What angle must the blade be? Is it good to have a high attack angle, or one that’s nearly flat?

How heavy should the apparatus holding the blade be? How far should it travel? Is keen sharpening important, or does the weight do most of the work? What kind of latch/release do you use?

Lastly, morbid extra credit, did they ever execute someone with their face up, so they could see the blade coming?

EDIT FOR CLARITY: Way more complex than an axe or a noose.

    • @Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      23•23 days ago

      Calm down, calm down. I didn’t say it was ineffective. Quite the opposite actually.

      As to “technically challenging,” you had to build the damn thing; as opposed to throwing rocks at someone, or tossing them off a building.

      I don’t think the 18th century was the idiot-land you think it was.

      It takes an engineer making calculations? Thanks for helping make my point ☝️

    • @BCsven@lemmy.ca
      20•23 days ago

      Just because it was a long time ago, don’t assume they were stupid. Their engineers that built castles and structures have that work still standing today–while USA has infrastructure collapsing

      • @cattywampas@lemm.eeEnglish
        9•23 days ago

        A little bit of survivorship bias there, but you are correct that engineers throughout history have been just as smart as engineers today.

      • sylver_dragonEnglish
        5•23 days ago

        Anyone can build a bridge which stands. It takes a engineer to build a bridge which just stands, while not costing an insane amount of money.

        That said, engineers throughout history were incredibly smart and shouldn’t be discounted.

        • @juliebean@lemm.ee
          1•22 days ago

          but you were certainly thinking it loudly. or how else was one to interpret ‘people from the 18th century wouldn’t be able to do something if it was technically challenging’?

    • TurboWafflz
      6•23 days ago

      Also, they had plenty of people to test it on as they refined the design