
The Mechanical Transmission of Power: Stangenkunst - caiobegotti
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html
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bane
This is really fascinating. When my father was a boy, he worked in the oil
fields of Southern Illinois/Indiana. He described to me roughly how the pumps
worked:

A large single-piston engine, centrally located provided power they looked
more or less like this
[http://www.stationaryengine.org/hornsby1_haddenham_2003.jpg](http://www.stationaryengine.org/hornsby1_haddenham_2003.jpg)

The huge wheel had to be removed by hand every once in a while and greased up.
Apparently it normally took 3-4 burly men. It was backbreaking work.

Attached to the engine through some contraption he was too young to remember
or understand were a number of power transmission rods (that sound like they
might have been what this article is talking about) that went out to the
pumps. A single engine might power a dozen pumps and the pumps might be a mile
away or so from the engine.

The oilman had to make his rounds throughout the day to each pump to make sure
they were working well and keep the flow of oil coming. While out at a pump,
the engine might have problems.

The "diagnostic" was to grab the rod and feel the vibrations. An experienced
oilman could tell what was wrong and the nature of it by these vibrations and
knew if he needed to go back, send a young worker boy (like my father) or
leave it for a bit till he got back later.

Even more experienced oilmen could simply sit at the engine head and grab each
rod and feel if the pumps were misbehaving and dispatch himself or a boy to go
deal with it. This saved miles of walking around to the pumps each day.

It's hard to imagine an oilman, perched a bit like a spider near his engine,
feeling into his web of rods for problems out in fields a mile away, but
that's how it was.

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jcr
There's a second article in their series on mechanical power transmission [1]
and a HN discussion from a couple of years ago [2]

[1] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/02/the-mechanical-
transm...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/02/the-mechanical-transmission-
of-power-jerker-line-systems.html)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5159884)

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akamaka
I heard that the Drake Well Museum in Pennsylvania operates a replica of a
similar system, if you're looking to see one in action:

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well_Museum](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well_Museum)

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jpatokal
Fascinating. Here's a crappy amateur video of one in action at the Gamla
Pershyttans mining museum in Sweden, anybody got a better example?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycN8nR9SD4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycN8nR9SD4w)

------
mkesper
Plural should be Stangenkünste or even more probably Stangenkunstwerke.
(artworks)

~~~
flohofwoe
Künste would be the proper plural, as in this context "Kunst" doesn't mean a
work-of-art, but it is an old meaning mostly used in mining, roughly
'machinery' or 'devices':
[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergm%C3%A4nnische_Kunst](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergm%C3%A4nnische_Kunst)

