Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia, T., Tread-mill.

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19th-Century American

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Tread-mill.

A wheel driven by the weight of persons treading upon the steps of the periphery. It is usually employed in prisons, where it forms the “hard labor” of persons convicted of crime.

The usual form is a wheel 16 feet long and 5 in diameter, several such wheels being coupled together when necessary for the accommodation of the prisoners. The circumference of each has 24 equidistant steps. Each prisoner works in a separate compartment, and has the benefit of a hand-rail.

The wheel makes two revolutions per minute, which is equivalent to a vertical ascent of 32 feet. The power may be utilized in grinding grain or turning machinery.

The tread-mill is a feature of English prison discipline, and sometimes is not revolved to any useful effect, a brake being simply attached to the axle, forming a seat for the overseer, who graduates the work or speed by moving toward or from the outer end of the lever.

Our transatlantic cousins have an idea, their surplus of labor being so great, that it is poor economy to make prisoners work to any useful end, as it takes employment from the hands of workmen outside, and sets them to stealing, or sends them to the poor-house. The same idea is becoming current here. “There is something rotten in the state of (Denmark?)”

It need hardly be said that the labor comes rather unevenly upon the sick and the well, the weaver and the plowman, the fat and the lean, he that is “as subject to heat as butter, a man of continual dissolution and thaw,” and he that “has a lean and hungry look.” See tread-wheel.

The tread-mill was a Roman institution, and was used for raising water by the work of condemned criminals.

The Chinese also use it to irrigate lands. It was introduced into England as a means of prison discipline by Cubitt, 1817.

1877.

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Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia
Knight, Ed.

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Tread-mill.

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia Knight, Ed.

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Table of Contents:

Tread-mill.

Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia
Knight, Ed.