Munari's Machines

In 1942, the artist, writer, product designer, architect, graphic designer, illustrator, educator and philosopher Bruno Munari created an enormously successful and utterly charming book called Le Macchine di Munari. Faithfully reprinted here, it contains instructions for building the most fantastical of mechanical structures, including a machine for taming alarm clocks, a lizard-driven engine for tired tortoises, a mechanism for sniffing artificial flowers, a humiliator for mosquitoes, a machine for playing the pipe even when you are not home, a machine for seeing the dawn before anyone else and a tail wagger for dogs.