Mechanical Advantage Quotes

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.

The height of the pulleys from the ground was twelve yards, and consequently, when the weights had descended through that distance, they had to be wound up again in order to renew the motion of the paddle.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

For most purposes, a man with a machine is better than a man without a machine.

I loved my computer; it's a tool. A tool increases your mechanical advantages. It allows you to use your strengths and talents to greater advantage, and that's what tools do, and that's what my computer does for me. It's not my toy, it's my tool.

Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World.'

Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum? Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth!

Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.

In turning from the smaller instruments in frequent use to the larger and more important machines, the economy arising from the increase of velocity becomes more striking.

A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still.

When a body acts upon another one, it is always immediately or through some intermediate body; this intermediate body is in general what one calls a machine.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man's back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

The animal frame, though destined to fulfill so many other ends, is as a machine more perfect than the best contrived steam-engine-that is, is capable of more work with the same expenditure of fuel.

As I was working I noticed that the way I designed the differential gearing actually created a spare drive that sat directly below the emperor's feet, or where they would be if he were to sit in the chariot.

Anglers who see fish exceptionally well can fish successfully in less productive water than anglers who don't. Fishermen love equipment and are always looking for mechanical advantages, but there is nothing to compare with learning to see well; if you see well enough, you can walk out in the mud with no boat and catch fish.

When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of its momentum. When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing.

A hundred thousand men, coming one after another, cannot move a Ton weight; but the united strength of 50 would transport it with ease.

The difference between "machines" and "engines" is obviously this, that machines need more workmen and greater power to make them take effect, as for instance ballistae and the beams of presses. Engines, on the other hand, accomplish their purpose at the intelligent touch of a single workman...

Confined to the use of his own physical power, man is one of the most helpless animals. In proportion to his size and requirements, he is unquestionably very weak and slow. But the superiority of his organism consists precisely in the aptitude of his brain and the fitness of his hands for the contrivance and use of mechanical devices, through which he may take from nature, by artifice, those forces in which he is naturally wanting