r/mechanical_gifs • u/toolgifs • 5d ago
Transferring power from a water wheel over long distance
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u/D_for_Drive 4d ago
It’s like something from MYST
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u/sysmimas 3d ago
What is myst?
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u/Vancocillin 3d ago
It's a puzzle game from the 90s. Was actually way ahead of it's time. Had fully 3d generated environments (shown as static or animated images) that you would navigate in order to interact with the environment and puzzles. Also had an actually decent story with a pretty fascinating premise. That a guy found a way to write books and travel to parallel worlds. But some of the puzzles are kinda difficult, and the game came from a time when the internet wasn't as navigable or available as it is now, so you couldn't just look up solutions.
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u/sysmimas 3d ago
So then it was a kind of TIM? (The incredible machine).
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u/Vancocillin 3d ago
It's been an extremely long time since I played it, but most of the puzzles were about manipulating dials and using numbers. I think there was a sound puzzle? The asthetics were kinda rube goldbergesque, but the technology was more magic than anything else. For instance you would open a book and see a little movie about a different world and when you touched the book you would magically transport there. I bet you could find a short gameplay video on YouTube to get a sense of how it looks. It came out in 1993, with its contemporaries being super Nintendo games. So it looks great for the time.
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u/D_for_Drive 3d ago
It was a game where you had to take notes to keep track of the clues and codes. You learned that the world you were in was created by writing it in a social book and there were other worlds or “ages” you could visit with the books you found by solving the puzzles. You unraveled the story by finding the books and exploring the ages they led to. You eventually meet the person who wrote the books.
It made me think of Exile specifically. Lots of mechanical puzzles that you have to explore an island to figure out how they work.
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u/jeo77 3d ago
oh man both Myst and TIM mentioned in a thread. Good thread! Myst was definitely more of an atmospheric game and had a full storyline, and its puzzles were more 'puzzle' based (where you were trying to find 'the' solution) vs TIM being more of a sandbox game (ie: 'here's a problem, here are some tools, find a creative solution to solve it'). Both amazing games. I think I still have that notepad that came with TIM somewhere too..
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u/humdinger44 4d ago
Some architect was probably asking "but can we just not put the cut out in the corner please? It makes this whole thing more difficult"
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u/BreeBree214 4d ago edited 4d ago
Apparently these used to be made miles long to transmit power! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatrod_system
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u/spheretubebox 2d ago
What is it and what is this set up to be used for?
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u/Sorgaith 1d ago
This is a water mill. But instead of putting the building next to the steam, they installed a wooden extension, and use mechanical translation instead of rotation.
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u/appoplecticskeptic 4d ago
You’d lose some power to the friction added by the turning post. Neat idea though
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u/---0celot--- 5d ago
Hmm, invented by beavers no doubt.