I’m thinking of things like waterwheels, windmills, millstones, etc- these systems would presumably have a lot of force running through them, such that stopping them for maintenance or replacement would seem difficult to do and maybe even damage the system. So what kind of mechanisms back in the day did people put in place to stop energy from moving through the machine at a given point? How do you successfully get two gears that are actively engaged to be safely uncoupled, for lack of a better word?
In: Engineering
Specifically for a windmill, consider that it uses a really heavy grindstone. There’s a lot of energy involved here, but the grindstone is not moving very fast. Engaging in disengaging gears is a relatively simple here compared to engines that move much faster.
Specifically for a water wheel, I visited a farm from a couple centuries ago, and that water wheel could be raised up and pulled out of the stream. In a way, this is also disengaging a gear, but without the material damage because the water doesn’t particularly damage the wheel when it starts catching.
Also, don’t forget that back in the day people didn’t do things efficiently or safely by today’s standards. A lot of things people did, they just did it and then fixed it if they ended up breaking things. There wasn’t a lot of forethought when the technology was relatively new, that came much later with lots of experience and frustration about having to constantly fix things.
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