Pound lock
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A pound lock is type of lock that is used almost exclusively nowadays on canals and rivers. A pound lock has a chamber (the pound) with gates at both ends that control the level of water in the pound. In contrast, an earlier design with a single gate was known as a flash lock.
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[edit] History
Indirect evidence suggests that pound locks may have been used in antiquity by the Ptolemaic Greeks and the Romans.[1]
Pound locks were created in ancient China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD), pioneered by the government official and engineer Qiao Weiyo in 984,[2] mentioned by the Chinese polymath scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) in his book Dream Pool Essays (published in 1088),[3] and fully described in the Chinese historical text Song Shi (compiled in 1345).[4]
In medieval Europe a type of pound lock was first built in 1373 at Vreeswijk, the Netherlands.[5] This pound lock serviced many ships at once in a large basin, yet the true pound lock (i.e. one for a small basin) came in 1396 with the one built at Damme near Bruges.[5] A famous civil engineer of pound locks in Europe was the Italian Bertola da Novate (c. 1410-1475), who constructed 18 of them on the Naviglio di Bereguardo (part of the Milan canal system sponsored by Francesco Sforza) between the years 1452 and 1458.[6]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Frank Gardner Moore "Three Canal Projects, Roman and Byzantine." American Journal of Archaeology, 54, (1950), 97-111 (99)
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 350-351
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 351-352.
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 351.
- ^ a b Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 357.
- ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 358.
[edit] References
- Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
