Just around my first year of university, perhaps earlier, I was a huge fan of a TV series from England called The Secret Life of Machines which aired over here on the Discovery Channel. In each episode Tim Hunkin and his co-host Rex Garrod would explain how something worked, like vacuum cleaners, elevators (Brits call them “lifts”), and cars. It had it’s own quirky home-made (but well presented) charm with a cool-ass intro song (“The Russians are Coming”, a reggae cover by Val Bennett of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”).
You see, since as early as I can remember I’ve always been fascinated by how things work. There was also a period of time where I was obsessed with robots and I’ve always been interested in machines, computers, and technology in general. It’s the kind of show that grabbed me instantly.
So, a week ago, in a fit of nostalgia, I Googled the show and found the Wikipedia entry and some other links as well. To my joy, I found most of the episodes on Google Video, an archive of the episodes provided by Science Zero and all three seasons on BitTorrent. I feel pretty good about this find and thought I’d share. And, these resources were actually linked to by Hunkin himself. Not too shabby.