AN IMPROVED WATER WHEEL
Year: 1874

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Ferdinand Gambette at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
21st April 1874.
I, FERDINAND GAMBETTE, of Floury-sur-Andelles, in the Department
of Eure (France), Mechanist, do hereby declare the nature of the said
Invention for "AN IMPROVED WATER WHEEL," to be as follows :-
Among the number of causes which are prejudicial to the working of
hydraulic wheels is the friction of the shafts in their bearings, and
shocks which result from the free play left in the axles. These are incon-
veniences which I have had before me when contriving the new wheel,
which forms the object of my present application for Patent, and in
which the principle consists in the total suppression of the shaft or axle
of the ordinary hydraulic wheel.
In my new arrangement of an axial wheel or a wheel without an axis
on which to rotate, I replace the central point of support of the said axis
by a circumferential support produced with the aid of interior rollers
guiding the felloe of the wheel with relation to two external toothed
wheels, which serve directly for the transmission of the motive power.

page_text: In this manner I substitute for the sliding friction of the central shaft
in its bearings a rolling friction of the above mentioned wheel, which
only causes an almost inappreciable passive resistance.
I also arrange for the utilization of the hydraulic power an arm of a
lever of much greater length than usual, since instead of the length of a
ray of a wheel circle it has almost the length of the diameter.
These advantages as well as the mode of construction of my anaxial
wheel will be well understood from the following description:―The
whcel is formed chiefly of two crown wheels of cast iron, each composed
of four segments bolted together. These crown wheels are cast with a
smooth edge or felloe in the interior, and with teeth on the exterior.
Between the cheeks of the crown wheels are arranged in the ordinary
manner the buckets or troughs fastened upon a piece from a plate of
slicet iron applied upon the internal projections of the crown wheels.
In order to give strength and solidity to the wheel I bind together the
crown wheels by crossed iron stays to a double concentric wheel or circle.
The wheel is embraced at two sides by the rollers which are mounted
upon the same axis passing through the wheel, and which support them-
selves at their circumference upon the smooth internal surface of the
felloc, the external part of which is as has been before explained, formed
with teeth and gears at cach side into two toothed wheels mounted upon
the same shaft, and actuated by the same motive pulley.
The installation of my new wheel can of course be endlessly varied so
ns to suit the necessities of the place where it may be desired to crect
one. In one already crected as an experiment the anaxial wheel is
keyed as it were between two zig-zag walls supporting the bearings in
which the shafts of the toothed wheels and rollers respectively revolve.
A canal leading downwards provides the water through an orifice
regulated by means of a sluice, so situated as to lead the water on the
wheel at a point a little below the straight line passing through its true
and false centre, and the water after having effected its work falls into a
canal for conveying it away, leaving the wheel at the lowest actual
point..