this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
296 points (99.3% liked)
Illustrations of history
1460 readers
49 users here now
This magazine is for sharing artwork of historical events, places, personages, etc. Scale models and the like also welcome!
Generally speaking, actual photos of a historical item should go to !historyartifacts@lemmy.world
Photos of ruins should go to !historyruins@lemmy.world
Photos of the past should go to !HistoryPorn@lemmy.world
founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's just way too simplistic. There's no lock, there's no block and tackle, there's no apparent way to get the stone to the wall once it's lifted. Dude spends a day's calories to hoist that cut stone 30 feet in the air and then what? It just dangles there while he's not allowed to go have a pee break?
And where's the donut dangling in front of the guy in the hamster wheel? Horrible representation...
The dangling donut was actually an innovation of the Dutch (who invented the donut); before that, hamster wheels had to make do with only 12% the efficiency of later hamster wheels.
Also with no ratcheting preventing backspin every once in a while that poor sap in the wheel would miss a step or something and then go for one hell of a ride.
Isn't a ratcheting mechanism sort of implied with it being labeled as a winch though?
No. Ratcheting stops are one form of winch break (and definitely the most common in modern winches) but it’s not a mandatory inclusion. A winch is just a rope around a drum.
There's a gentleman over there with a dry boat hook, to pull the block stage left. As far as a lock, perhaps there's a slot and a peg going into the floor beneath the wheel?
Ah, I saw it wrong. I thought that was dude on the ground but this block is already 50ft in the air. Thanks.
Oh I see it. The guy with the hook is on a wall, and you can see lower down the even smaller guy. Guy with the hook pulls it toward him and the wall.
Hum... 4000kcal is ~16MJ, what would lift about 160 thousand kg by those 10m.
But yeah, it's missing all the components. Also, isn't the wheel supposed to be on the ground? What lifts the wheel into the top of the wall?
They would just build it there. Same way that nobody would lug siege weapons all the way from home - engineers build them onsite.
OK yeah, hyperbole about the work required but can you imagine stepping a 500 pound stone into the air with no mechanical advantage? I'm not sure that a human can even exert that force with their weight.
They would just haul the lumber up and build the machine at the top of the wall
He's walking in a big wheel with a rope wrapping around a small wheel on his axle. That's the mechanical advantage.
Ah, yeah.
So would that work? Can that dude treadmill stones to the top of the apparently 50-60ft wall with that mechanical advantage all day?
Would it help if I whipped him while he did it?
also doesn't show what powers the machine. looks like ai bs to me.
No, it's the dude in the hamster wheel.
ha! i totally didn't see that guy. i hereby recant my ai accusation, but it's still a very silly picture.
The entire right half of the picture is the "power source".
yeah, i didn't see the dude in the wheel. don't worry - i'm already eating shit for it in another thread ;)
As long as your sporting a smile while eating it, rock on brother