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They couldn't use it as anything else than a toy. The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc.
There's an important lesson that can be applied to every technology, I think: technological progress is always iterated, never revolutionized. If your novelty - a programming language, a framework, a methodology, whatever - doesn't stand on the shoulders of the giants, then you have simply nothing to apply this novelty to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor
edit: I once said this phrase at a work meeting and someone objected to my use of a crude term which I then explained much to everyone's surprise. They thought it had something to do with testicles.
This is from the article, but governors also played a role in kicking off modern control theory! """ In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell studied when these oscillations grow or die away in his paper “On Governors”[https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/old_lite...]. This became one of the beginnings of modern control theory. """
Going balls to the wall means pushing the throttle and mixture all the way in to the firewall/instrument panel for maximum power.
https://www.douglasdc3.com/dc3throt/dc3throt.htm
The choice of wording makes me suspect that they intended both entendres. ;)
Also considering the origins of precision - the intertwined evolution of machining tools and measuring systems that allowed these machines to be built.
RE: 3 year old - yes, mechanical systems are wonderful for children (and adults). There is something incredibly satisfying about watching them in motion doing work.
Highly recommend this primer titled "The Model Engineering Learning Curve" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps_BQJEMnGA
She's been building a model locomotive for years now, there are over 100 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLY67-4BrEae-xhrvZX33gPk4...
One more: a little engine I'd never encountered before called a wobbler is, apparently, the hello world of machining model engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHDrIms7-0
It's a great hobby. Manual machining is totally different from writing code, but you get into a similar state of flow.
Not just in terms of presentation, but also quality.
Amazing!
For other animations I put together a style guide and worked together with Fable to build them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl_UA36ouzM&list=PL2vJ5Cg-wl...
Glad you enjoyed the units :).
One nit: All three animations that show the governor and the flywheel have the governor turning the wrong way, causing the gears that join them to do physically impossible things.
Fix shall be deployed shortly!
For the figures, I had prototyped some by hand, and it was slow going. Fable was the first LLM I found that was actually able to understand and model mechanical linkages correctly enough to be useful. I built a style guide, and iterated many times on each figure and animation until we arrived at something useful. There are also quite a few backing tests to ensure physical correctness of the animations (as far as reasonably possible :).
One of my favorites. Good read.
This is sending me :)
> One cup of water becomes roughly 400 litres of steam, enough to fill two bathtubs
Three units of measurement in one sentence, my favorite unit is bathtubs.
RE: units - Good catch - there is almost certainly a better way to phrase this one. I always tried to give physical examples to make things more concrete. But who knows, maybe the bathtub will take off as a unit :).