Department

Machines & Hardware

Department head

Team leads

About

Machine chronicle / deep time

The long ascent.

Hardware is the oldest story we can hold. A stone edge, a geared wheel, a steam piston, a satellite: each one is the same idea at a larger scale — extend the hand, store the motion, leave the planet.

  1. 01 / 3.3 MYATHE HAND

    The first edge

    A stone struck at the right angle becomes a tool. The hand learns to extend itself, and the first piece of hardware is carried out of the dark.

    FlintLeverFire
  2. 02 / 3000 BCETHE GEAR

    Matter remembers

    Wheels, levers and geared mechanisms turn muscle into stored intent. A machine can now repeat a motion its maker never has to make again.

    WheelBronzeClockwork
  3. 03 / 1712THE ENGINE

    Energy becomes motion

    Steam, pistons and feedback let hardware regulate itself. The machine stops being a single gesture and becomes a system with a pulse.

    SteamPistonFeedback
  4. 04 / 1957THE ORBIT

    The machine leaves home

    A radio pulse from a polished sphere opens the orbital age. The orbital yard is the next workshop: a place to build the machines that build everything else.

    SputnikISSOrbital yard

Orbital yard / afterword

We are not building objects. We are adding chapters to a 3.3-million-year machine.

The black hole at the centre of this scene is the oldest engine we can see. Around it, two mechanical worlds share one orbit: one built to forge, one built to think. Between them, the yard turns raw material into instruments. The hardware team is the latest link in that ascent — and the one responsible for what the next link can reach.

Track record