Topic summary
Differential gear
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Differential (mechanical device).
Other uses
Non-automotive uses of differentials include performing analoguearithmetic. Two of the differential's three shafts are made to rotate through angles that represent (are proportional to) two numbers, and the angle of the third shaft's rotation represents the sum or difference of the two input numbers. The earliest known use of a differential gear is in the Antikythera mechanism, c. 80 BC, which used a differential gear to control a small sphere representing the Moon from the difference between the Sun and Moon position pointers. The ball was painted black and white in hemispheres, and graphically showed the phase of the Moon at a particular point in time. An equation clock that used a differential for addition was made in 1720. In the 20th century, large assemblies of many differentials were used as analogue computers, calculating, for example, the direction in which a gun should be aimed.