Machine for excavating earth.

b f - m n

The pole has the advantage of being able to descend as low as the wheel must descend in order to reach the bottom of the water in the marsh.

Here the calculation of the power is not set down for the present. But you, reader, are to understand that this has utility, which arises from the shortening of time; which shortening arises because the instrument that carries the earth from below to above is always at the task of carrying, and never returns back empty. The adversary says in this case that it is as much wasted to pour out and go round without benefit as to return back in the same time as its going forward. But since the spans of lost time, interposed among the spans of useful time, are equal in this and in all other inventions, here one must seek a way in which the time may be spent in the most valid and useful operation possible, which will be to find an instrument that f may take up more ground, as will be shown here, behind this page.

The turning of the handle n turns a pinion, and this pinion turns the toothed wheel f, and this wheel f is joined to the cross of the buckets, carrier of the earth of the swamp, which discharges onto the boats. But the two ropes m f and m b wind onto the pole f and make the instrument travel with the 2 boats toward m; and these ropes are most useful for such a task, etc.