LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Robert Hooke: Springs
built 641 days ago
A specific Hooke invention has been fitted to millions of cars, though it is less common now. The universal joint allows one shaft to turn another even when the angle between the shafts changes. Hooke needed to invent this to complete the design of a quadrant to be used for making astronomical observations.
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[I]f he had a weak body, Robert had a keen eye and brain. He made detailed sketches of the plants, animals, farms, rocks, cliffs and sea of the island. And he was fascinated by mechanical toys and clocks. Observing a watchmaker dismantling and fixing the family timepiece, Robert built his own clock, entirely from wooden parts. The boy began to view nature itself as a complex machine, and determined to unlock its secrets.
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Hooke died in March 1703. No portraits of him survive. Like his image, his reputation is somewhat forgotten; yet his diverse skills and originality of thought made him an equal to the most eminent scholars of his day.
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Hooke's researches into combustion and the airpump naturally led him to the physiology of respiration. In this immediately post-Harveian age, physiologists were investigating the relationship between blood circulation and respiration, and the deaths of birds and small animals
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On 8 July 1680, Hooke observed the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. He ran a bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge.[9][10]
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Hooke's language may be archaic, but his meaning is quite modern: Dead wood could be turned to stone by the action of water rich in dissolved minerals, which would deposit minerals throughout the wood. Hooke ... concluded in Micrographiathat the shell-like fossils that he examined really were "the Shells of certain Shel-fishes, which, either by some Deluge, Inundation, earthquake, or some such other means, came to be thrown to that place, and there to be fill'd with some kind of Mud or Clay, or petrifying Water, or some other substance.
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