home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Handle bent at right angles and connected to
- the shaft of a machine; it is used to
- transmit motion or convert
- reciprocating (back-and-forwards or
- up-and-down) movement into rotary movement,
- or vice versa. The earliest recorded use of a
- crank is in a water-raising machine by
- al-Jazari in the 17th century, 200 years
- before it appeared in Europe.
-