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How Everyday Things Are Made
OckNock writes "The Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford University in conjunction with Design4x has released online courses on design and manufacturing that include over 4 hours of streaming video (Flashplayer required). Some of the topics include airplanes, crayons, and waterjet cutting.
If only they had this when I had studied mechanical engineering - maybe I would have stayed awake in class more."
Not too many people thing about the work that goes into making a chair (for example) fit properly, but it's a complex process and one that requires a lot more engineering than people realise.
With 10,000 years of prior art, forgive me if I thought that chair design was something we as a society had already perfected...