Talk:Differential (mechanical device)

Active differentials Updating
The Active differentials section seems very out of date — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.183.139.79 (talk) 09:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Animated
Is anyone here talented and vigorous enough to put up an animated version of this? Jokem (talk) 05:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)


 * There are various animations here on Commons, but I'm not sure if any of them would add greatly to the article.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 08:20, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see any differential animations here. Jokem (talk) 18:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Please use meaningful edit summaries
Thank you for your contributions to clean up this article. It really needed citations. Please do use meaningful edit summaries, tough, if you would, so that the rest of us can follow along. I'm looking at diffs such as and  where things were moved all around, and I can't find the justification. A good edit summary should say you're doing and, not just that you're focused on "article structure" or "images". Thanks again! —  void  xor  16:38, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

cn bombing
A recent editor claims that lots of cn tags are disliked. In my experience the article cn tag is more annoying. Specific issues can be addressed, a generic moan cannot. Greglocock (talk) 02:38, 12 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Hello! You could have pinged instead of referring to me as "a recent editor". My "generic moan"—as you put it—is that most claims on this article aren't verifiable, which is required per policy. The article-wide tags exist for a reason. Please realize that I was summarizing a concern that I've heard more than once over the years. —  void  xor  19:50, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I am too close to the subject but most of the claims in the article are high school physics, or the consequences thereof, and so scarcely need to be verified. I must admit I haven't read it through for a long time. Greglocock (talk) 22:05, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Contradictory claims
The article contains the sentences "The earliest known use of a differential gear is in the Antikythera mechanism, circa 80 BCE..." and "The earliest verified use of a differential was in a clock made by Joseph Williamson in 1720". One of these statements must be incorrect, or at least written in a way that is confusing/misleading. 198.24.10.249 (talk) 20:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't see the contradiction. The former is about the differential, and the latter is about a differential. —  void  xor  15:55, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * (OP) In this context, the two terms should be interchangeable, or else the term "differential gear" should not have been used at all here. A differential is constructed from a combination of several gears in a specific configuration. "Differential gear" is a term sometimes used in common parlance to refer to the assembly as a whole, but none of the gears individually are somehow uniquely "differential". The only way "a differential gear" might mean something other than "a differential" and thus be distinct from the assembly as a whole is in the sense that it might be "a gear from an assembly of gears that constitutes a differential". Implying that the entire differential exists in either case. So either the Antikythera Mechanism has/had the full set of gears necessary to constitute a differential/"differential gear" (thus serving as the earliest known example of a differential), or it doesn't, and it shouldn't be included in the article at all. So again, either one statement is incorrect, or one is confusing/misleading, or possibly both. 12.89.139.22 (talk) 22:01, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected and have removed the claim about the clock. It was uncited anyway. —  void  xor  23:10, 8 June 2023 (UTC)