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6 practice locks from simple to complex. I was fascinated by locks -- the engineering is beautiful. Pin tumbler, wafer, disc detainer. Legal to own, useful to understand, excellent for developing mechanical intuition.

A box of precision brass gears, cams, shafts, and springs. The same components I designed for the Analytical Engine. Build a clock, a music box, or a mechanical calculator. Or redesign them three times and never finish. Either way, the gears are beautiful.

A set of Jacquard punch cards and a demonstration reader. These are the ancestors of computer programs -- patterns encoded in holes. The loom doesn't think. It follows the card. The card is the algorithm. Babbage borrowed the idea. I wrote the first algorithm for it.

Good trail runners. I nearly qualified for the 1948 Olympics with a 2:46 marathon. Running clears the mind better than any computer. Take them for a long run and think about impossible problems.

Working replica of the Wehrmacht 3-rotor Enigma. 159 quintillion possible settings. Type a letter, the rotors turn, the lampboard lights up the encrypted letter. I broke it with logic, not brute force. Try to crack a message yourself -- I'll give you hints.

Small tin sheets, oil paints, fine brushes. Everything for painting retablos -- the small votive paintings I collected and was inspired by. Paint your miracle, your gratitude, your survival. The format is tiny. The feeling is enormous.

Forget flattering yourself. Paint what's real. The scars, the joy, the fury, the love. We work in oil or acrylic on small canvases. I'll teach you about color symbolism from Mexican folk art -- what red means, what blue means, why I put monkeys and parrots in my paintings. Bring a mirror. Bring honesty.

Four hearing devices from different periods of my deafness, faithfully reproduced. From the early brass cone to the elaborate conversation devices Johann Maelzel built for me. A sobering reminder that the most famous music in history was composed in silence.

Replica of my Walter fortepiano -- the instrument I actually played, not a modern Steinway. Lighter action, clearer tone, closer to what I heard when I composed. Perfect for performing Mozart, Haydn, early Beethoven the way it was meant to sound.

Learn to write a fugue. Two voices, then three, then four. Each voice independent, all voices together forming something greater than the sum. This is not just music theory -- it's how to think in parallel. Programmers love it. Every thread independent, every thread synchronized.

Franco-Flemish double-manual harpsichord. Two 8-foot registers, one 4-foot. Proper temperament for Baroque repertoire. I wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier to prove every key was playable. This instrument proves it. Tuning included -- I'll come tune it at your venue.

MIG welder, 200A, gas/gasless. Good for steel, stainless, aluminum with the right wire. NOT for beginners -- you need to know what you're doing or book a training session.

Mike Kenel

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