power-wheel

It borders somewhat on hero worship, however, as is evident from the use of the following language: "If one could see a mystical presentation of the epoch, one would see Garrison as a Titan, turning a giant grindstone or electrical power-wheel, from which radiated vibrations in larger and in ever larger, more communicative circles and spheres of agitation, till there was not a man, woman, or child in America who was not a tremble."

The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 Various

Especially in its partially acclimatized forms to American conditions, it is all adult and almost scholastic; and as the most elaborate machinery may sometimes be run by a poor power-wheel, if the stream be swift and copious enough, so the mighty rent that sets toward motor education would give it some degree of success were it worse and less economic of pedagogic momentum than it is.

Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene G. Stanley Hall 1885

Redgrave, standing with Zaidie in the conning-tower, moved the power-wheel through ten degrees, and then to the amazement of tens of thousands of spectators, the hull of the _Astronef_ rose perpendicularly from the waters of the Bay.

A Honeymoon in Space George Chetwynd Griffith 1881

And how unfortunate I am to be tied to a power-wheel, in that filthy town, instead of being here, where Nature turns the wheel, and the birds chirp at hand, and the scene and the air are all purity and peace. "

Put Yourself in His Place Charles Reade 1849

There isn't a power-wheel, or a water-wheel, within eight miles of Hillsborough, that can't show you just such a correspondence as this; and rattening, or worse, at the tail of it. "

Put Yourself in His Place Charles Reade 1849