Best Bill Hammack Podcasts (2024)

1
(4/4) Operation: The details of setting up the Harmonic Analyzer 11:47

9+ y ago11:47

11:47

This series on Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This video (the fourth of four) shows how to operate the machine. Check out the seri…

1
Bonus: Rocker arms: sinusoids in two different directions 17:28

9+ y ago17:28

17:28

This series on Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This bonus video shows the motion of every rocker arm -- that is, every sinusoid. Th…

1
Bonus: Watch the machine spin around over and over... 2:53

9+ y ago2:53

2:53

This series on Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This videos shows the machine rotating and rotating -- including a breathtaking spir…

1
Page-by-Page Guide to the Free PDF of the Book Albert Michelson's Harmonic Analyzer 19:44

9+ y ago19:44

19:44

his series on Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This video is a page-by-page commentary to the series companion book. Learn how to ge…

1
(3/4) Analysis: Explaining Fourier analysis with a machine 4:04

9+ y ago4:04

4:04

? Learn more at: http://www.engineerguy.com/fourier ? Buy the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983966176/ ? Buy the posters on Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/engineerguy ? Main videos in the series: (1/4) Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsM30MAHLg (2/4) Synthesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KmVDxkia_w (4/4) Oper…

1
(2/4) Synthesis: A machine that uses gears, springs and levers to add sines and cosines 5:41

9+ y ago5:41

5:41

This series on Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This video (the second of four) shows how to use the machine to do Fourier synthesis…

1
(1/4) Intro/History: Introducing a 100-year-old mechanical computer 3:38

9+ y ago3:38

3:38

This introduction to the series Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers. This video is the first of four -- plus several bonus videos. Check…

1
The Cigarette machine 2:41

10y ago2:41

2:41

Bill nominates, perhaps only provocatively, James Bosnack's cigarette machine as the invention with the greatest economic impact on the 20th century. Cigarettes, as compared to pipes and cigars, are and the most direct way to deliver nicotine to the brain. Bosnack's machine made the mass production of cigarettes possible. The use of cigarettes, of …

1
How home air conditioning triumphed over the open air movement 2:30

10y ago2:30

2:30

Bill explains how the rise of home air conditioning had to battle the open air movements in public school: They regarded it as only for factories where it was first introduced. Only when movie theatres added air conditioning in the 1930 and 1940s did it become popular for the home.By Bill Hammack

1
Kodak 2:53

10y ago2:53

2:53

Bill tells the story of how George Eastman invented film. Its use in the Brownie camera revolutionized photography; that it changed the way American families think of themselves and recall their own histories.By Bill Hammack

1
How the Donner Party inspired food packaging 3:07

10y ago3:07

3:07

Bill tells us about packaging, a sub-discipline of engineering that is essential to our society. This radio commentary was originally broadcast on November 30, 2004. Visit this link to view complete list of media attributions http://goo.gl/fmGESM.By Bill Hammack

1
Theremin: How science fiction got its sound 2:15

10y ago2:15

2:15

Bill discusses the theremin, and how it lead to one the music industry's most fundamental assets, the electronic synthesizer. This was originally broadcast on December 26, 2000. Visit this link to view complete list of media attributions http://goo.gl/fmGESM.By Bill Hammack

1
Ferris Wheel: How the Eiffel Tower wasn't good enough 3:11

10y ago3:11

3:11

Bill tells the story of the origins of an engineering marvel found at every amusement park, the Ferris Wheel. This radio piece was first broadcast February 15, 2005. Visit this link to view complete list of media attributions http://goo.gl/fmGESM.By Bill Hammack

1
Coffee makers: How baseball put them in our homes 3:27

10y ago3:27

3:27

Bill describes how the household drip coffee maker evolved. This was originally broadcast on August 29, 2000. Visit this link to view complete list of media attributions: http://goo.gl/fmGESM. Watch the related EngineerGuy video on how a drip coffee maker works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j4Q_YBRJEI…

1
Why the Dvorak keyboard didn’t take over the world 3:49

10y ago3:49

3:49

Perhaps no technological failure is better known than that of the Dvorak keyboard. Since the early 1870s nearly every typewriter used a keyboard with a QWERTY layout, yet most studies show the Dvorak arrangement of keys to be faster. This videos probes the underlying reasons that this arrangement failed to make headway in the marketplace. This vide…

1
PicturePhone: How Bell Telephone lost a half billion, but nearly created the internet 3:59

10y ago3:59

3:59

How Bell Telephone’s PicturePhone, introduced in 1964, flopped yet nearly catalyzed the internet. Technically, it was an amazing achievement: Bell used the existing twisted-pair copper wire of the telephone network -- not broadband lines like today -- to produce black and white video on a screen about five inches square. And, amazingly for the time…

1
How Sony’s Betamax lost to JVC’s VHS Cassette Recorder 3:49

10y ago3:49

3:49

In 1976 Sony introduced the Betamax video cassette recorder. It catalyzed the “on demand” of today by allowing users to record television shows, and the machine ignited the first “new media” intellectual property battles. In only a decade this revolutionary machine disappeared, beaten by JVS’s version of the cassette recorder. This video tells the …

1
Stories of Technological Failure: PicturePhone, Dvorak keyboard & Betamax 2:11

10y ago2:11

2:11

Introduction to a short series of three videos that takes a "snackable" look at the failure of three famous engineered objects: The Bell System's PicturePhone, which lost the company a half billion dollars, but nearly created the internet; the Dvorak keyboard, which is faster than our current QWERTY arrangement, but failed to gain traction in the m…

1
How a Lead-Acid Battery Works 5:11

12y ago5:11

5:11

Bill details how a microwave oven heats food. He describes how the microwave vacuum tube, called a magnetron, generates radio frequencies that cause the water in food to rotate back and forth. He shows the standing wave inside the oven, and notes how you can measure the wavelength with melted cheese. He concludes by describing how a magnetron gener…

1
What Keeps Nuclear Weapons from Proliferating 4:39

12y ago4:39

4:39

Bill explains that the hardest step is making the proper type of uranium. Weapons and power plants require uranium that contains a greater amount of the isotope uranium-235 than found in natural uranium, which is mostly uranium-238. He outlines the key difficulty in separating the two isotope: They have nearly identical properties. He explains the …

1
How an Atomic Clock Works 4:33

12y ago4:33

4:33

Bill shows the world's smallest atomic clock and then describes how the first one made in the 1950s worked. He describes in detail the use of cesium vapor to create a feedback or control loop to control a quartz oscillator. He highlights the importance of atomic team by describing briefly how a GPS receiver uses four satellites to find its position…

1
How a Laser Works 4:54

12y ago4:54

4:54

Bill shows how the three key characteristics of laser light - single wavelength, narrow beam, and high intensity - are made. He explains the operation of a ruby laser - the first laser ever made - showing how electronic transitions create stimulated emission to give coherent light, and then how the ends of the ruby cavity create a narrow wavelength…

1
Anodizing Aluminium (or The Beauty of Corrosion) 4:16

12y ago4:16

4:16

Bill describes how metals like aluminum and titanium are made resistant to corrosion by growing an oxide layer into the metals. These is the same process used on many Apple products. This video is based on a chapter in his book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories.By Bill Hammack

1
How a Smartphone Knows Up from Down 4:25

12y ago4:25

4:25

Bill takes apart a smartphone and explains how its accelerometer works. He also shares the essential idea underlying the MEMS production of these devicesBy Bill Hammack

1
CCD: The Heart of a Digital Camera 4:27

12y ago4:27

4:27

Bill takes apart a digital camera and explains how its captures images using a CCD (charge coupled device). He also shares how a single CCD is used with a color filter array to create colored images. This video is based on a chapter from the EngineerGuy team's latest book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories (Learn more at http://www.engineerguy.com/e…

1
Fiber optic cables 5:36

13y ago5:36

5:36

Bill uses a laser pointer and a bucket of glycol to show how fiber optic cables works, and how engineers use them to transmit signals across the ocean.By Bill Hammack

1
Cell phone design 4:01

13y ago4:01

4:01

Bill uses a pile of cell phones to illustrate the seven design criteria that shape a mobile device. He outlines the seven basic constrainBy Bill Hammack

1
Hard drive teardown 5:04

13y ago5:04

5:04

Bill tears down a hard drive to show how it stores data. He explains how smooth the disk surface must be for the device to work, and he outlines the mathematical technique used to increase data storage.By Bill Hammack

1
LCD Monitor 4:58

13+ y ago4:58

4:58

Bill tears down an LCD monitor to show how it works. He describes how liquid crystals are used, the structure of the glass panes, and the thin film transistor (TFTs) that allow for active matrix addressing.By Bill Hammack

1
How smoke detectors work 3:45

13+ y ago3:45

3:45

Bill takes apart a smoke detector and shows how it uses a radioactive source to generate a tiny current which is disrupted when smoke flows through the sensor. He describes how a special transistor called a MOSFET can be used to detect the tiny current changes.By Bill Hammack

1
Light Bulb Filament 3:38

13+ y ago3:38

3:38

Bill takes apart an incandescent light bulb to how how the filament is made. He shows extreme close-ups of the filament, and he discusses the materials processing need to make the ductile tungstenBy Bill Hammack

1
Why the other line is likely to move faster 3:42

13+ y ago3:42

3:42

Bill reveals how "queueing theory" - developed by engineers to route phone calls - can be used to find the most efficient arrangement of cashiers and check out lines. He reports on the work of Agner Erlang, a Danish engineer who, at the opening of the 20th century, helped the Copenhagen Telephone Company provide the best level of service at the low…

1
How a quartz watch works 3:34

13+ y ago3:34

3:34

The amazing everyday wristwatch: We never think about it, but only because engineers have made it so reliable and durable that we don't need to. At its heart lies a tiny tuning fork made of the mineral quartz. In this video Bill takes apart a cheap watch and shows extreme close-ups of the actually tunings fork. He explains how the piezoelectric eff…

1
How the first transistor worked 4:46

13+ y ago4:46

4:46

Bill shows how a transistor works by examing a replica of the first one ever build: The Bardeen-Brattain point contact transistor.By Bill Hammack

1
Black Box 2:18

13+ y ago2:18

2:18

Bill opens up a vintage "black box" from a Delta airlines jetliner. He describes how the box withstands high temperatures and crash velocities because it is made from Inconel: A superalloy steels that is used in furnaces and others extreme environments. The flight data recorder he shows is a Sundstrand FA-542 and was likely used on a DC-9 in the 19…

1
Coffee Maker 2:40

13+ y ago2:40

2:40

To engineer an object means to make choices. Bill illustrates how the choice of having a single heating element made an engineer find a creative way to pump water with no moving parts.By Bill Hammack

1
Pop Can Stay-on tab: An ingenious engineering design 2:17

13+ y ago2:17

2:17

Bill uses slow motion video to show the ingenious engineering design of the apparently simple tab of a pop can. To create a tab with the least amount of material it changes from a 2nd to a 1st class lever while opening the can.By Bill Hammack

1
Whiffletree: A mechanical digital-to-analog converter 2:29

14y ago2:29

2:29

Early calculating devices and computers used mechanical digital to analogue converters. This video describes one based on an arrangement of metal bars called a "whiffletree" - also sometimes called a "whippletree." It shows, briefly, the whiffletree used in IBM's revolutionary selectric typewriter and then illustrates the principles of a whiffletre…

1
The IBM Selectric & its mechanical digital-to-analogue converter 3:05

14y ago3:05

3:05

Using slow motion video Bill Hammack, the engineer guy, shows how IBM's revolutionary "golf ball" typewriter works. He describes the marvelous completely mechanical digital-to-analogue converter that translates the discrete impulse of the keys to the rotation of the type element. (This is the typewriter featured on the television series Mad Men.)…

1
The ice hotel (audio) 26:17

14+ y ago26:17

26:17

In ths public radio piece Bill reveals the mysteries of the Ice Hotel. In January 2002 Bill visited the Ice Hotel with his wife Amy Somrak and their friends Allan and Pat Tuchman. Located in the arctic circle of Sweden, the hotel's owners rebuild the hotel every year. Temperatures outside the hotel can be as low as 40 degrees below freezing; inside…

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