You live in an agrarian society, where muscles, either human or animal, powers everything. From digging your wells, to pull your carts and wagons. Muscles power does it. As your society progresses and grows, you get to a point where in order to provide all the materials you need to live, you need some way of transferring more power than your body or your draft animal's bodies can provide.
At first you notice either the wind or the water moving things. And a thought forms. If the wind or the water can move things, why can't it do it for me? Through imaginative thinking, your society builds either a windmill or a water wheel. And while you can use the power it generates for you. It has limitations. You need a way to transfer the power your wind mill or water wheel is generating. But how will you do that?
The three articles linked below show you a methods of power transmission and it's various refinements through the years.
I hope you will find them as interesting as I did.
The Mechanical Transmission of Power (1): Stangenkunst
The Mechanical Transmission of Power (2): Jerker Line Systems
The Mechanical Transmission of Power (3): Endless Rope Drives
As a kid I remember walking through old oil fields that had Jerker line rods strewn about. I didn't know what they were until I read the article on it. Very ingenious thinking behind that.
Maybe if we used some of these old technologies today, we might find them more affordable and more needed.
That was a cool series of articles.
ReplyDeleteThanks!