this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Illustrations of history
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This magazine is for sharing artwork of historical events, places, personages, etc. Scale models and the like also welcome!
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That's just way too simplistic. There's no lock, there's no block and tackle, there's no apparent way to get the stone to the wall once it's lifted. Dude spends a day's calories to hoist that cut stone 30 feet in the air and then what? It just dangles there while he's not allowed to go have a pee break?
Hum... 4000kcal is ~16MJ, what would lift about 160 thousand kg by those 10m.
But yeah, it's missing all the components. Also, isn't the wheel supposed to be on the ground? What lifts the wheel into the top of the wall?
They would just build it there. Same way that nobody would lug siege weapons all the way from home - engineers build them onsite.
OK yeah, hyperbole about the work required but can you imagine stepping a 500 pound stone into the air with no mechanical advantage? I'm not sure that a human can even exert that force with their weight.
They would just haul the lumber up and build the machine at the top of the wall
He's walking in a big wheel with a rope wrapping around a small wheel on his axle. That's the mechanical advantage.
Ah, yeah.
So would that work? Can that dude treadmill stones to the top of the apparently 50-60ft wall with that mechanical advantage all day?
Would it help if I whipped him while he did it?