A machine is a powered tool consisting of one or more parts that is constructed to achieve a particular goal. Machines are usually powered by mechanical, chemical, thermal or electrical means, and are frequently motorized. Historically, a powered tool also required moving parts to classify as a machine; however, the advent of electronics technology has led to the development of powered tools without moving parts that are considered machines.
The word "machine" is derived from the Latin word machina, which in turn derives from the Doric Greek μαχανά (machana), Ionic Greek μηχανή (mechane) "contrivance, machine, engine" and that from μῆχος (mechos), "means, expedient, remedy". The meaning of machine is traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to an independently functioning structure and by Merriam-Webster Dictionary to something that has been constructed. This includes human design into the meaning of machine.
A simple machine is a device that simply transforms the direction or magnitude of a force, but a large number of more complex machines exist. Examples include vehicles, electronic systems, molecular machines, computers, television and radio.
Read more about Machine: History, Types, Machine Elements, Design
Other articles related to "machine":
... An automaton (plural automata or automatons) is a self-operating machine ... The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot ...
... In 1839, Singer obtained his first patent, for a machine to drill rock, selling it for $2,000 to the I M Canal Building Company ... He developed and patented a "machine for carving wood and metal" on April 10, 1849 ... York City, hoping to market his wood-block cutting machine there ...
... back to the first use of automobiles, and even earlier, to the horse-drawn tachankas mounting machine guns in eastern Europe and Russia ... deserts of Egypt, Libya and Chad using unarmored motor vehicles, often fitted with machine guns and cannon of various types ... this time fitted with a single.50 caliber Browning machine gun ...
... that had been pioneered on the IAS machine ... After two "rescues" from the scrap heap, the machine currently resides at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California ... Like the IAS machine, JOHNNIAC used 40-bit words, and included 1024 words of Selectron tube main memory, each holding 256 bits of data ...
... the USA, Alex Robertson has been credited with developing and building the first automatic teller machine (which didn't dispense cash) ... The rollout of this machine, called Bankograph, was delayed by a couple of years, due in part to Simjian's Reflectone Electronics Inc ... was an automated envelope deposit machine (accepting coins, cash and cheques) and did not have cash dispensing features ...
Famous quotes containing the word machine:
“Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“Above all, however, the machine has no feelings, it feels no fear and no hope ... it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“The Frenchman Jean-Paul ... Sartre I remember now was his last name had a dialectical mind good as a machine for cybernetics, immense in its way, he could peel a nuance like an onion, but he had no sense of evil, the anguish of God, and the possible existence of Satan.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)