The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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all the water that it can raise in two turns, because at the half  
turn of the wheel it would be raising 100 pounds and no more; and if  
it had to raise the whole, 200 pounds in one turn, it could not  
raise them unless the wheel were of double the diameter and if the  
diameter were doubled, the time of its revolution would be doubled;  
therefore it is better and a greater advantage in expense to make  
such a wheel of half the size (?) the land which it would water and  
would render the country fertile to supply food to the inhabitants,  
and would make navigable canals for mercantile purposes.  
The way in which the river in its flow should scour its own channel.  
By the ninth of the third; the more rapid it is, the more it wears  
away its channel; and, by the converse proposition, the slower the  
water the more it deposits that which renders it turbid.  
And let the sluice be movable like the one I arranged in Friuli  
[
Footnote 19: This passage reveals to us the fact that Leonardo had  
visited the country of Friuli and that he had stayed there for some  
time. Nothing whatever was known of this previously.], where when  
one sluice was opened the water which passed through it dug out the  
bottom. Therefore when the rivers are flooded, the sluices of the  
mills ought to be opened in order that the whole course of the river  
may pass through falls to each mill; there should be many in order  
to give a greater impetus, and so all the river will be scoured. And  
below the site of each of the two mills there may be one of the said  
868  


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