Designing and making successful automata involves combining materials, mechanisms and magic. Making Simple Automata book explains how to design and construct small scale, simple mechanical devices made for fun. Materials such as paper and card, wood, wire, tinplate and plastics are covered along with mechanisms - levers and linkages, cranks and cams, wheels, gears, pulleys, springs, ratchets and pawls. This wonderful book is illustrated with examples throughout and explains the six golden rules for making automata alongside detailed step-by-step projects.

This beautiful book draws on Robert Race's extensive collection of traditional moving toys, looking at the ways the makers have achieved remarkable and varied results, often with very limited resources. Each chapter begins by looking at the mechanisms and materials used in some of these traditional moving toys, goes on to consider possible variations, and describes how to make a related moving toy. It continues, from this basis, to develop a design for an automaton. The book shows that designing and making these simple but wonderfully satisfying mechanical devices is fun, and that good results can be achieved in many different ways, using a variety of materials, tools and equipment such as wood and wire, card and paper, bamboo, string, tin plate and feathers.