Archive Gallery: Decades of Finding Out How Things Work
The origins of wind power, Roomba's great grandfather and the magical workings of the automatic shower faucet Our annual How it Works issue is now available, wherein we strip 13 amazing machines of their skins to marvel at what lies beneath. For anyone interested in science and technology, it's a natural tendency, almost a reflex: let's open this thing up and see what makes it tick. Maybe we can put it back together, and then again maybe not. Of course, we've been doing this here at PopSci for over a century. Here we've combed the archives for some of our favorite "How It Works" articles over the years. And there are some gems. Click the thumbnails to launch the gallery It pleases me to no end to see, amongst the rocket cars and interstellar colonies of fantasy, the instances where PopSci of old totally nails the future. In November 1972, when...