The Bookwheel, invented in 1588 by Italian engineer Agostino Ramelli, was a heavy, 600-pound wooden rotating bookcase that let scholars easily use up to eight open books at once. It had a clever gear system to keep the books upright as the wheel turned by hand, saving time for readers who didn’t have to fetch books from shelves. Featured in Ramelli’s book of machines, it was a creative Renaissance tool for studying, though it’s uncertain how many were actually made.
The Bookwheel, invented in 1588 by Italian engineer Agostino Ramelli, was a heavy, 600-pound wooden rotating bookcase that let scholars easily use up to eight open books at once. It had a clever gear system to keep the books upright as the wheel turned by hand, saving time for readers who didn’t have to fetch books from shelves. Featured in Ramelli’s book of machines, it was a creative Renaissance tool for studying, though it’s uncertain how many were actually made.
instagram.comWhen the twentieth century began, there were very few bookstores and libraries. Many books were sold by “subscription.” Publishers’ representatives literally went door to door soliciting orders.
This required the construction of “millwork”—assemblies of gears, shafts, belts, and pulleys for transmitting and regulating power.
Earlier forms of printing had merely streamlined writing in the same way that Roman numerals streamlined tallying: each page was engraved on a printing plate and thus all the symbols on it could be copied in a single action. But, given a supply of movable type with several instances of each letter, one does no further metalwork.
Compared with previous vehicles, from war chariots to fancy coaches, the omnibus was far more egalitarian. Its popularity signaled the democratization, at long last, of wheeled transport. It had taken more than five thousand years since the invention of the first wheel. In 1623 the poet John Taylor had declared that “The World runnes on Wheeles.” T
... See moreNot only do the spinning wheels retain direction toward a target, but a spinning wheel also stores great energy or power
