507 Mechanical Movements: A Classic Reference Comes Alive with Animations
507movements.com is digitizing Henry T. Brown's 1868 classic, '507 Mechanical Movements,' offering animated GIFs of each mechanism alongside the original illustrations. Currently, only a portion are animated, identified by color thumbnails, with more added over time. The site serves as a valuable resource for engineers, designers, and enthusiasts, preserving historical mechanical knowledge in an accessible, interactive format.
Unfortunately we do not have all the animations working yet, but we do have quite a few.
- PufPufPuf
"507 Mechanical Movements" is a rare HTTP status code, usually only used when the request can't be fulfilled due to an earthquake
- emacdona
Many of these aren't animated... which gives me a great(?) idea for a new AI benchmark: "Animate the mechanical movement at this URL: ..."
Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"
- wowczarek
It's a great collection and exploring it is fun, but it misses on titles / names of the given linkage or movement. It makes sense when you are reading the book [0], but on a site like this where you see the individual item in isolation, a title or name would be helpful.
- WillAdams
One of my favourite sites! and an interesting example of that class of sites which are book made into sites with animations/interaction --- the another classic and notable example is:
https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...
Really wish that the folks doing the 507 Mechanical Movements would finish the balance of the animations.
Curious if folks are aware of other similar text/website combinations which are still extant (many others such as Bembo's Zoo are no longer available, and of course at one point in time, this sort of thing was the province of CD-ROMs such as Leonardo).
- stevep98
This guy has quite a lot of videos of various mechanisms if you’re into that sort of thing