The Way Things Work

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The Way Things Work

Book cover for The Way Things Work
Author	David Macaulay Neil Ardley
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Educational
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Publication date	1988
Pages	400
ISBN	0-395-42857-2
OCLC	17917341
Dewey Decimal	600 19
LC Class	T47 .M18 1988

The Way Things Work is a 1988 children's book by David Macaulay with technical text by Neil Ardley. It is an entertaining introduction to everyday machines, describing machines as simple as levers and gears and as complicated as radio telescopes and automatic transmissions. Every page consists primarily of one or more large diagrams describing the operation of the relevant machine. These diagrams are informative but playful, in that most show the machines operated, used upon, or represented by woolly mammoths, and are accompanied by anecdotes of the mammoths' (fictive) role in the operation. The book's concept was later developed into a short-lived animated TV show (produced by Millimages^[1] and distributed by Schlessinger Media), a Dorling Kindersley interactive CD-ROM (including a spin-off pinball game), and a board game. A family "ride" involving animatronics and a 3-D film based on the book was one of the original attractions at the San Francisco Metreon, but closed in 2001.

The New Way Things Work[]

A second version, The New Way Things Work, released on October 26, 1998, contains additional text on the workings of computers and digital technology. A number of pages were dropped, among them a two-page demonstration of a mechanical coin-operated parking meter and the original descriptions of computing. The original's computing section included four pages explaining the workings of a pocket calculator and the distinctions between a calculator and a general-purpose computer, and four pages on binary arithmetic, logical AND and OR gates, and how these are assembled into a half adder and full adder; these were replaced with entirely new art and more detailed descriptions, with a longer story, 'The Last Mammoth', depicting a lonely mammoth invited to visit the 'Digital Domain' by its proprietor Bill,^[2] which uses the mammoth's assistance and a humorous pumpkin-and-apple-based mechanical computer to create a video depiction of a community of mammoths.

The Way Things Work Now[]

A substantially revised edition, The Way Things Work Now, was published in October 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Dorling Kindersley.

Contents for The New Way Things Work[]

While the individual sections and subsections are changed in The Way Things Work Now, the structure and Table of Contents remain the same.

• Part One — The Mechanics of Movement: Introduction, The Inclined Plane, Levers, The Wheel and Axle, Gears and Belts, Cams and Cranks, Pulleys, Screws, Rotating Wheels, Springs, Friction
• Part Two — Harnessing the Elements: Introduction, Floating, Flying, Pressure Power, Exploiting Heat, Nuclear Power
• Part Three — Working with Waves: Introduction, Light and Images, Photography, Printing, Sound and Music, Telecommunications'
• Part Four — Electricity and Automation: Introduction, Electricity, Magnetism, Sensors and Detectors
• Part Five — The Digital Domain: Making Bits, Storing Bits, Processing Bits, Sending Bits, Using Bits, Epilogue
• Eureka! — The Invention of Machines

With a glossary of technical terms and an index at the back of the book.

Publishing history[]

This list is incomplete; you can help by . (February 2011)

• Houghton Mifflin, 1988. ISBN 0-395-42857-2.
• Houghton Mifflin, 1998. ISBN 0-395-93847-3.
• Dorling Kindersley, 2004. ISBN 1-4053-0238-0.
• Dorling Kindersley, 2016. ISBN 0-2412-8219-5.
• Houghton Mifflin, 2016. ISBN 1-3286-6310-8.

References[]