Making Moving Toys and Automata

Book excerpt: This beautiful book draws on Robert Race's extensive collection of traditional moving toys, looking at the ways the makers have achieved remarkable and varied results, often with very limited resources. Each chapter begins by looking at the mechanisms and materials used in some of these traditional moving toys, goes on to consider possible variations, and describes how to make a related moving toy. It continues, from this basis, to develop a design for an automaton. The book shows that designing and making these simple but wonderfully satisfying mechanical devices is fun, and that good results can be achieved in many different ways, using a variety of materials, tools and equipment such as wood and wire, card and paper, bamboo, string, tin plate and feathers. It exploits, in a simple way, mechanisms such as levers, linkages, cranks and cams. It explores different ways of moving those mechanisms directly by hand, by springs or falling weights, and by the wind. Beautifully illustrated with 117 colour images.