**2. Materials and Methods**

As mentioned above, the article has as its starting point the 3D model of the *Hay inclined plane* developed through our own methodology and published in a previous article [13]. Static analysis of this 3D model by means of FEM has been proposed.

Therefore, the sources used for the present study are the same as those used to obtain the 3D model. The Orotava Canary Foundation for the History of Science [21] developed a project on the engineer Agustín de Betancourt in which all his written and graphic work has been digitized [22]. In the file of the Spanish engineer [15], there is a written account and a detailed sheet of the existing inclined plane in Coalbrookdale that operated between the River Severn and the Shropshire Canal. The colored sheet, drawn by hand by Betancourt himself, describes most of the elements of William Reynolds' ingenuity, but cannot be considered as a scale plane itself, since without a written account it is impossible to understand the functioning of the mechanism for moving ascending and descending boats and, in addition, because some of the parts of the mechanism do not appear to be detailed in the plan, although they do in the written account.
