Gallery: Mechanical Marvels Hide in Plain Sight

From Wired: Top Stories:

: You don't have to trek out to the dusty hell of Burning Man in order to see inspired feats of mechanical art and engineering. In fact, the back rooms and museums of your hometown may conceal feats of industrial genius that would put any steampunk artist to shame. Take San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. Tourists know it for picturesque views of the bay, vendors selling clam chowder in bread bowls and bad street-corner buskers. But tucked into the corners of the San Francisco waterfront are such marvels as the most advanced mechanical computer ever made, prototypes of a gigantic clock intended to run for 10,000 years and a working steam engine three stories tall. "It just occurred to me -- the most mechanical geek I know -- that if I didn't put these things together, the rest of San Francisco didn't either," says Alexander Rose, one of the organizers of a one-day, self-guided tour of San Francisco's mechanical marvels.

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