What Makes It Go? What Makes It Work? What Makes It Fly? What Makes It Float?

Joe Kaufman's What Makes It Go? What Makes It Work? What Makes It Fly? What Makes It Float?
Joe Kaufman ~ Golden Press, 1977

Though some of the info in this book is wildly outdated, it still totally rocks. Not completely sure who Joe Kaufman was/is (fill me in someone please) other than an amazing illustrator, but the way all things are explained here and the incredibly cool cut-a-ways make this a book I sometimes "accidentally" leave in the bathroom to peruse myself. My son is just starting to get into asking how things work, so it was an ideal time for this book to arrive in my possession.


I've pictured three illustrations here, the later of which is Joe's vision of the future... some of which seems to have come true...

Instead of having a separate television, telephone and record player, as some people do today, you might have one single machine, a home communications center, that would do all the things they do. This machine might also be able to project slides, movies, and video tapes. While people today have shelves of books, people in this future city might also have shelves of video tape cassettes which could be put into the tape-playing part of the home communications center and watched and heard. These would be books with moving pictures.

Wow, how bad would he have freaked back then that you would have something like this that fits in your pocket? I like to think of this book as a time machine of sorts, but the majority of the book is filled with basic mechanics, which for the most part have remained unchanged: washing machine, light bulb, stove, bank vault, etc. Besides, I always wanted to know how a turntable works.

Sadly, I never had this book as a child, because it's exactly the sort of thing I'd have spent hours pouring over, studying every frame and word. Good to know my boy won't be so unlucky.

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Learning About Sizes
Joe Kaufman's Book About Busy People