Roasting jack

In Britain, starting in the Tudor period, dog-powered turnspits were used; the dog ran in a treadmill linked to the spit by belts and pulleys.

A great majority of the jacks used prior to the 19th century were powered by a descending weight, often made of stone or iron, sometimes of lead.

A steam-powered roasting jack was first described by the Ottoman polymath and engineer Taqi al-Din in his Al-Turuq al-samiyya fi al-alat al-ruhaniyya (The Sublime Methods of Spiritual Machines), in 1551.

Smoke-jacks were also illustrated in Vittorio Zonca's book of machines (1607),[7] and in John Wilkins's Mathematical Magick.

The wheel AB should be placed in the narrow part of the chimney, where the motion of the smoke is swiftest, and where also the greatest part of it must strike upon the sails.—The force of this machine depends on the draught of the chimney, and the strength of the fire.Smoke-jacks are sometimes moved by means of spiral flyers coiling about a vertical axle; and at other times by a vertical wheel with sails like the float-boards of a mill: but the above is the more customary construction.A bottle-jack[9] was a clockwork motor in a brass shell, shaped like a bottle; it was introduced in the late 18th Century and in many cases replaced the earlier and much more simple dangle spit.