Hydraulic Press Channel

About

Hydraulic Press Channel is a YouTube channel devoted to compressing and crushing a variety of objects with a high-powered industrial-strength hydraulic press. Since its launch by Finnish factory owner Lauri Vuohensilta in October 2015, the web series has gained online fame and a large audience on YouTube, mainly due to its oddly satisfying appeal.

History

A hydraulic press is a machine that uses a hydraulic cylinder to apply compression force, which is typically used in the field of metalworking.^[2] On October 6th, 2015, Hydraulic Press Channel was launched on YouTube, along with the pilot episode in which the press operator, an anonymous male who appears to have an Eastern European accent, crushes a golf ball using the device. The video received over 1.3 million views within the first five months.^[1]

The channel subsequently released seven more videos throughout October, but went on a hiatus for several months until March 15th, 2016, when one of its episodes titled "Can you fold paper more than 7 times with hydraulic press" was submitted to the /r/videos subreddit, where it received 6,867 points (88% upvoted).^[3] Shortly after the video reached the front page of Reddit and received massive exposure, the account resumed the production on a regular basis and released eight new episodes in the following two weeks, most notably the two instances wherein a hockey puck and the infamous Nokia 3310 cellular phone are put to test.

Since the channel began releasing its episodes on a regular basis in March 2016, a total of 28 episodes have been published as of late May 2016, with an overwhelming majority of them racking up millions of views per video on average. On May 18th, the channel surpassed the mark of one million subscribers on YouTube, a milestone that was promptly celebrated with a special edition of the web series, "Crushing million subscribers milestone (not the play-button since I don't have it yet)."

Online Presence

In 2016, the Hydraulic Press Channel has been featured in articles on Mashable,^[5] Gizmodo,^[6] and Tubefilter.^[7] On March 21st, 2016, Redditor Anthro_Fascist submitted an AMA request^[4] for the creator of the Hydraulic Press Channel videos, with the featured questions "Where do you film your videos?" and "What is the weirdest press request you have gotten?." The request received 31 points. On April 8th, Quartz^[8] released an interview video identifying the mysterious video blogger as Finnish factory owner Lauri Vuohensilta (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References