The Secret Life of Tim

March 4, 2021 7:13 AM

Enjoyed The Secret Life of Machines? Tim Hunkin is back with a new series, The Secret Life of Components – starting with a 47 minute episode on CHAIN (previously)
posted by adrianhon (11 comments total)

Oh awesome. I've enjoyed watching the Secret Life of Machines so definitely look forward to his new show. It's a bit sad to me that Rex Garrod can't be a part of it since he passed away in 2019.

I always enjoyed the human-sized/powered sewing machine to show how the two needles work to make stitches. And the two of them always built such interesting machines and devices.
posted by skynxnex at 7:29 AM on March 4, 2021 [6 favorites]

well, this is excellent news. thanks.
posted by theora55 at 9:38 AM on March 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

I miss Novelty Automation a lot and cannot WAIT to go back once things are safe and reopen. Tim Hunkin is a genius and experiencing his creations in the flesh is unbeatable. I must spend £20 every single visit, and we used to visit a LOT. (https://www.novelty-automation.com/ for those of you wondering).
posted by bookbook at 11:55 AM on March 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

And there's his wonderful clock outside the bird house at the London Zoo.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 2:40 PM on March 4, 2021

New to me and entirely charming, as well as informative. Thanks for posting!
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 4:05 PM on March 4, 2021

London was kinda low on my international travel priority list, but now I really want to visit one of Hunkin's arcades
posted by Popular Ethics at 5:08 PM on March 4, 2021

I occasionally used to skip school just to watch TSLoM back in the day. I didn’t open my browser expecting to watch a whole episode on chains but here I am 45 minutes later.
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:31 PM on March 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

Novelty Automation is a blast and I spent a fistful of pound coins back in the Before Times! The other Hunkin deep cut you should visit is The Secret Life of the Home gallery in the basement of the Science Museum in London, which is a delight and for which I will defend at all costs if and when they decide to replace it with some computer-powered bullshit.
posted by adrianhon at 2:13 AM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

I also unearthed his epic 1996 blog post on An Initiation into Museum Design, which shows he's just as good a writer as he is a presenter.
posted by adrianhon at 2:19 AM on March 5, 2021

Seems to me that the theme music of that new video is a lo fi slowed down version of the theme from TSLOM?

Anyway, learning about this is almost certain to be the high point of my Friday. Now, can we get a new James Burke series too? I'll even settle for Arthur Weasley / Mark Williams going on about steam engines, but only if he does the accents.
posted by hearthpig at 4:29 AM on March 5, 2021

Well, there's James Burke's Web of Knowledge on BBC Sounds, which I think is less geographically constrained than the iPlayer, but I could be wrong. I thought there was something really recent, but perhaps it was a repeat of that.

(I used to read Hunkin's cartoon strip every Sunday on the inside back page of the Observer magazine in the 1970s, where it was either replaced by or supplanted with John Glashan's Genius. A friend of mine went to Southwold on holiday every summer and his favourite thing in the town was the Hunkin exhibition, and I think he was generally well-disposed to the place anyway.)
posted by Grangousier at 5:14 AM on March 5, 2021 [1 favorite]