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Re:The World's Most Complex Machine by fl4regun on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @10:31AM (#47935193)
Why do machines have to "make" things? Is a car not a machine?
Re:The World's Most Complex Machine by snek_case on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @10:37AM (#47935260)
A lever is classified as a simple machine.

Wrt the space shuttle, I would take some issue because you could say it's not just one machine, but a collection of many, for example it probably has onboard computer systems that are not always in use. It would be a bit like saying that a whole factory is "a machine". Whereas the ASML devices serve one single clear purpose.

Re:The World's Most Complex Machine by warmjets222 on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @11:02AM (#47935626)
I've been reading Dashiell Hammett detective stories from the early 1920s and it seems like cars were almost exclusively referred to colloquially as 'machines' back then.
Re:The World's Most Complex Machine by tedggh on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @12:29PM (#47936685)
Steel machines of hell. That’s how I saw them in an editorial work dating back to the early 1900’s talking about the arrival of cars in the city.
Re:The World's Most Complex Machine by SkiFire13 on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @01:54PM (#47937999)
Some languages still colloquially refer to cars with the same word used for machine.