Whirligig
It can also be a pinwheel, spinning top, buzzer, comic weathervane, gee-haw, spinner, whirlygig, whirlijig, whirlyjig, whirlybird, or simply a whirly.
They can be used as kinetic garden ornaments, and can be designed to transmit sound and vibration into the ground to repel burrowing rodents.
Many a child of the Great Depression from the southern Appalachians and Ozarks remembers a button or token, or coin and a string as the primary spinning toy of their youth.
A buzzer is often constructed by running string through two of the holes on a large button and is a common and easily made toy.
Early American buzzers were constructed of wood, bone, or stone, and date from at least the Fourche Maline Culture, c. 500 B.C.
The two blade non-mechanical model is the most prevalent,[citation needed] exemplified by the classic Cardinal with Wings illustrated at right.
By 400 BC the bamboo-copter or dragon butterfly, a helicopter-like rotor launched by rolling a stick, had been invented in China.
[7] Wind-driven whirligigs were technically possible by 700 AD when the Sasanian Empire began using windmills to lift water for irrigation.
[13] For reasons that are unclear, whirligigs in the shape of the cross became a fashionable allegory in paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
An oil by Hieronymus Bosch, probably completed between 1480 and 1500 and known as the Christ Child with a Walking Frame, contains a clear illustration of a string-powered whirligig.
The 1819 publication by Washington Irving of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow contains the following description: "a little wooden warrior who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn".
What began as a simple turning of artificial feathers in the wind advanced into full-blown mechanisms producing both motion and sound.
The body is of hand whittled bamboo, fastened with rusty nails and wire and a single piece of string.
The shaft contains a second feature, a set of knockers that create a bit of music on raised pieces of bamboo.
O. Henry wrote a short story called "The Whirligig of Life", about a mountain couple who decide to divorce and the events that lead to their remarriage told from the perspective of the judge.
[25] Lloyd Biggle, Jr. wrote a novel titled The Whirligig of Time as part of his science fiction series featuring Jan Darzek, a former private detective.
In the Newbery Award-Winning young adult novel Missing May by Cynthia Rylant, Ob, the main character's uncle, makes whirligigs as a hobby.
In the movie Twister, Helen Hunt's aunt Meg (played by Lois Smith) has a large collection of metal kinetic art whirligigs in her front yard to warn her of approaching tornadoes.
[27] Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and Saad Bhamla, a postdoctoral student at Stanford University built in 2016 an inexpensive, hand-powered centrifuge based on this ancient toy, that could help doctors working in developing countries.
