How did the world's largest museum collection of Dream Machines wind up in Toronto?

It's an ordinary weekday in November, and while most of the Toronto Eaton Centre's Black Friday sales have now ended, there's still plenty of activity up and down Yonge Street. 

On one stretch just south of Dundas Street, however — in a space previously occupied by Nordstrom — a window display is stopping passersby in their tracks. Some folks press their phones to the glass for the perfect photo. Others take a cooler, more detached approach — hanging back on the curb to analyze the scene. 

They're mesmerized by a collection of moving contraptions that could have been lifted from a Victorian storybook: kinetic sculptures more fanciful and complex than the usual festive animatronics of Santa's workshop and the like.

In style, the display is almost Seuss-ian; it's a collection of charmingly absurd vehicles and home appliances that have been engineered with a Rube Goldberg sensibility. Each one reveals a mechanized network of found objects: antique parasols and wooden spoons, alarm clocks and English tea sets. In one window, a tweedy gentleman aviator pilots a spindly flying machine that appears to be powered by butterflies and Earl Grey. Built from pram wheels and badminton birdies, how the machine moves at all is a mystery — and yet it comes to life quite dependably every half hour, beginning its dance at 10 o'clock every morning.

Its official title is the Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman's Flying Machine, and it's what the Ontario Science Centre refers to as a "Dream Machine."

For some Torontonians, visiting the Science Centre's assortment of these mechanical wonders is a holiday tradition; since the early '70s, the museum has put a series of "Dream Machines" on display for the winter, but for the first time ever, much of the museum's collection will be appearing in a completely different location, animating the windows on Yonge St. throughout the holiday season.

"We were interested in broadening our reach and sharing science content with a larger audience," says Jenny Pascoa, artifacts coordinator at the Science Centre, while discussing the museum's decision to bring the collection downtown. 

Only one of their Dream Machines, the Tea Train, will remain in its usual location this winter; visitors arriving via shuttle bus will find it inside the Science Centre's entrance, and there's a sensible reason as to why it was left behind. Stretching nine metres long, the train was simply too large to fit in a window.

The Dream Machines were all made by the same British artist, Rowland Emett. A cartoonist who is perhaps best remembered today for his work on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 musical epic starring Dick Van Dyke as a kooky inventor, Emett didn't design the movie's titular flying car, but he was responsible for the junkyard gadgets that appeared throughout the film. 

Those props, as it happens, are perfect examples of Emett's "Dream Machines," and the Science Centre's collection includes several that were created for the film, including replicas of the Clockwork Lullaby, the Little Dragon Carpet Cleaner, the Hushabye Hot Air Rocking Chair and the very same Humbug Sweet Machine that appeared on screen. (For those who still have the movie's earworms burrowed into their skulls, that's the invention that cranks out musical "Toot Sweets.")

Emett was a famed illustrator before he began building elaborate kinetic sculptures, and his cartoons about British life were regularly featured in the satirical Punch magazine from 1939 through the '60s. 

"A lot of his sculptures, in a way, are those drawings brought to life," says Pascoa. Even the first Dream Machine of his career could have been lifted directly from one of his wispy-lined illustrations. That invention, The Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway, was a fully operational miniature people-mover that debuted as a train-ride attraction for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Featuring three fanciful locomotives, it was capable of shuttling 1,000 passengers around London's Battersea Park every hour.

As the '50s and '60s progressed, Emett would be commissioned to build more of his Machines for private clients. "Big corporations come to me for things that will make people smile," Emett told the Globe and Mail in a 1968 interview, discussing his work for companies including Shell Oil and Honeywell Computers.

The latter assignment produced one of the Science Centre's most whimsical holdings: Emett's Anglophilic riff on modern computing, the Forget-Me-Not (Peripheral Pachyderm) Computer. (Its memory centre contains storage space for "first love," "mother" and 1066, the year of the Norman conquest.)

By the early '70s, the Science Centre was already hosting exhibits of Emett's Dream Machines, Pascoa says. At first, the works appeared there on loan from Emmet himself, and according to Pascoa, Emmet regularly took his creations on the road during this era, buoyed by the popularity of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

When the movie was being promoted in 1968, copies of Emett's movie props would have been taken on tour to help build some buzz. As he told the Globe and Mail that year, he'd been tasked with building "37 copies of the machines, mostly in sets of five, that tour around to help sell the film." It was a massive assignment, and he told the Globe that he spent 18 months scouring England for the requisite antique parts: turn-of-the-century phonographs, sewing machines, etc.  

Emett and his wife/business manager, Mary, appeared at the Science Centre in person when the Dream Machines were shown there in 1975; featured programming also included daily screenings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. According to Pascoa, Emett likely made the trip so he could oversee the installation of the Machines, but behind the scenes at the Science Centre, the museum's artifacts officer, Albert Colucci, was leading an appeal to acquire Emmet's creations for the permanent collection.

In a letter dated to 1975 that was found by Pascoa, Colucci argues that the Machines would be of enormous value to the Science Centre, writing that their use of pulleys, gears, crank arms and winches is an example of "first class automation" with undeniable visitor appeal. 

"People think they're dotty, but there's a profound logic in these things," Emett told the Toronto Star in a 1975 interview. And indeed, the Ontario Science Centre wasn't the only North American institution interested in nabbing one of his gadgets. They can also be found in the Mid-America Science Museum in Arkansas, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. That said, Toronto holds the curious distinction of being home to the world's largest museum collection of Emmet's Dream Machines.

By 1976, the Science Centre owned six Dream Machines, and according to a Globe and Mail report about that winter's holiday exhibit, the museum paid $72,000 for the lot of them. By 1977, they'd acquired two more: the Forget-Me-Not and the Featherstone-Kite.

More than 45 years later, the Machines continue to delight. "Each year they come out and I learn something new about them, which is fascinating and really a joy to be around," says Pascoa, who oversees the Machines' installation. "It's my favourite time of year, for sure."

As the Machines move downtown for the holiday season, she hopes they inspire a closer look. "I'm really fascinated by the various materials that [Emett] used, and he used many found objects," says Pascoa. "When people spot something like a colander or a teacup … it inspires."

"To see something so large and somewhat intricate move very seamlessly — I think it captures the imagination."