Visualization

When I was in high school, I may have been the last generation to actually spend any time watching instructional films.  Not videos – productions shot on film.

Now, my beef is not with the medium on which the production was shot; video versus film is an aesthetic argument, and not one that I’m particularly involved in.

But along about time time video supplanted film, computer animation began to replace an older, more fascinating art – the building of explanatory models.

Explaining complex processes, equations, and mechanical concepts is difficult.  And in a way, I’ve found the plethora of computer-based animations used to do the explaining today are almost too accurate to do a job of explaining complex concepts.

Filling that gap, long before there were any computers, was the operating model.

An operating model took a complex concept, mechanism or process, simplified it, magnified the important stuff while omitting (or deferring) the minutia, and explained it.

And it’s kind of a lost art.

Which was why I loved this film – which explains the function of the auto differential, a bit of mechanical engineering that always amazes me…:

…and this one, which is as good an explanation of pretty much every firearm operating system in the business:

And I can watch them for hours.

7 thoughts on “Visualization

  1. Lego gears are fun to play with, and the kids enjoy fooling around with them, but I have yet to get them to make a primitive transmission or differential. Maybe have them watch the first video and then make Lego cars.

  2. When they put the crossbar on a hub that could turn, I got misty. But when they added more spokes, I cried like a schoolgirl.

    There, I said it.

  3. When I was in grade school we actually had to march down the hall to the “Audio Visual Room” to watch instructional videos.

    It was always the highlight of my day.

  4. Who invented the differential transmission?

    From Wiki
    There are many claims to the invention of the differential gear but it is possible that it was known, at least in some places, in ancient times.

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