¶ Lever: Fallen Tree as a Lever
← Lever: Fallen Tree as a Lever | Layer: Fallen Tree as a Lever →
Index Entry
Lever: Fallen Tree as a Lever:
"budge it. But standing back on the fallen tree, sure enough he can lift it. Now I suspect this man must have gone to his family with talk of a magic tree, a very special tree that would be brought home and kept around for a number of generations. But then one day someone must have found that any tree would do. Now, as a generalization, that is the beginning of the lever.
“With that lever, man was able to move things he couldn’t move with his own muscle. He began to move large rocks around and develop monumental defenses. Then the great pirates began to use levers in big ways. They set their slaves to rowing ships, which now could go windward with the rowing ship (something the wind alone would not let them do). They then began to have very much bigger ships, and they had to find a way to anchor them. The anchor, which of course had to be recovered when not in use, was made of metal and was very heavy. So they developed those same levers into a capstan around a shaft that the slaves pushed around horizontally-- and up came the anchor. Later, man found that he could turn the shaft around vertically and from this came water wheels. Man had time and again felt the potential force of falling water (under water falls and so forth).”
