Tim Hunkin
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Tim Hunkin (born 1950) is an English engineer, cartoonist, writer and artist, who lives in Suffolk, England. He is best known for creating the Channel Four television series The Secret Life of Machines, in which the workings and history of various household inventions are explained. He has also designed various museum exhibits in institutions across the UK, and numerous other large public engineering works, chiefly for entertainment.
Hunkin's works are quite distinctive, often recognisable by the presence of his unique style of papier-mâché sculpture and his cartoons, which are difficult to describe without pictures (although one easy way to recognise some of his sculptures is that they are made from unpainted newsprint), and an offbeat sense of humour (one of his slot machines simulates the experience of being frisked by multiple inflated rubber gloves!).
Many of his projects have been quite large-scale and theatrical, including gigantic clocks (usually of an unconventional design - one excellent example is a multi-storey clock regulated by the gradual build up of steam inside a large piston), bonfires and pyrotechnic displays. In particular, most episodes of The Secret Life Of Machines had at least one large "centrepiece", related in some way to the machine covered in the epsiode, often quite surreal - a mountain of flaming televisions or foaming washing machines, launching of vacuum cleaners converted into rockets, a carhenge, a ballet of remote-control radios or stop-motion fridges, a "religious pilgrimage" of an internal combustion engine (impossible to accurately describe without footage), a free-standing heating system mounted on a skeletal house, a "human sewing machine", etc.
He has published numerous books in a distinctive cartoon style, notably Almost everything there is to know, a compilation of his informative comic strips, The Rudiments of Wisdom, first published in The Observer. Animations in identical visual style to Hunkin's static cartoons are featured in all episodes of The Secret Life, including the title sequence. The pier at Southwold has a number of humorously-intended (working) slot machines of his design and making, and a somewhat rude sculptural clock.
He is also the author of a book, Hunkin's Experiments, which describes a variety of science based pranks, games, and curiosities. Much of the book is freely available online.