Books about Contraptions from Amazon.com

With this Klutz Lego book you can make five moving machines with 60 special Lego pieces. There is also five more contraptions to be made with pieces you already have. Ages 7 and up..
Price: $9.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Kids create 50 amazing contraptions that spin, fling, collide, and whiz! -- Kids have fun creating all kinds of gizmos and gadgets that help them understand the laws behind motion, friction, gravity, rotation, balance, and energy. -- They will build a catapult that sends marshmallows flying or send a marble on a wild ride down a room-sized marble ramp. They can even design a friction gobot, let gravity activate a dinosaur's head, meet Sir Isaac Newton, and have fun! -- This book is chock full of clear and concise explanations of scientific terms, mini-biographies of inventors, and even historical context. -- Winner of numerous science writing and education awards. -- See More NEW PRODUCTS.
Price: $8.07 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Kid Concoctions and Contraptions is the fourth addition to international best-selling authors John and Danita Thomas' award-winning series, The Ultimate Book of Kid Concoctions.

Quickly duplicate popular toy store concoctions and contraptions with common household items for just pennies.

In this book you will find dozens of all new wacky, wild and creative recipes for creating exciting projects such as:

Super Bubble Ooze,
Phony Spill,
Pocket Rocket,
Shrinky Doos,
Silly Scents,
Pickle Potion,
Indoor Hot Air Balloon,
Wacky Tattoos,
Gooey Gun Drops,
Magic Marble Dip,
Balloon Hovercraft,
Wacky Window Paint,
Sea Monster Farm,
Hydro Jet Boat,
Movie Glass Candy,
And many more!.
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

10 color photos, 110 b/w photos, 48 drawings, 8 x 11
Easy-to-follow text
Helpful photographs

In the spirit of Rube Goldberg, pinball, and bubble-gum machines, Alan and Gill Bridgewater present ten wildly complex marble-action woodworking projects that are as entertaining to make as they are to play with. Contraptions such as the Marble Deceleration Honeycomb Maze, Perpetual Random Number Shuffler, and Marble Rotator Finger-Touch Tumbler Labyrinth can each be constructed easily in a weekend, but in finished form will baffle those who dare to dally with them. Step-by-step instructions with accompanying photos and detailed plans make construction easy. Metric conversions included..
Price: $12.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

-General interest and quirky appeal

-Competitive gift price

-Attractive small format A cuff holder used by poker cardsharks to hide the ace up their sleeves, an electric comb from the 1920s, an automatic shaving cream filler and brush to help save time in the mornings It's a wonder these crazy devices never took off! In this zany and fascinating book, collector Maurice Collins's presents over 100 bizarre and ingenious antique gadgets from the days of yore.

Fascinating and humorous, this innovative book will engage and amuse every reader. From the watch camera of the 1900s to the perfect 1920s camping cup of tea, the intriguing creations in this book are a testament to human ingenuity and resourcefulness..
Price: $0.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Here is a splendid treasury, the definitive volume of the comic fantasies of the great English artist William Heath Robinson, whose name passed into the English language during his lifetime. In America, we have the "Rube Goldberg devices;" in England, they call them "Heath Robinson contraptions."

Robinson's elementary mechanical world is brilliant and arcane--those ancient wooden cogwheels, intricate pulleys, fragile gantries, ingenious tunnels, magnets, and steam kettles kept on boil by a lighted candle or two; the whole enterprise held together by knotted string and operated by intensely serious workmen with a sprinkling of soberly top-hatted company directors in charge.

This distinguished volume of Robinson's dazzling genius covers the whole field of his comic work in peace and war, from his first mocking anti-German propaganda in the First World War down to the Second, during which he died. Turning these delightful pages, one has exactly the feeling of H.G. Wells, who wrote to Heath Robinson in 1914: "Your absurd, beautiful drawings . . . give me a peculiar pleasure of the mind like nothing else in the world."

Robinson's world will enchant everyone and for all time--so long as machines remain machines and human beings need reminding that that is all they are..
Price: $22.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $5.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Making crazy devices that perform simple but useful tasks has never been more fun! Make 50 Wild and Wacky (but Useful!) Contraptions shows you how to create the most mazelike contraptions imaginable Inside you'll discover:

The key players in the world of contraptions: Rube Goldberg, Heath Robinson, and Robert Storm Petersen

The different components that go into making a contraption, and how to build them

The scientific, mechanical, and engineering secrets behind each of the components

How to build working models that demonstrate all of the techniques

Finally, and most importantly, Make 50 Wild and Wacky (but Useful!) Contraptions contains 50 easy-to-follow projects that show you how to make your own fiendishly complicated machines.

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Price: $8.43 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The antique phonograph is the center of a beautiful, brilliant, and sometimes bizarre universe of accessories The commercial development of the phonograph, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inspired a host of adjunct technology, from fancifully-painted flower horns to record storage disguised as furniture. Here are gadgets any snake oil salesman would be proud of - objects that claimed to make the phonograph louder, softer, improve the "tone," or remove the scratching of the needle. There are dazzling horns that call attention to the phonograph, or imposing cabinets that hide it completely. Each element of the talking machine, from its whirring spring motor to its polished woodwork, inspired bursts of inventive genius as brilliant and colorful as the nighttime sky on the Fourth of July. To aid the collector there is a guide to current values. Award winning authors Timothy C. Fabrizio and George F. Paul, in their sixth Schiffer book, take the reader on a lively tour of these utterly entertaining objects. The 555 color illustrations and engrossing captions introduce a multitude of artifacts not documented in the authors' previous works..
Price: $36.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's attempts through 4,000 years of written history to make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to understand its physical nature, and to know its real and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of elaborate "contraptions" by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately, about the "grand contraption" we've constructed through the ages in an effort to understand and identify with the universe.

According to Park, people long ago conceived of our world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils, and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting certainty of celestial movement they discerned numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the scientific exploration of the universe.

The journey reveals many common threads stretching from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of today. For example, humans have tended to imagine Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it with the reverence it deserves.

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Price: $10.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]