WINTER

One of the four seasons of the year. Winter is usually understood to begin with the shortest day, and to end when the sun returns to the vernal equinox. WIPERS, in some kinds of machinery, as oil-mills, powder-mills, fulling-mills, are pieces projecting generally from horizontal axles, for the purpose of raising stampers, pounders, or heavy pistons, in vertical directions, and then leaving them to fall by their own weight. The principal object to be attended to in the construction of wipers is to give them such a form that the weight shall be raised with a uniform force and velocity. (Gregory's Mechanics; Appendix to Ferguson's Lectures, by Brewster; IVillis's Frinciples of Mechanism.) [s. 1346]