Animations

I have mentioned in the past that my all-time favorite novel is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. 

There is a conversation in the book that takes place between a couple of mathematicians in World War II.  One mentions that (radial) airplane engines always have an uneven number of cylinders.  The other questions this and the first relies (paraphrasing) “I don’t know.  Something to do with harmonics, I guess.  That wasn’t my point, anyway.  Can we just accept it as a given?”

Obviously, this is not a pivotal passage in the book, but I have thought about it.  In fact, I was thinking about it again yesterday afternoon. 

It occurred to me that – unlike an in-line six or a V-8 engine - all of the pistons in a radial engine had to attach at the same point on the crankshaft,  and I wondered how that was done. 

I had not yet begun to research this when I accidently came across a website devoted to Animations.  The first of these features a radial engine.