Animals have been powering machines for a long time, but not just horses and oxen and donkeys. Dogs have, too—as long ago as the sixteenth century. I blogged awhile back about turnspit dogs—those canines who toiled away in treadmills that turned the meat roasting on a spit. During the Victorian era, dogs were used to power other, smaller machines. Such as one of the most important inventions ever–the sewing machine, invented by Elias Howe in 1846. Here’s his early invention, which operated with a hand crank (but no dog).
Patents for dog-powered sewing machines cropped up during that time gap between the invention of the sewing machine and the availability of electric-powered machines (which didn’t happen until around the turn of the 20th century) .
Here’s one inventor’s dog-powered industrial sewing machine, shown in an 1882 book Popular Scientific Recreations:
The dog would move when the sewing machine operator inclined the treadmill (uphill? downhill?). Anyway, it wasn’t a constant motion on the poor dog’s part. The Richards Dog Engine was briefly used in Paris to power sewing machines in a uniform-making factory.
Isaac Singer improved on the design and was the first to use foot-power to replace the hand-cranked (or dog-cranked) model.
Then there’s the sewing machine bicycle. I don’t have permission to show the photo, but you can click on it here. It’s kind of worth it.