tool design

Tantacrul walks through how the MuseScore 4 team was built and how design decisions were made for the overhaul of a huge legacy notation app. It covers playback and engraving quality improvements.

A feature-length Defunctland documentary on the history of Disney's FastPass and FastPass+ expedited queue systems. It covers how the systems evolved and how they were designed, with simulation of their effects on park lines.

Kirsten Dirksen visits architect Gary Chang's 32 square meter Hong Kong apartment, which he has redesigned over decades. Sliding walls and transformable furniture turn it into 24 different room configurations.

Destin Sandlin tours a progressive metal stamping factory, showing machines that stamp millions of metal parts and the tooling behind them.

Short BBC Earth clip from Life of Mammals in which David Attenborough shows orangutans imitating human behaviors like washing clothes with soap and using tools.

A condensed film of Dick Proenneke's footage of building a cabin and living alone in the Alaskan wilderness, using hand tools and local materials. It draws on the 8mm films he shot himself.

Machine Thinking argues the 1751 machine, a metal-cutting lathe associated with Vaucanson, triggered the biggest explosion of wealth in history by enabling precise manufacturing of other machines.

Tom Scott visits Onkalo in Finland, the planned deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste intended to be sealed for 100,000 years.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

A Gaming Historian documentary on the creation of Super Mario Bros. 3, the hype around its release and why it is regarded as one of the greatest games. It runs about 50 minutes in three parts.

A tour of Christian Schallert's 24 square meter apartment in Barcelona, designed so that it looks like an empty cube until he builds the furniture he needs. Kirsten Dirksen shows how the space is transformed for cooking, sleeping and dressing.

A short BBC clip narrated by David Attenborough showing crows in Japan using city traffic to crack nuts, dropping them at intersections and retrieving them when the light changes.

A 1982 Bell Labs film hosted by Victor Vyssotsky on the origins and design philosophy of the UNIX operating system, with appearances by Kernighan, Thompson and Ritchie. It shows pipes, filters and a shell one-liner spell checker being built.

A documentary on how GraphQL came to be at Facebook, featuring its co-creators Lee Byron, Dan Schafer and Nick Schrock. It covers the problems it solved and its adoption at companies like Twitter, Airbnb and GitHub.

Kirsten Dirksen tours the underground ferro-cement dome home of Paula and Bill Lishman, the family behind the geese-led flight story. The skylit earth-sheltered house stays warm below the frost line.

A Noclip Greatest Hits documentary on the legacy of RollerCoaster Tycoon, covering its original design, Chris Sawyer and the OpenRCT2 community that keeps it alive.

Episode 7 of the Inside Koenigsegg series, where Christian von Koenigsegg demonstrates the camless Free Valve engine technology. It discusses how such innovation could affect the wider auto industry.

The first episode of Adam Curtis's 1992 BBC series Pandora's Box, on the engineers' plot, examining communism in the Soviet Union and the rise and limits of technocratic central planning.

Machine Thinking traces where mechanical precision comes from, from flat surface plates and the three-plate method up through lathes and early measuring tools. It is the first in a series on recreating the first micrometer.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tries to manufacture a grill scrubber entirely in the United States. Along the way he runs into missing supply chains, tooling and institutional manufacturing knowledge.

The first episode of Clickspring's series on reproducing the Antikythera Mechanism by hand, laying out the plan and the history. The series follows a machinist building the ancient Greek device with traditional tools and methods.

A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.

A 105-minute film of a West African smith family in Burkina Faso smelting iron from ore, from making charcoal and building the kiln to forging tools. It is a cultural recreation filmed for the camera, not current practice.

A short vintage film clip of Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on using computers to spark children's imagination and learning.

A 1957 Walt Disney film in which he explains and demonstrates the multiplane camera, the animation tool that gave 2D films depth. It is a short behind-the-scenes piece from Disney's archives.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

A short Great Big Story piece about Hagoromo, a Japanese chalk brand so prized that mathematicians stockpiled it, with some reportedly dealing it on the side. It tells the quirky tale of a writing tool whose supply became scarce.

The 1966 film Walt Disney recorded weeks before his death, laying out his plans for the Florida Project and especially EPCOT, a planned city of the future. It uses models, concept art and animation to describe the circular city, monorails and people movers.

Footage of a crash test of a Boeing 727 deliberately crashed in the Mexican desert, shown from multiple angles inside and outside. It is taken from a Channel 4 documentary.

A New York Times Op-Doc by Laura Poitras profiling William Binney, a 32-year NSA veteran who helped design a secret program he says collects Americans' personal data.