An Ancient Water Elevator.
In Egypt and other countries where irrigation is practiced to a greater extent than elsewhere, the inventive mind has been alert for centuries, contriving devices of various kinds for elevating water. Some of these, remarks The Scientific American, are so simple that they must have been obvious, while others show an amount of inventive genius worthy of our own century; in fact, as is well known, the fundamental principles of hydraulics were discovered ages since, and some of the early machines have never been materially changed or improved upon.
l'he Egyptian shadoof is a form of water elevator that has been in use from time immemorial, not only in Egypt, but almost all over the world. A device fully as simple as this, but not so old, is a gutter, which was made both single and double. It consisted of a trough pivoted at one end above the level of the water, the free end being alternately dipped in the water and raised, so as to cause it to discharge into a sluice leading away from the machine.
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