While every other blog in the world is posting about the new iPhone today, I thought I’d draw your attention to some old technology. Boing Boing noted recently that episodes of the British series The Secret Life of Machines are now available on Google Video. This fact significantly shaked my foundation this week. I watched this series a lot when in ran here in the States on PBS in the late 80’s. It was smart and wry and it made me want to tell stories too. Going back and just watching a few minutes of these, I can see why. Each episode looks at one invention, usually one we take for granted, and explores why and how that invention was developed. There’s a moment in the episode on Washing Machines where host Tim Hunkin and his brute of an assistant Rex Garrod take out the concrete block that’s in all washing machines that keeps them rattling all over the place. Then they start the machine and it jiggles and walks. No really, the thing bounces back and forth on its four little feet and bounces around so much it walks.

And then there are the cartoons used to animate the historical parts of each story. They’re a lot like the reports Robert Krulwich was doing using Odd Todd’s animations for ABC a couple years ago. Except you know—better. The production of the whole thing isn’t much more involved than the home video I made for Spanish class my freshman year of high school. And still, watching Tim Hunkin nearly burn himself while demonstrating with a carbon pencil how some of the first electric lights were made using a heated carbon core…well it’s more engaging than anything I’ve heard on the radio in a long time.