Lovecraft's Neighbor (1903) Knowles

Only tangential to Lovecraft, but he would have seen this family and known of them. He would have been 13 or so.
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"Curiosities", The Streand Magazine, p. 357, 1903



ANOTHER EXPERIMENT IN DYNAMICS IN the Curiosities in The Strand for June it was stated that if a half unrolled spool of thread is placed on a table and the thread pulled horizontally from the under side of it the spool contrary to general expectation will roll towards the hand In connection with this it is interesting to note that if the cylinder is larger in diameter at the point around which the thread is wound than it is at the points on which it rolls it will roll away from the hand when the thread is pulled This experiment can be tried by passing a pencil through a spool and resting the ends of it on two books as in the illustration Also if the thread be drawn from the under side of a it spool resting on a flat surface the spool will not move in either direction I was led to these conclusions which I afterwards verified by trying in the case of the half unrolled spool mentioned in the June Strand to calculate the ratio between the rate of the spool and that of the hand as the hand pulled the thread This makes a very interesting little problem Mr J Courtland Knowles 2 Angel Street Providence RI US A