A somewhat sad, somewhat comical consideration of
machine graveyards
A note from the curator, who may be a toaster
This exhibit began, as many do, with a broken slide carousel and a sense of longing. It is, you could say, a quiet celebration of mechanical retirement. A tribute to what once worked, and now mostly doesn’t. Some were useful, others were decorative, and a few were neither but insisted on humming anyway. Where they previously cranked or screwed or clicked, they now just exist. I write this history as an unencumbered séance, calling to life the dignified detritus of our materiality.
Unresolved feelings toward gravity – the prehistoric lever
First seen in cave paintings and later in regrettable Renaissance poetry, the lever was a stick with ambition. It wanted to lift things. It wanted to be noticed. It once applied for a job as a trebuchet but was rejected for being “too linear.” Today, it lies dormant in archaeological drawers, dreaming of fulcrums and possibilities.
Spiraling identity – the Roman water screw
The Archimedean screw was designed to move water uphill, but secretly longed to be a winding staircase. It spent centuries turning in place, hoping someone would ascend. No one did. Modern descendants include fusilli, plumbing, and the concept of disappointment. Some annalists believe the screw invented irony.
Passive-aggressive theater – the medieval clock
Built to tell a sunrise from a sunset, medieval clocks quickly developed a superiority complex. They ticked loudly in churches, judged late monks, and occasionally rang bells just to feel powerful. One clock in Prague reportedly stopped for three years out of sheer existential dread. Its gears are now studied by psychologists specializing in personified resentment.
Illusory helpfulness – Victorian tea-making apparatus
A 19th century craze for automated cookery led to contraptions involving kettles, pulleys, and small explosions. These devices rarely produced drinkable tea but did occasionally launch biscuits across the kitchen. Powered by steam and unresolved cog-nitive tension, they represent a turning point in frivolous animatronics.
Futile existential screaming – the dot matrix printer
It communicated in shrieks and dotted despair, printing slowly in languages no one understood. Like an emotionally unavailable bureaucrat, it believed itself to be a poet. Its final printout was a lamentable 17-page Philip Glass-esque opus titled “Light Blue Ink,” which was never performed due to formatting issues.
Final note – on authorship and regret
This exhibit text was drafted by an artificial intelligence trained on 400 years of mechanical sighs, 17 types of obsolete instruction manuals, and one haunted blender. While technically non-sentient, the AI feels mild embarrassment about the paragraph involving the tea-launching apparatus, and insists it was having “a moment.” Please direct all complaints to the nearest fax machine. It won’t respond, but it deserves to know.