Spinning Tops: The "Operatives' Lecture" of the British Association Meeting at Leeds, 6th September, 1890Perry, John
Science
Spinning Tops: The "Operatives' Lecture" of the British Association Meeting at Leeds, 6th September, 1890
Perry, John
Gyro compass; Gyroscopes; Tops
The real full-size car, which he is now constructing, may be pulled with
other cars by any kind of locomotive using electricity or petrol or steam,
or each of the wheels may be a driving wheel. He would prefer to generate
electropower on his train, and to drive every wheel with an electric motor.
His wheels are so independent of one another that they can take very quick
curves and vertical inequalities of the rail. The rail is fastened to
sleepers lying on ground that may have sidelong slope. The model car is
supported by a mono-rail bogie at each end; each bogie has two wheels
pivoted both vertically and horizontally; it runs on a round iron gas pipe,
and sometimes on steel wire rope; the ground is nowhere levelled or cut,
and at one place the rail is a steel wire rope spanning a gorge, as shown
in fig. 2. It is interesting to stop the car in the middle of this rope and
to swing the rope sideways to see the automatic balancing of the car. The
car may be left here or elsewhere balancing itself with nobody in charge of
it. If the load on the car--great lead weights--be dumped about into new
positions, the car adjusts itself to the new conditions with great {144}
quickness. When the car is stopped, if a person standing on the ground
pushes the car sidewise, the car of course pushes in opposition, like an
indignant animal, and by judicious pushing and yielding it is possible to
cause a considerable tilt. Left now to itself the car rights itself very
quickly.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
{145}
[Illustration: FIG. _3^b_ (showing the ground-plan of Fig. 3).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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