Which, As We All Know
Is Romanian for "Water wanted", because this Intro will be concerning itself with the wet stuff, thanks to one of those inspirational thoughts I bethought myself on the walk into Lesser Sodom this afternoon.
Because the subject matter is less than riveting when rendered pictorially, I think a recourse to the AI image generator is called for. Art!
Hmmmmm. This from the text prompt "Rolls-Royce armoured car in the desert 1941", and it looks more like a Ford of the Light Car Patrols from First Unpleasantness vintage.
Not totally tangential, because what do deserts lack? No! not Choc Full O'Nuts on every street corner - deserts lack WATER (and streets, and street corners*).
This very obvious fact may be rather lost on the inhabitants of This Sceptred Isle, for we are notoriously not short of water, either in running form or as precipitation. In fact - Art!
We have such a superfluity of it that water has been used as a motive source for millennia, because you're never going to run out of it, and it's also free, although I bet local councils have ways of charging you for it's use.
ANYWAY back to the 'Shaduf', which is what triggered this typically meandering Intro.
Here an aside. It's about a river, so that makes it okay. The River Maeander was a very wiggly river known to be so across the ancient world, thanks to hydrodynamics, rather resembling a snake having a fit. Art!
Now back to your scheduled broadcast. Art!
The problem to be solved here is raising water in quantity from a river, well or canal, and depositing it to a higher elevation, typically fields of crops that need irrigating. Yes yes yes, you can do it with a bucket, for a few minutes until you're absolutely fagged-out; or a bucket chain, which requires lots of people, who will probably want compensating for their time and effort.
A shaduf takes the effort out of lifting water thanks to the counterweight, so you may get bored or suffer Repetitive Strain Injury long before doing your back in, always a plus in my eyes. As you can tell from the colour photograph, the shaduf is still used in Egypt as it's dead simple, very efficient and why re-invent the wheel? Art!
Here is another, more modern way of moving water in large volumes from a lower to a higher elevation: the Archimedes Screw, allegedly invented by him circa 200 BC, a positive johnny-come-lately compared to the Shaduf, which has been around for 3,000 years. The screw, when rotated, will carry water up the helix and dump it in another location. One variant is to enclose the screw in a tube, to prevent accidental spillage. When hand-cranked the AS can be operated until the operator gets tired, or, if we are talking mid-19th century onwards, an engine can be used to turn the crank indefinitely. Art!
A third solution to the problem of raising water to height, this time using a horse or other quadruped. You can see that Dobbin turns a crankshaft, which drives a waterwheel, which lifts the wet stuff up and dumps it in a higher channel. From there gravity and kinetic energy will allow it to be used as either an irrigation source, or for motive power.
You've had the sweet (water) and now for the Savery. Art!
This was an ingenious method of raising water to height, using steam as motive power. Steam forced water out of the Cylinder until the valve at A was closed. As the steam cooled, it created a partial vacuum, sucking in water from the pipe leading to the (flooded) mine. The valve at D was closed and that at B opened, with the boiler being fired up again. This forced accumulated water out of the Cylinder and from the pipe entirely. Patented in 1698, it was known as the "Savery Engine" and was intended to remove floodwater from subterranean mine workings. Art!
This is a Newcomen steam engine, with puny human for scale. Obviously - of course! - it is enormous and complex and a whole lot more costly than a shaduf. On the other hand, it could drain water from mines and thus allow them to function, which the Shaddy cannot do.
That's quite enough H₂O under the bridge. We will now move on.
You What?
Occasionally Conrad comes across a picture with caption that is sufficiently odd to catch my attention, leading to pictures being copied. Art!
I think a few still from the Youtube clip might enlighten us. Art!
That might be a slag pot, full of slag, which I believe is molten gunk not wanted in the casting or forging process. Art!
Here pressure is being applied via a powered ram, which progressively increases the pressure. Art!
The piston finally shatters the outer core of the 'skull'? and breaks it apart, allowing the molten interior to break free. Art!
Skull demolished. I think we are all better-informed than we were five minutes ago.
"The War Illustrated Edition 198 19th January 1945"
What do we have in today's commentary on what the public were being told, or admitted, on the Allied side of the lines? Art!
This mobile metal marine mountain is HMS 'Howe', a 35,000 ton beast dwarfing the felucca in the foreground; the big ship is far away, Donald, and the little ship is close to us.
The Battle of the Atlantic having been effectively won two years previously, and with the land campaign in North-West Europe entering the last stretch, there was good reason to send the 'Howe' to the Far East. It was anticipated at this date that there would be an amphibious landing on the Japanese home islands, which required a whole new British fleet out in the seas there.
Early Christmas Present
Conrad is unsure if he's bothered you with the demise of our elderly Foreman Grill, which had been suffering power lead problems for weeks until finally giving up the good fight and being consigned to the bin.
However - my favourite word! - as one door closes, another opens. This metaphor causes draughts but allows exposition. Art!
I would counter that the size of the grill is more of a rate-limiting factor than my imagination, thank you very much. You're talking to the inventor of 'Sprong', the miracle metal suitable for all your domestic and light engineering needs, and the word 'scrivel'. I rest my case, Your Honour.
No picture of the grill itself as I plan to 'test-drive' it this evening by doing a couple of burgers on it, so you may well rue complaining about lack of photographs here and now when tomorrow arrives.
"Fear The Walking Dead"
Conrad got this at the charity shop last week and it joined the increasing number of DVDs in my Film & TV Mountain. It hails from 2015, which slightly stunned me, as I have never seen any episodes of FTWD and knew nothing about it. Nine years ago? This DVD is the complete first season, set in the world of "The Walking Dead" but as things begin to unravel, not weeks afterwards. Art!
Starring Cliff Curtis, that ever-dependable Antipodean, and a bunch of other people.
Finally -
Better go stake my claim to the kitchen to start that photo-essay.
* And Choc Full o'Nuts, just to be completist about things.
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