Moving water from one place to place to another is going to be an important feature of flow. Here is a video our first attempt to make a semi wooden pump. It worked !
A semi wooden water pump
simon
History of ship-mills
When we were developing the Flow project our first problem was how to make a floating water wheel that worked with the changing levels of the river Tyne. We decided we had to make a floating structure that moved with the tide. We soon found that the floating mill concept was not new. Floating ‘Ship-mills’ were used in proliferation in medieval times.
http://www.histinst.rwth-aachen.de/ext/tma/tema/muehle/sm.htm
A ship-mill uses a water wheel attached between two interconnected floating platforms, one of which often supported the mill-house. The whole floating structure is tethered to the river bank, while the wheel is moved by the passing current. The advantages of this floating arrangement are that it can be moved into the fast flowing areas of rivers and it can work with the changing levels of tidal rivers. It could also be moved to allow larger boats to pass. It is one of the earliest examples of mobile manufacturing technologies.
http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/waterwheels/
Evidence suggests that the Ship-mill concept was first developed by the Romans. In medieval times the Ship-mill had become a common sight throughout Europe. Notably spreading as far as Bagdad, where large ship-mills of iron and wood, were built on the Tigris. Today a hand full of ship-mills exist, Some painstakingly restored. Four of these ‘schiffmuehle’ are in Germany, with other good examples in Austria and Slovakia.
Recently the Ship-mill concept has been put to good use in Baltiore where a working Ship-mill that uses a special conveyor belt to scoop floating debris from the river.
tonazoid
Hydrophonic Periscope
An Owl Project concept model for a hydrophonic periscope for the project flow.
The salmon sees a rock, we see the salmon
simon
The new salinity sampler sequencer
The idea behind this was to try and construct a machine that would dip electrodes in water samples of varying salinity. The notes vary depending on how much electricity passes through the electrodes. So the notes vary according to the saltiness of the water and we can listen to the variations.
Kind of works but needs lots of refining.
simon
The Water Organ
The Water Organ, has an amazing history so I thought I would track some of it here.
Obviously there are hundreds of links... here are some good ones
http://www.pianola.org/history/history_mechanical.cfm
http://herbergeronline.asu.edu/haefer/classes/564/564.papers/curtisjwate...
Here are a few books to hunt down.
New and rare inventions of waterworks - Isaac de Caus.
The English landscape garden Language: English Pagination: 26, 34, xxvi, [4] p: ISBN 10: 0824001788 LCCN: 79057005 Dewey: 714/.0942
Athanasius Kircher wrote a treatise on mechanical music, Musurgia Universalis, published in 1650.
After a bit of hunting around it seems like the whole of this book has been scanned and kindly put up by the university of.
http://imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr/displayimage.php?pos=-185710
Here is an image of a water-powered barrel-operated pipe organ designed by Kircher.
Kircher states that three things are necessary for a water organ: water, air and a recording barrel. The recording barrel is the pinned cylinder common to so many of these instruments.
simon
