Joint for the transmission of movement

Conical or bevel gears can be used to transmit movement between two drive shafts positioned at right angles. But conical gears are often complex and do not always satisfactorily maintain the same speed between the driving and driven shafts. Working on this question, the engineer Melville Clemens successfully presented a new device for transmitting movement at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, mounted for the occasion on a 100-horsepower machine. An article in the Revue maritime, echoing the one published in the Scientific American, emphasized the new joint’s silent functioning, robustness and reliability. This full-scale reproduction of the Clemens joint by Jules Digeon was acquired by the Conservatoire two years later, in 1878.