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The Secret Life of Machines - Vacuum Cleaners 1/2

Buddy Runyan · 150.5K views · 2011-02-06 · 13:04

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN recommends the series as an entertaining way to learn how everyday machines work, enough to start debugging them.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2017–2020

Topics

Mechanical & precision engineeringHome, DIY & practical skillsEngineering & making (other)
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vacuum cleanershow machines worktim hunkinbritish tvengineering history

What people said

throwaway829 · 2020-04 · Recommendation

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: [VIDEO]

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eesmith · 2017-11 · Recommendation

Thanks to both of you for the praise. You might also be interested in "The Secret Life of Machines". [LINK] and [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.

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euoia · 2017-06 · Recommendation

There is a great TV series called "The Secret Life of Machines" that covered some inventions that changed the world: [VIDEO] There is an episode on central heating: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Buddy Runyan, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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