abandoned machines and motors (in 1922)

15:28 Mar 7, 2018 

whether Tony's hypothesis of "motors = cars" was right...
During my research on the Internet, I've also found that Feynman work is associated with "molecular machines and motors": I don't know anything about physics and chemistry, but, who knows, maybe in saying "machines and motors", the authors were also been influenced by these discoveries...
Thank you so much for your help!

12:22 Mar 5, 2018 

Charles, thank you so much for your contribution: it's very very helpful and I think I may quote the book in a Translator's Note.
Have a nice week!

21:12 Mar 2, 2018 

And let's not forget that in the UK at least, in informal usage 'motor' is still used for car, as in "Nice motor, mate!" (glottal stop almost obligatory!)

20:23 Mar 2, 2018 

Urban junkyards were very widespread by 1922 and the trade in recycling junk was an organised and institutionalised industry. By the end of the nineteenth century items abandoned in them included "the detritus of farm machinery, household tools and appliances, scrapped vehicles, and retired industrial machinery".

Cars were abandoned by this time:
"In the 1920s, the automobile graveyard became a new, specialized junkyard, where customers could purchase obsolete automobiles for scrap or purchase individual parts off junked automobiles in order to repair other automobiles."
https://books.google.es/books?id=BFaB5xsGbaMC&pg=PA451

So by 1922 there certainly could have been abandoned cars in the junkyard behind Feynman's home (in Queens, NY).

"Motor" was already used to mean "a motor car; an automobile" by 1913.
http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/motor

That meaning is still listed in the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary. Given that this is reporting what Feynman told someone, albeit many years later, I think he could have used the word "motors" to refer to cars, though this is far from certain, of course. It could mean motors from motorised machines or appliances.

19:29 Mar 2, 2018 

have a nice weekend!

19:15 Mar 2, 2018 

If this is a contemporary text, it's unlikely that "motors" means cars, and they mean "motors and other machines".
A junkyard is a place that buys scrap cars and sells the parts. I'm sure they had them in 1922 as well.

18:38 Mar 2, 2018 

it is possible that the words date back to some time ago, but I don't know when exactly.
before, the authors say:
We heard a terrifically illustrative story about Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, from a friend who had met him when she was about fourteen years old. Given the chance to pick his brain, she asked him how he got so smart. He said it was simple. From age four, his parents….

So Feynman's words may not be contemporary...
My doubt, however, is: was it really possible that parents sent a little child in a place where cars were destroyed? Did such places already exist in 1922? Could "junkyard" mean a "junk dealer", instead?

18:20 Mar 2, 2018 

"Machines and motors" is a tautology, because a motor is a machine. Either it's bad writing, which is possible, or it means cars. Of course, cars are machines too...
I agree with Tony that when it was written could be a clue. People don't usually refer to cars as motors these days.

18:19 Mar 2, 2018 

Thanks for your very interesting contribution. Actually, the text is a contemporary one, but I don't know whether the words I mention were used by Feynman.. It's not in the form of a quote, however. By the way, I guess "junkyard" was something "smaller", maybe a sort of shop - a junk dealer - than a modern junkyard where you scrap cars...

17:54 Mar 2, 2018 

Depending on when the text was written, compared to the period being written about, it is quite possible that 'motors' in fact meant 'motor cars' — note that in the early days, they were very often shortened to 'motors' — cf. General Motors and Ford Motor Company.

In your context, that would make a lot more sense than simply non-specific motors of some kind...

15:56 Mar 2, 2018 

I was thinking of "washing machine", "sewing machine"..."household appliances"...