Highfield lever Highfield lever A Highfield lever is a lever device which allows tension to be rapidly set up in a wire and equally rapidly released to the required extent. It is frequently used in sailing boats where tension in some part of the rigging needs to be adjusted to a pre-set amount as the wind impinges on one side of the sails or the other. It is typically used in running backstays (runners). To make it work, the backstay is led through a block or fairlead along the deck to a two-legged, second order lever mounted with its fulcrum above deck
Lever of the lever. The word "lever" entered English about 1300 from Old French, in which the word was "levier". This sprang from the stem of the verb "lever", meaning "to raise". The verb, in turn, goes back to the Latin "levare", itself from the adjective "levis", meaning "light" (as in "not heavy"). The word's primary origin is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stem "legwh-", meaning "light", "easy" or "nimble", among other things. The PIE stem also gave rise to the English word "light". The earliest remaining writings regarding levers date from the 3rd century BCE and were provided by Archimedes. 'Give me