Maybug

„The first time when I seem to have acted under the first instinctive impulse which later dominated me – to harness the enemies of nature to the service of man, was thru the medium of May-bugs or June-bugs, as they are called in America – which were a veritable pest in that country and sometimes broke the branches of trees by the sheer weight of their bodies. The bushes were black with them. I would attach as many as four of them to a crosspiece, rotably arranged on a thin spindle, and transmit the motion of the same to a large disc and so derive considerable „power“. These creatures were remarkably efficient, for once they were started they had no sense to stop and continued whirling for hours and hours and the hotter it was the harder they worked.“