neat.


Along those lines, this is a neat TV series with James May (of Top Gear fame):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May:_The_Reassembler


Has he ever worked on pagers by a chance




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