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Early designs of perpetual motion machines were done by Indian mathematician–astronomer Bhaskara II, who described a wheel (Bhāskara's wheel) that he claimed would run forever. [2] A drawing of a perpetual motion machine appeared in the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, a 13th-century French master mason and architect.
In medieval and ancient philosophy, the Wheel of Fortune or Rota Fortunae is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna ( Greek equivalent: Tyche ) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls.
The Charon zoetrope is built to resemble and rotate in the same kinetic fashion as a ferris wheel, stands at 32 feet high, weighs 8 tons and features twenty rowing skeleton figures [40] representing the mythological character, Charon, who carries souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx.
The wagon-wheel effect (alternatively called stagecoach-wheel effect) is an optical illusion in which a spoked wheel appears to rotate differently from its true rotation. The wheel can appear to rotate more slowly than the true rotation, it can appear stationary, or it can appear to rotate in the opposite direction from the true rotation ...
The Spinning Wheel is also the title/subject of a classic Irish folk song by John Francis Waller. [51] [52] A traditional Irish folk song, Túirne Mháire, is generally sung in praise of the spinning wheel, [53] but was regarded by Mrs Costelloe, who collected it, [54] as "much corrupted", and may have had a darker narrative. It is widely ...
By 1709 a German optician and glass grinder named Themme (or Temme) made moving lantern slides, including a carriage with rotating wheels, a cupid with a spinning wheel, a shooting gun, and falling bombs. Wheels were cut from the glass plate with a diamond and rotated by a thread that was spun around small brass wheels attached to the glass wheels.
The Wheel of Death, in the context of the impalement arts, is a classic moving target stunt sometimes performed by knife throwers. The thrower's assistant or target girl is secured, (usually by the limbs and tied by rope), to a large, generally circular, target board that is free to spin about its center point. As the target rotates the thrower ...
WHEE-LO is a trademark for a handheld toy that propels a plastic wheel along both sides of a metal track with magnets built into the wheel. As the track is tilted up and down, the wheel rolls the length of the track, top and bottom, and then again on the opposite side of the wire.