- For the Unknown Instructors album, please refer to "The Way Things Work (album)"
The Way Things Work is a book by
Neil Ardley, illustrated by
David Macaulay, as an entertaining introduction to everyday
machines, describing machines as simple as
levers and
gears and as complicated as
radio telescopes and
automatic transmissions. Every page consists primarily of one or more large diagrams describing the operation of the relevant machine. These diagrams are informative but playful, in that most show the machines operated, used upon, or represented by
woolly mammoths, and are accompanied by anecdotes of the mammoths' (fictive) role in the operation. The book's concept was later developed into a short-lived animated
TV show (produced by
Millimages and distributed by
Schlessinger Media), a
Dorling Kindersley interactive CD-ROM, and a
board game. A family "ride" involving
animatronics and a
3-D film based on the book was one of the original attractions at the
San Francisco Metreon, but closed in 2001.
