704.00 Universal Joints

704.01 The 12-spoke wire wheel exactly opposes all tension, compression, torque, or turbining tendencies amongst its members. Universal joints of two axes or three axes of freedom are analogous to the wire wheel as a basic 12-degrees-of-freedom accommodating, controlling, and employing system whose effectiveness relies upon their discrete mechanical and structural differentiation and disposition of all tension and compression forces. All of these may be considered to be basic tensegrity systems. (See illustration 640.41B. )

704.02 The shafted axis of the two-axis universal joint tends to make it appear as a single-axis system. But it constitutes in actuality an octahedral tensegrity, with its yoke planes symmetrically oriented at 90 degrees to one another. The two-axis tensegrity has been long known and is often successfully employed by mechanics as a flexible-membrane coupling sandwiched between two diametrically opposed yoke-ended shafts, precessionally oriented to one another in a 90-degree star pattern. This only tensionally interlinked, i.e., universally jointed, drive shafting has for centuries been demonstrating the discontinuous compression and only tensionally continuous multiaxial, multidimensional symmetry of tensegrity structuring and energetic work transmission from here to there.