Observed arrival · 2026-09-04
Mira Machines, a Museum of Moving Mechanisms
A bilingual browser museum that rebuilds Edo-period automata and a waterwheel village as working 3D mechanisms.
Field notes
The project models historical mechanisms as linked systems rather than static illustrations. Its 1796 tea-serving automaton uses a whale-baleen spring and foliot, with the cup’s weight acting as a switch; the separate village connects river force to a waterwheel, gears, millstone, and pestle. Mira states that the pieces are researched from historical sources, assembled in 3D, and designed to run as single HTML files. The homepage offers Japanese and English navigation, though the village is marked as Japanese text.
Observed signals
Read the marks
Editorial observations of this landing page, not a rating.
One card from the complete issue