Tim Hunkin | |
---|---|
Born | Timothy Hunkin 27 December 1950 Hammersmith, London, England |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge [1] |
Known for | The Secret Life of Machines Under the Pier Show |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Engineering Cartoons |
Website | timhunkin |
Timothy Mark Trelawney Hunkin (born 27 December 1950 in London) is an English engineer, cartoonist, writer, and artist living in Suffolk, England. He is best known for creating the Channel Four television series The Secret Life of Machines , [2] in which he explains the workings and history of various household devices. He has also created museum exhibits for institutions across the UK, and designed numerous public engineering works, chiefly for entertainment. Hunkin's works are distinctive, often recognisable by his unique style of papier-mâché sculpture (made from unpainted newsprint), his pen and ink cartoons, and his offbeat sense of humour. [3] [4]
Hunkin enrolled in 1969, and graduated in engineering science from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1972. [1]
Hunkin's Under the Pier Show [5] at Southwold Pier, England, is a penny arcade featuring a number of humorous, coin-operated machines of his creation. Attractions include the "Autofrisk" (a device that simulates the experience of being frisked by multiple, inflated rubber gloves), the "Bathyscape" (a device that simulates a brief submarine adventure) and a somewhat rude sculptural clock. Hunkin has also opened Novelty Automation, an amusement arcade in Holborn, London, which has a more satirical tone, of which Hunkin has said "I don’t think political art has an enormous effect, but in the short term it is satisfying to reinforce people’s disrespect of the villains." [6]
Many of his other projects are large-scale and theatrical, including gigantic clocks of unconventional designs, bonfires and pyrotechnic displays. In 1976, he designed the flying pigs and sheep for rock band Pink Floyd's In The Flesh tour, promoting their Animals album.
His displays are also featured in episodes of The Secret Life of Machines and relate to the machine covered by the programmes. These included a mountain of flaming televisions; flying vacuum cleaners fitted with rocket motors; a carhenge; a ballet of self-propelled portable radios; and a bizarre "pilgrimage" of an internal combustion engine carried, shoulder high, on a bier into the centre of Carhenge. The Pink Floyd inflatable pig was also featured in the vacuum cleaner episode. Other displays featured in the series were more informative, such as a free-standing central heating system and a "human sewing machine." The programmes also include his cartoons in voiced and animated form.
In 2013 he created a large, unfolding clock for the San Francisco Exploratorium. [7]
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic Hunkin was inspired by other creators online to make a new series called The Secret Life of Components that was distributed on YouTube beginning in March 2021. A second installment was distributed beginning 30 March 2022. [8]
Hunkin has published several books in his distinctive cartoon style. His first was a children's book, Mrs Gronkwonk and the Post Office Tower ( ISBN 978-0207955006) in 1973, which he recently made available again at Lulu.com. In 1988 he published Almost Everything There Is To Know, [9] a compilation of his comic strip The Rudiments of Wisdom, [10] first published in The Observer . He is also the author of the book Hunkin's Experiments [11] [12] which describes a variety of science-based pranks, games, and curiosities. Content from both books is freely available online.
Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the North Sea, in the East Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 11 miles (18 km) south of Lowestoft, 29 miles (47 km) north-east of Ipswich and 97 miles (156 km) north-east of London, within the parliamentary constituency of Suffolk Coastal. At the 2021 Census, the population was 950.
A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction–type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal.
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The Secret Life of Machines is an educational television series presented by Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod, in which the two explain the inner workings and history of common household and office machinery. According to Hunkin, the show's creator, the programme was developed from his comic strip The Rudiments of Wisdom, which he researched and drew for the Observer newspaper over a period of 14 years. Three separate groupings of the broadcast were produced and originally shown between 1988 and 1993 on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, with the production subsequently broadcast on The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel in the U.S.
Southwold Pier is a pier in the coastal town of Southwold in the English county of Suffolk. It is on the northern edge of the town and extends 190 metres (620 ft) into the North Sea.
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