ABSTRACT
Belts were developed to provide a means for transmitting power from the prime mover — a steam engine or a water wheel — to the point where it was actually needed. The first belts were used in water-powered mills, and they were generally flat, made from leather, and ran on wooden pulleys that had a very slight crown to keep the belt in position. In those early days, a mill would have a line shaft driven by the prime mover. Then, off the main line shaft, there would be many flat belts, each supplying a smaller line shaft, a machine, or a part of the process. One of the truly impressive sights of my early days in industry was watching the “head operator” using a special stick-like tool to put a 600 mm wide, 9 m long (24-in.-wide, 30-ft-long) flat belt on a line shaft pulley rotating at 500 r/min. A huge motor drove the main line shaft, which in turn drove 15 other machines.
