Every creature casts a shadow under the sun's golden finger

When graphic artists were called upon to personify gear-wheels as a cartoon character for advertisements, traditionally they showed them with expressions that are at best neutral or inexpressive. This went on for centuries. John Ptak remarked on it:

Anthropomorphic images of the Gear have appeared in books in the West for several hundred years, and in almost every case where the Gear has a face, it is usually expressionless, its mouth drawn into a mid-Western farmer/Abe Lincoln horizontal, a tightly drawn nothing. Two thin lips, firmly repulsing all emotion.

You can understand why the gear in the picture is looking pissed off: the gear-cutting technology of 1543 was so rudimentary that it is stuck with teeth that are impractical if they function at all. The eccentric cam to the right is having a quiet snigger.


See the optimal gear teeth below! The profiles are involutes of a circle, which keep the torque and the rotatory movement constant, as Euler showed in the 18th century amid loud Huzzah!s from the mathematicians and a veritable crescendo of The Explaining Voice.

No wonder the wheel is looking less grumpy. It would probably be even happier but it has just been listening to doleful songs from The Handsome Family about Eurydice in the Garden of Eden.

The eccentric cam is still eccentric.

Alternative title: See the Black Sun rise.