This compendium of ingenious mechanisms employs simple drawings to explain 507 of the small components that constitute complex machinery. Left-hand pages feature illustrations, and facing pages offer brief descriptions of use and operation. Ranging from simple to complex, the mechanisms include cranks, pulleys, drills, wheels, and screws. - Back cover. The want of a comprehensive collection of illustrations and descriptions of mechanical movements has long been seriously felt by artisans, inventors, and students of the mechanic arts. It was the knowledge of this want which induced the compilation of the collection here presented. The movements which it contains have been already illustrated and described in occasional installments scattered through five volumes of the American Artisan, by the readers of which their publication was received with so much favor as was believed to warrant the expense of their reproduction with some revision in a separate volume. The selection of the movements embraced in this collection has been made from many and various sources. The English works of Johnson, Willcock, Wylson, and Denison have been drawn upon to a considerable extent, and many other works -- American and foreign -- have been laid under contribution; but more than one-fourth of the movements -- many of purely American origin -- have never previously appeared in any published collection. - Preface.