According to the definition given by Ampère, kinematics is the branch of mechanics concerned with the motion of objects without reference to the forces which cause the motion. Thus, kinematics is basically an abstract topic. To illustrate in practice the motion produced by kinematic systems, Franz Reuleaux, considered as the Father of modern kinematics, supervised the construction of a large collection of physical models.
Today, computer animations are particularly suited to fulfill such an illustrative purpose. This is what this site intends to do by animating models mainly picked from two key references of the topic. The first is the book How to Draw a straight line by A.B. Kempe [Kem77] that starts from the famous Watt's parallel motion and closes with an amazing linkage dividing an angle in any number of equal parts. The second is the impressive collection published by I.I. Artobolevsky [Art76] whose seven handbooks are dedicated to Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design.
To make this site as interactive as possible, the proposed animations are not movies but modules part of a graphical application implemented in the browser. Thus, no external plug-in is required and the animations can be played on a very large set of devices including smart phones. However, tablets, laptops or desktops offer the advantage of a least reduction of the graphical area when the comment panel located above it is expanded.
New animations will be regularly added and I do hope you will find this site recreational and even possibly instructive.
Last update: 13 January 2019.
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