The Secret Life of Machines
One of the best 1980s educational shows get a remastered version
As a child of the 1980s and pre-internet world, the access to information was limited to the local library and a couple of TV channels that did their best to provide good educational content and if looked back, they did an excellent job at it. I still remember hours spent using a large 12V battery connecting it to disassembled telephone receiver and marveling at noises it made. Compared to today’s world where no one can sift through a wast amount of information to get to truly informative content, the content creators of the time gave their best and none better than Tim Hunkin, an English engineer, and Rex Garrod, an inventor and pioneering roboteer.
In 1988 they created a TV series for Chanel 4, a British free-to-air public-service television network, named “The Secret Life of Machines”. It was created as an extension of Hunkin’s comic strip that was published for 14 years in the British newspaper the Observer. The comic strip was researched and drawn by Hunkin himself which he named The Rudiments of Wisdom. The comic book strips still exist in their new online version at The Rudiments of Wisdom Encyclopedia. The comic strips are characterized by a unique drawing style that Hunkin favored and are packed with information in shockingly small areas. That drawing style was also used in the TV show.
The only other TV show that is better from that era is Carl Sagans Cosmos that recently got a follow-up series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey in 2014 hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
In 2021 Hunkin started posting remastered versions on YouTube that are upscaled versions and are some of the best beginner content to get young brains churning with love for engineering.
