sprocket

What came first, the sprocket or the oil?

From Salon ● Jun. 6, 2026

Over in a dilapidated shack on the opposite side of the highway, 24-year-old Nasratullah Raihan said much the same as he watched a repairman fiddle with the rear sprocket of his bicycle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2021

He’s always been a gearhead, devoted to celluloid and sprocket holes, but his best movies are also sentimental as hell—big, sloppy tearjerkers wrapped inside clockwork thrillers.

From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2020

Ease the film onto the metal reel, where, ideally, the film’s sprocket holes will catch in tiny teeth.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 5, 2017

A chain weighing twenty thousand pounds connected a sprocket on the axle to sprockets driven by twin thousand-horsepower steam engines.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

May 2: Tesla stockholders are dismayed when CEO Elon Musk announces he is changing his name to Spacely and that his company will stop manufacturing electric cars in favor of sprockets.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 2, 2021

The former stained-glass factory in Haarlem’s old town, lovingly repurposed into an art studio by Collado’s father-in-law, houses an unconventional mélange of sprockets and easels, grinders and paint brushes.

From The Verge ● Sep. 23, 2020

I feel the sprockets turn and the ratchet move up the teeth.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 22, 2018

He daydreams of flying spoons and sprockets, of one-legged light bulbs and robotic birds.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2015

When I squinted my eyes, the people all blurred like a film that has jumped the sprockets and is racing untended through the machine.

From "Jacob Have I Loved" by Katherine Paterson