Windlass

Uses

• Vitruvius, a military engineer writing about 28 BC, defined a machine as "a combination of timber fastened together, chiefly efficacious in moving great weights". About a century later, Hero of Alexandria summarized the practice of his day by naming the "five simple machines" for "moving a given weight by a given force" as the lever, windlass, screw for power, wedge, and tackle block (pulley). Until nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was held that these "five mechanical powers" were the building blocks from which all more complex assemblages were constructed.
• During the Middle Ages the windlass was used to raise materials for the construction of buildings such as in Chesterfield's crooked spire church.
• A windlass cocking mechanism on crossbows was used as early as 1215 in England, and most European crossbows had one by the Late Middle Ages.
• Windlasses are sometimes used on boats to raise the anchor as an alternative to a vertical capstan (see anchor windlass).
• The handle used to open locks on the UK's inland waterways is called a windlass.
• Windlasses can be used to raise water from a well. The oldest description of a well windlass, a rotating wooden rod installed across the mouth of a well, is found in Isidore of Seville's (c. 560–636) Origenes (XX, 15, 1–3).
• Windlasses have also been used in gold mining. A windlass would be constructed above a shaft which allowed heavy buckets to be hauled up to the surface. This process would be used until the shaft got below 40 metres deep, when the windlass would be replaced by a "whip" or a "whim".