Product Details
Make Your Own Contraptions: Design and Build 50 Marvellous Machines

Make Your Own Contraptions: Design and Build 50 Marvellous Machines
By Eric Chaline

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Product Description

Named after the cartoonist famed for his drawings of convoluted contraptions, 'Rube Goldberg' has become shorthand for all manner of fiendishly complicated devices that are designed to perform extremely simple tasks.Discover the history, theory and science behind these extraordinary contraptions and then put it all together to create your own marvellous machines.Each of the 50 projects consists of: a large scale-diagram, a shopping list of items needed, planning tips, detailed step-by-step instructions and problem solving strategies ensuring each outrageous apparatus is easy to construct, no matter how complicated it looks.From cartoons to car adverts, these elaborate contrivances have remained hugely popular for over 50 years; now for the first time you can discover how to create such monumentally maze-like contraptions.


Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #34483 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-11-28
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 128 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Robert Beattie is a multi-talented journalist, fisherman, musician and craftsman. His writing has appeared in The Observer, The Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday. He is the author of several books including 101 Things to do in a Shed and 101 Incredible Experiments. Robert lives in Brighton.


Customer Reviews

A book that will not deliver1
I bought this as I work in the field of Automata restoration. This book contains projects that are completely unrealistic and unworkable. There are some basic errors that convince me that many of these projects were never made or tested, they just look good on the page. The 50 projects are also variations on a theme and would be better described as 15 projects. A publishing exercise.

Awful.1
Brief opinion follows. I'm disinclined to spent much time on this review, except in an effort to warn prospective purchasers.

Very poor effort. Irrelevant/unrealistic applications. Solutions offered are neither clever nor particularly amusing.

Most definitely not recommended.