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?
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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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.
Dude spends a day’s calories to hoist that cut stone 30 feet in the air
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?
I read that the person in the wheel was often blind. It was one way for them to make a living.
So what happened when they weren't blind? Did people just do shifts when blind?
Just get a hot poker and fix the problem
Not very groovy of you to call the guy in the wheel a winch
That's just a misunderstanding. He's a known womanizer, does lots of wenching, but, well, spelling hadn't been standardized at the time the illustration was depicting, so they got the wrong vowel intentionally so as to maintain peak historical authenticity.
i sentence you to three days in the medieval construction crane treadwheel
Kinky
You think this is a punishment? I'd volunteer to be the human hamster.
If people want to see one in action there are using one in guedelon in France. It's a castle being built only using techniques from XIVs century.
If you tour cathedrals be nice to the docent and you might be able to get a look at one of the many cranes built into the cathedral.
I was fully expecting Saddam Hussein
If you play Timberborn, that's a beaver wheel, not a hamster wheel.
The shaming wheel
they really had some poor mf'er climb into the hamster wheel ey
Tom Scott
Is it just me or should he be walking in the other direction to lift that stone up?
Depends whether you think it has the rope coming in on the far side (to the viewer) or the near side. If it's wrapping from the far side then old mate is raising the block, otherwise he's lowering it. The picture is ambiguous enough that it could be seen either way IMO.
I need to build this thing in minecraft now.