Wheels, Pulleys, and Shafts for Water-Powered Drop Forge

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art Hitory, Brown University

Water-Powered Drop Forge. Mid-eighteenth century. Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet. Sheffield, South Yorkshire. Photograph George P. Landow. 1980. [another view.]

The wheels, pulleys, and shafts that drive the hammers whose repeated striking of heated metal (or forging) produced high-quality steel. This combination of wheels, pulleys, gears, and shafts transforms "the pushing, pulling, pressing of the hand into continuous rotation" -- a transformation that Sigfried Gideon terms the "first phase of mechanization" (47).

References

Gideon, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. New York: Norton, 1969.

Last modified: 25 February 2003