A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
I don't know of a series covering Industrial Revolution technologies. But the videos below should giv you a good conceptual understanding of steam engines:
Unrelated to steam engines or the industrial revolution, Bill Hammack's play lists are great deep dives in topics from an engineer's perspective. Be sure to sort his videos by "popular" there are a number that are over 10 years old but are still amazing short explorations of things like the aluminum can (over 18 Million views).
The History Guy has a few decent niche tech videos. I think he did one on the invention of screws which was kind of interesting.
Something like the American Precision Museum or videos of Fred Dibnah might help? He even has an episode called Engines at Work .
There are a few videos from Machine Thinking that focus on the early or past days of industrial technology, particularly things such as precision, screws, lathes, etc. I can recommend these in particular:
Another thing to look at would be infographics, especially from Animagraffs by Jacob O'Neil. They've got a few gems that cover some of what you're asking about, such as pistons:
For something a little closer to a full-blown free course or series, there's this Basics of Mechanical Engineering playlist put together by John Bedford Solomon, but it doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason as to the order, so skip around a bit, or look more specifically at any of the channels it selects videos from.
Lastly, the top videos from US Auto Industry on YouTube (sort by popular) are some old but phenomenal educational content on some of the basics of cars, with videos about differential steering, transmission, suspension, and hydraulics.
Happy learning!