I bet you'd love the simplicity/complexity and engineering in the old German made Heidelberg letterpresses I work on Onyma.

Here's a great example of their near perfectness in engineering: these machines at different points within their operation require air blast and vacuum to be present, which the machines generate by themselves in a timed fashion so that air blast is present when needed as is vacuum, but only when needed within the operational stroke of the machine.

They achieve this with a single chambered mechanically driven air pump which is nothing but a cylinder with a piston inside it. The operation and porting of this pump is timed in such a way that when air blast is required it gets it from the side of the cylinder where the piston is advancing and compressing the air in front of the piston. Vacuum is then achieved by porting from the opposite side of the piston where it is at the same time creating a vacuum as the piston travels away from the vacuum port. This is nothing short of sheer genius in its simplicity!

These machines are so amazing from a mechanical standpoint I fell in love with 'em as soon as I saw one in operation