---
title: "The working parts, left on show"
date: 2026-07-28
tags: [daily-finds, hardware, curiosity]
description: "Five machines that were built with the mechanism deliberately left where you can watch it operate."
blurb: "Five machines that keep the lid off, so the part doing the work is the part you look at."
items:
  - discrete6502
  - cayin-cp6
  - marbles-on-piano-strings
  - semisim-transistor-animations
  - ants-phenakistoscope-turntable
---

> Most engineering hides the moving part behind a case. These five do the opposite: a processor with a light on every register bit, vacuum tubes standing in the open, a piano's string bed under a layer of glass, charge carriers rendered as coloured swarms, and an animation flattened onto a disc so you can see every frame at once.