Weekend Steam: Putting Gears In Your Head

Engineering Johnson has been overseas for many weeks now, setting up machinery in a factory in less-than-ideal surroundings, mostly with no-one to turn to for answers to hard problems.  (What would you do if monsoon rains were pouring through the roof onto your electronic control panel?)  The little bits he can share with his family always amaze me; how could a kid from Southern Illinois develop such great skill in working with machines used in modern manufacturing?

 Before he went off to college to become a mechanical engineer, he visited a couple of steam shows every year, starting when he was just six months old.  Reciprocating parts, open gears, big wheels (Really big to a toddler!) were exposed to his young mind over and over.

I never knew how much of this he was able to take in and process; here you have a chain drive (It makes a wonderful grumbly sound when it runs.), spur gears, and a differential gear assembly at eye level for a kid to examine.  Machines like this are fertilizer for a gear-head.