A chainsaw is a portable handheld power saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. Modern chainsaws are typically powered by a gasoline engine or an electric motor, which spins the chain around the bar so its teeth can bite into wood or other material as they pass. Chainsaws are used to fell trees, remove branches, cut logs into lengths, prune, clear firebreaks, and harvest firewood, and chainsaw carvers use them to shape wood into sculpture. Specialized versions can also cut concrete, stone, brick, and ice, and a chainsaw mounted in a guide frame can serve as a portable sawmill for milling lumber.
Facts
Introduced When (Circa)1926 (first electric chainsaw) and 1929 (first gasoline-powered chainsaw), both Andreas Stihl 1 OriginThe chainsaw's direct ancestor was a medical instrument: the osteotome, developed around 1830 by German orthopaedist Bernhard Heine to cut bone, using small cutting teeth on a chain guided around a blade. 1 Introduced era (class) Power Source Still Made Today In the Other Atlases
Era Of Origin
Also in History Atlas: the era this subject comes from.
Sources
1. Chainsaw (Wikipedia)
History > For cutting wood section, Stihl and Lerp paragraph
the latter patented and developed an electric chainsaw for use on log bucking sites in 1926 and a gasoline-powered chainsaw in 1929, and founded a company to mass-produce them.
History > In surgery section, Heine osteotome paragraph
This instrument, the osteotome, had links of a chain carrying small cutting teeth with the edges set at an angle; the chain was moved around a guiding blade by turning the handle of a sprocket wheel.
Lead section, action
A chainsaw (or chain saw) is a portable handheld power saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar.
Lead section, still made today
Modern chainsaws are typically gasoline or electric and are used in activities such as tree felling, limbing, bucking, pruning, cutting firebreaks in wildland fire suppression, harvesting of firewood, for use in chainsaw art and chainsaw mills, for cutting concrete, and cutting ice.
Lead section, power source
Modern chainsaws are typically gasoline or electric
Lead section
with patents for wood chainsaws beginning in the late 19th century
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