Talk:Machine

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what about it?

What about computers and hypothetical machines like Turing machines? Shouldn't they be listed here, too? --zeno 16:32, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Buildings as machines

Isn't i also possible to incorporate other views of "machines". It is a famous thought among a lot of architects to look upon buildings as machines. But what do they mean? What does this machinery consist of? What makes it a machine?

Nothing. That was just Le Corbusier summing up (one aspect of) the post-modernist view of architecture. --Heron 17:06, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Le Corbusier was speaking metaphorically. A building does not generally fit the definition of a device that transforms energy. A building contains many machines - so I suppose you could wedge it in if you had to. SteveBaker 17:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Device that transmits or modifies energy

The link to energy defines it as the capacity of a system to do work. So the definition of a machine therefore becomes a device that transmits or modifies the capacity of a system to do work. Is that right? How do you transmit a capacity to do work? I would have thought a machine would be a device that does work by modifying force.164.159.255.67 21:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Glen Tarr[reply]

Moving parts

IMO a machine must have moving parts, in the "commonly accepted" view of a machine. A wheel and axel is a machine because the axel turns in a bearing. Whereas an inclined plane (one of the examples of a simple machine) may as well be a naturally occuring hill. One could say that a constructed inclined plane is a tool, but not a machine. Likewise an atlatl, or a hammer for that matter, are not a machines even though they both accomplish work. They are tools. So, I'm fiddling with the introduction. --kop 04:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Machines vs other kinds of devices

It'd be nice to see the table separate machines from other sorts of devices. Again, IMO, machines have rigid moving parts. A ramjet combustion chamber is a device, but not a machine in and of itself. To be a machine it needs pumps and stuff attached to feed the fuel. Neither is a rope, an airfoil, a sustained nuclear reaction, or a single gear a machine. Maybe the whole table should be moved to the device article. --kop 04:43, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]