3 HN users recommended this documentary3 months2017–2020score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends the series as an entertaining way to learn how everyday machines work, enough to start debugging them.
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.
“These overviews give you just enough knowledge to start debugging a broken household machine.” (HN, 2020)
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]
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.
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]
Overviews of household machines enough to start debugging them.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Read more