RACK

(Sax. wroccan, to strain, torment, fee.; evident ly of the same origin as the Germ, rachen, Ang. to wreak.) An instrument of torture formerly used in England. According to Coke (who, however, merely reports the story on traditional authority), the rack was first introduced into the Tower by the Duke of Exeter, constable of the Tower in 1447; and thence called " the Duke of Exeter's daughter." (3 Inst., p. 34.) Stowe, in his Chronicle, says that the duke's daughter herself invented it. The earliest mention of the use of the " rack or brake" is by Holinshed, under the year 1467. But it first became common in the reign of Henry VIII. Under that prince, the remaining Tudors, James I., and Charles I., down to 1040, the rack was a common implement of torture for prisoners confined in the Tower, and inflicted by the warrant of the council or under the sign manual. The rack consisted of an oblong frame of wood, composed of four beams, a little raised above the ground; the sufferer was fastened by the hands and feet to the corners, where two cro beams joined the longer ones, sometimes by sniill cords attached to each finger and toe; and the cords were twisted by means of rollers, so as to raise him from the ground, and stretch his body with extreme violence, dislocating the limbs, and, according to the Jesuit writers, who have left the most vivid representations of the sufferings of their companions under the state persecution of Elizabeth, some times extending the sufferer " more than a palm beyond his usual stature!" (Jenner, Societas Europaa, p. 12; see also.Tardive's Reading on the Use of Torture in England. 1837.) The Roman equideus is often translated rai ' writers; but whether the equuleus was something similar to the English engine, or a wooden horse (as the derivation of the word implies), or, in short, what was its form and description, antiquaries have not been able to discover. (See among other authorities the learned treatise of Magius, De Equuleo.) Rack. A railed convenience formed above the manger in a stable for the reception of the hay. It should be constructed with openings at the bottom for the seed or dust to pa through. Rack. In Machinery, a rectilinear sliding piece, having teeth cut on its edge so that they may work with those of a wheel or pinion which drives or follows the rack. The rack may be regarded as a toothed wheel whose radius is infinite. [s. 1030]