Technology for Luddites
Looking for an even more efficient cargo vehicle than a Chinese wheelbarrow? Try a handcart on rails. The light railway shown on the pictures below was built during the early 20th century in Ghana, then a British Colony called Gold Coast. The human powered railway was used for conveying cocoa from the factory in Akuse to the river barges on the Valta river.
Source: EngRailHistory.
Phonebloks is a modular smartphone that’s designed to outlast the throwaway phones of today. Previously: How to make everything ourselves: open modular hardware.
Ethan Schlussler of Sandpoint, Idaho, built this clever bicycle-powered treehouse elevator to make it easier to reach his nearly 30-foot-high treehouse. “I got tired of climbing a ladder six and a half million times a day, so I made a bicycle powered elevator to solve this problem,” he writes. See and read more at Make. More pedal powered machines.
“Instead of a big solar oven that adapts to our conventional idea of cooking, The GoSun requires a bit of adaptation of our diet. But that really is a feature, not a bug; it can be a healthier diet with less food waste.” Read more: GoSun stove reinvents solar cooking.
Mid-nineteenth century, water motors operated by tap water became a valuable power source in addition to hand and foot powered machines. Most of these small-scale water motors for indoor use were Pelton turbines, which are up to 90% efficient regardless of their size.
A demonstration of how water power may be used efficiently even on a very small scale is the water-powered fire alarm. The device is still for sale today. Buildings protected by sprinkler systems often have outside alarm bells that are activated by very small Pelton turbines on the other side of the wall.
The hydro-mechanical device signals the flow of water in an automatic sprinkler system. The main flow of water lifts a valve that sends a small amount of water to the little turbine, sounding the bell. The great advantage for fire protection is that the system works independent of electricity.
Picture: a water-powered fire alarm. Source: The Reliable Automatic Sprinkler Co. Via The Museum of Retrotechnology.
Some machines require both power and water. A household example is the washing machine. By using a small water wheel, the water that is needed to wash the clothes can also serve to power the machine. Washing machines powered by water from the town mains were quite common in the early decades of the twentieth century. The pictures show a portable American model called the “Washerette” (see it in operation in this video). It was connected to a faucet and put on the sink or bathtub so that exhaust water could be easily captured. The images were found at Smokstak.
