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":
... 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 ... he packed up his family and moved back to New York City, hoping to market his wood-block cutting machine there ...
... 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 ... The Bankograph was an automated envelope deposit machine (accepting coins, cash and cheques) and did not have cash dispensing features ...
... 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 ...
... to the first use of automobiles, and even earlier, to the horse-drawn tachankas mounting machine guns in eastern Europe and Russia ... Libya and Chad using unarmored motor vehicles, often fitted with machine guns and cannon of various types ... SAS and LRDG use of the Willys Jeep, this time fitted with a single.50 caliber Browning machine gun ...
... architecture 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 ...
Famous quotes containing the word machine:
“I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist’s hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)
“But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The machine invades me all day.”
—Sharon Atkins, U.S. receptionist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)