epicycloidal wheel

English

Noun

epicycloidal wheel (plural epicycloidal wheels)

  1. A device for producing straight-line motion from circular motion, on the principle that a pin fastened in the periphery of a gear wheel will describe a straight line when the wheel rolls around inside a fixed internal gear of twice its diameter.
    • 1911, “Calculating Machines”, in Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, New York, N.Y.: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.:
      The racks gear directly in the A-wheels, and the figures are placed on cylinders as in the Brunsviga. The carrying is done continuously by a train of epicycloidal wheels. The working is thus rendered very smooth, without the jerks which the ordinary carrying tooth produces; but the arrangement has the disadvantage that the resulting figures do not appear in a straight line

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “epicycloidal wheel”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

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