The tools of the computer age are typically just methods to represent information. Programming languages and data structures are the hammers and wrenches we use today to create much of the world we inhabit. These information age tools lack the tangible aesthetics of industrial age tools.
The photos below were taken at Carbon Industrial Design in Alexandria, Virginia. Carbon recycles parts of old factories, as art and as furniture. I love the heft of the old tools, and the sense that they have done real work, building things of permanent substance, not things that can disappear with a key stroke.
A Brace of Wrenches
Long Pipe Wrench