An impressive collection of marble machines

This video is a rolling demo and timeline of a whole series of marble machines. These are simple in theory – a single engine, wood and wire used to channel ball bearings around.

I think these machines are strangely hypnotic. They’re also far more sophisticated than they first appear – for example, just getting the wire in exactly the right place to support a ball bearing as it whizzes through a loop the loop is hard work.

Not bad huh? I can hold my hands up and admit there’s no way in Holy heck that I’d be able to craft anything like this. Could you?