In daily driving and even high-performance racing, it can be extremely easy to take for granted all the incredible feats of engineering taking place in your vehicle. The automobile is an amazingly intricate puzzle, with all the many pieces working in symphony to give us the car as we know it.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who get behind the wheel have little to no understanding of what it is that takes place when they turn the key, or when they press on the accelerator, or even when they turn on the A/C. But nevertheless, a myriad of incredible laws and principles of physics are being exercised around us every time we start driving.

One the most fundamental and unchanging of these intricacies is the transmission. As is made obvious from the video, an informational segment from way back in 1936, your transmission is absolutely vital- without it, your car is essentially useless. This much you probably already knew; but whether you’re familiar with the inner workings of a transmission or not, videos like this one are a refreshing look into the simple beauty of the good old-fashioned gearbox.

While much of the modern car is either a refined or revolutionized form of things utilized in even the earliest automobiles, the manual transmission is one thing that’s remained fairly constant. Though nowadays advances have been made both in the name of performance (such as dual-clutch systems and billet steel or aluminum flywheels) and efficiency (such as the use of hollow shafts and advanced lubrication systems), the basic structural design and concept hasn’t changed a whole lot. In a time where the typical car is equivalent to a NASA space-shuttle when compared to the cars of 50 years ago, its kind of nice to see how similar they are.