Bucket-wheel for raising water, with lever ratios
A lever-driven wheel emptying a cistern, its dimensions, load savings, and a small laundry inventory
On blue-tinted paper Leonardo designs a lever-and-wheel machine for lifting water out of a cistern (bottino), sketched as a large pen wheel inside a big circle with attendant calculations. He specifies levers and counter-levers, wheel diameters, spoke counts and bucket weights, computing how much load can be saved: buckets of 40 pounds save some 28,000 pounds, and making a b a quarter of a c saves 70,000. He advises boarding-in the descending side so the water does not impede the spokes. In the upper-right corner an unrelated household list of linen (a towel, tablecloth, napkin, cloths, sheets and shirts) is jotted down.
On this page
Water-raising wheel emptying a cistern
Wheel a b raises water into the cistern while wheel a c descends with water drawn out; f n is the cistern's height, f d the bucket and f g the water level. The wheel is to have 104 spokes with a n at 11 parts and n c at 26, buckets of 40 pounds each, and the descending run c n boarded over so the water does not hinder the spokes.
Lever and counter-lever proportions
One setting makes the lever 40, the counter-lever 2 1/2, the wheel 5 and buckets a quarter, 2 braccia long, with the counter-lever rising a quarter and the loaded lever falling 4 braccia. A second instrument has a 30-braccia lever and 3-braccia counter-lever: the counter-lever raises half a braccio, the lever 5, and the wheel is 6 braccia.
Household linen inventory
A brief list in the upper-right corner tallies one hand-towel, one tablecloth, one napkin, six cloths with the hand-towel, one pair of sheets and two shirts. It is unrelated to the machine occupying the rest of the sheet.