Drawing Machines

Long before computers learned to draw for us, inventors create devices to help with the labor of writing, or for producing detail too intricate for human hands.

Build Thomas Jefferson’s tool for copying his signature. Assemble a harmonograph, a pendulum that lets gravity draw for you. Invent a Random Image Generator, which makes art out of mayhem. Construct a Spirograph, a drawing machine that can crank out endlessly varied concentric spirals.

Share your work. We all begin with the same parts. We invent delightful differences.