Pitching machine
A pitching machine (sometimes in German baseball throwing machine ) is a training device in baseball that automatically "throws" a ball to a batter . In order to simulate a pitcher as realistically as possible, the balls are shot at different speeds and styles. There are devices in which each ball is inserted individually by hand ( hand-feed ), as well as devices in which the next ball is automatically transported from a kind of basket with many balls into the throwing device ( auto [matic] feed ).
history
The inventor of the first baseball throwing machine was the British mathematician Charles Hinton , who in 1897 built a gunpowder- powered pitching machine for the baseball team at Princeton University . Some sources claim that the machine caused many serious injuries and that it caused Hinton to drop out of Princeton University. In fact, Hinton moved to the University of Minnesota and took his throwing machine with him to his new place of work.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hinton, Charles, "A Mechanical Pitcher," Harper's Weekly , March 20, 1897, pp. 301-302
- ↑ SS Seahra: Physics in Higher-Dimensional Manifolds. (pdf (2.5 MB)) Thesis. University of Waterloo, 2003, p. 19 , accessed July 17, 2012 (English, footnote on page 5).