The Chinese escapement
Speaker 1: This audio is used for the transcriber test at GoTranscript.
Speaker 2: You really should just accept the fact that the use of toothed wheels to transmit power or turn it through an angle was widespread in all cultures several centuries before the beginning of our era. Everybody knows that in classical times they were already familiar to Archimedes, who was born in 287 BC in China.
Actual examples of wheels and molds for wheels have been ferreted out dating from the 4th century BC. These machine gear wheels are characterized by having a round number of teeth, 1624 and 40 teeth are known. Some of them have a shank with a square hole, which fits without turning on a squared shaft.
Another remarkable feature in these early gears is the use of ratchet shaped teeth, sometimes even twisted helically so that the gears resemble words intermeshing on parallel axles. The existence of windmills and watermills testifies to the fact that ever since classical times and through the Middle Ages, mankind not to mention womankind has had a general familiarity with the use of gears to turn power through a right angle.
Speaker 1: This audio is used for the transcriber test at GoTranscript
Speaker 2: The Chinese escapement is justifiably regarded as a missing link. Just about halfway between the elementary Clepsydra, with its steady flow of water and the mechanical escapement, in which time is counted by chopping its flow into cycles of action. Repeated indefinitely and counted by accumulating device with its characteristic of saving up energy for a period of 15 minutes before letting it go in one powerful action.
The Chinese escapement is especially well suited to the driving of jack work, and like some transcribers, I could name but won’t require much energy but only intermittent activity. Now you know. Su Song built the final forms to a well known to clockmakers today after many trials and improvements. This Chinese Astronomical Clock Tower must have been the most impressive object. Yes, it looked exactly like the upright tower from the 16th Trump or the major arcana card in most Italian suited Tarot decks. Unlike the card, of course, the real tower stood about 30 feet high with an observation platform on top covered with the light roof, which must have come in handy during acid rainstorms.
Speaker 1: This audio is used for the transcriber test at GoTranscript