If you are having a lousy day and need to have a moment to refocus your attention, relax for a hot second, or just escapee’s reality for a minute, we have just the medicine for you. This video is fantastic as it shows five different (actually more than that) antique engines being started up. They range from small stationary engines to what is legitimately the first “car engine” and finally some monster stationaries as well. They all have pistons and flywheels and they all have the thing we like the most about old engines…the sound! They chuff and they clunk. They make the kind of solid mechanical noises that are both soothing and entertaining to gear heads.
If you take these engines into the context of their individual times they had to have been shocking machines to the majority of the population. If you came from the farm and ventured into a city area where there were factories and the week before you were working behind a team oxen only to find a stationary engine with 6ft diameter flywheels whirring and smoking away, we’re guessing it was kind of a shocker. Also, when the engines got small and “portable” the change that they brought was immediate and prodigious. Totally awesome, right?
Fun stuff here. Give it a watch.
