The Day Before · Sprout · ages 6-8
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Read by an AI-generated voice. The words on this page are the transcript.
One Rope, Two Wheels
The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.
Warm wind blew the Green away, and the ground under their feet was somewhere else, the day before.
Mud-brick houses by a river. A boy's family was building a room on their roof.
"The bricks must be up tonight," he said. "Tomorrow the flood comes."
"I know what it's called! I prom..." said Lan. Bzzz.
You can't bring the answer. You can only bring the question.
His sister pulled baskets up. Hand over hand. Slow!
"Which way are we pulling?" said Inkling. "Up. But down is easy."
Their uncle hung the rope over a smooth beam. Now they pulled down from the street. The basket went up!
But the rope rubbed. It got hot.
"I noticed something, I can name it," said Inkling. "The beam doesn't turn. It rubs."
"Could the round thing turn with the rope?" said Lan. "Like the wheels in the marsh?"
The uncle carved a little wheel with a groove. He put it on a peg. The rope sat in the groove.
Pull down. The wheel turned. Up went the basket. Nothing rubbed!
Then Inkling asked, "What if a wheel rode on the basket too?"
Now the pull was half as hard.
At sunset the last basket went up.
Warm wind blew the day before away, and the grass under their feet was the Green.
On the anvil was a new letter. D, O, O, R. DOOR.
The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.
Back on the Green
Lan hung a rope over a branch. Up went Tí's bucket of toys!
Tell the story back to someone. Why was pulling down easier?
Who you met
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Lan a child of the Green Goes first; makes a friend in a minute -
Inkling a child of the Green Names what she notices
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts are true, stretched or made up — and what does nobody know?
True
- The oldest evidence of pulleys comes from Egypt, about three thousand nine hundred years ago, and from Mesopotamia at about the same time. Source
- A wheel fixed in one place with a rope over it changes the way you pull: you pull down, and the load goes up. Source
- A wheel that rides on the load itself, so two parts of the rope hold it up, halves the pull you need. You have to pull the rope twice as far. Source
Stretched
- In the story the pulley and the second wheel are both worked out in one afternoon, on one roof. What we simplified: Pulleys were probably improved slowly, by many people, over a long time. The famous stories about pulleys with several wheels, told about the Greek thinker Archimedes, come from more than a thousand years later.
Made up
- Lan and Inkling, the spark, the buzzing word, the boy, his sister, his uncle and the new room on the roof are made up.
Nobody knows
- Nobody knows who made the first pulley. The earliest evidence does not come with a name. Source