14
votes
Near the end of the Middle Ages a device came into service that helped avid readers: the book carousel or book wheel
Link information
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- Title
- Medieval Book Carousels
- Authors
- Erik Kwakkel
- Published
- Nov 2 2018
- Word count
- 1294 words
The video in the article of the 17th century one in action is pretty neat:
https://videopress.com/v/9yLXdojY
I especially like how each platform stays at the perfect angle as the whole device rotates. There must be some sort of hidden counter-rotating gearing inside it since it doesn't appear the platforms are just free floating.
There's a partial representation of the internal gearing in figure 7 in the article, with 9 gears in the section we can see.
It's always cool to see how advanced things were in the past; for all that they weren't where we are now, humans have always been creative craftsmen and voracious consumers of information.