Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage

The Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage (or Peaucellier–Lipkin cell, or Peaucellier–Lipkin inversor), invented in 1864, was the first true planar straight line mechanism – the first planar linkage capable of transforming rotary motion into perfect straight-line motion, and vice versa.

It is named after Charles-Nicolas Peaucellier (1832–1913), a French army officer, and Yom Tov Lipman Lipkin (1846–1876), a Lithuanian Jew and son of the famed Rabbi Israel Salanter.

This piston needed to keep a good seal with the cylinder in order to retain the driving medium, and not lose energy efficiency due to leaks.

In the geometric diagram of the apparatus, six bars of fixed length can be seen: OA, OC, AB, BC, CD, DA.

With OBD staying collinear, the only requirement to achieve the intended straight-line motion of D are that AB = AD, that BC = DC, and for B to be constrained to a circular path which crosses O.

A typical example is shown in the opposite figure, in which a rocker-slider four-bar serves as the input driver.

3, Paper 2) writes that when he showed a model to Kelvin, he “nursed it as if it had been his own child, and when a motion was made to relieve him of it, replied ‘No!

I have not had nearly enough of it—it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.’” A monumental-scale sculpture implementing the linkage in illuminated struts is on permanent exhibition in Eindhoven, Netherlands.