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80-502: [REDACTED] Look up water mill  or watermill in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Water Mill or Watermill may refer to: Watermill , a mill that uses hydropower Milldam , which may include a water mill within the dam Water wheel , the driving engine of the mill List of watermills , listing several water mills called Watermill The Watermill (Ruisdael) ,

160-586: A forge , also known variously as a hammer mill , hammer forge or hammer works. The hammers were usually raised by a cam and then released to fall under the force of gravity . Historically, trip hammers were often powered hydraulically by a water wheel . Trip hammers are known to have been used in Imperial China since the Western Han dynasty . They also existed in the contemporary Greco-Roman world , with more evidence of their use in medieval Europe during

240-450: A forge , fulling stocks in a fulling mill and so on. However, in corn mills rotation about a vertical axis was required to drive its stones. The horizontal rotation was converted into the vertical rotation by means of gearing, which also enabled the runner stones to turn faster than the waterwheel. The usual arrangement in British and American corn mills has been for the waterwheel to turn

320-424: A fuller's mill , a type of mill that has been operated at all times with falling stocks. However, it has been pointed out that the translation of Pomponius' fragmentary text could be faulty, and relies on translating mola , which is often thought to mean either a mill or millstone, to instead refer to a water powered trip hammer. Grain-pounders with pestles, as well as ordinary watermills , are attested as late as

400-637: A 1660 painting by Jacob van Ruisdael The Watermill (1958 tune) musical composition by Ronald Binge Watermill (ballet) , a 1972 ballet by Jerome Robbins Watermill Theatre , a repertory theatre in Bagnor, Newbury, Berkshire, England, UK Water Mill, New York , USA; a hamlet on Long Island in Suffolk County Water Mill (LIRR station) of the Long Island Rail Road, in the hamlet of Water Mill Water Mill (Water Mill, New York) ,

480-437: A dam on the river above the mill and a more elaborate millpond, sluice gate, mill race and spillway or tailrace. An inherent problem in the overshot mill is that it reverses the rotation of the wheel. If a miller wishes to convert a breastshot mill to an overshot wheel all the machinery in the mill has to be rebuilt to take account of the change in rotation. An alternative solution was the pitchback or backshot wheel. A launder

560-718: A day. By 610 or 670 AD, the watermill was introduced to Japan via Korean Peninsula . It also became known in Tibet by at least 641 AD. According to Greek historical tradition, India received water-mills from the Roman Empire in the early 4th century AD when a certain Metrodoros introduced "water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then". Engineers under the Caliphates adopted watermill technology from former provinces of

640-452: A horizontal shaft on which is also mounted a large pit wheel . This meshes with the wallower , mounted on a vertical shaft, which turns the (larger) great spur wheel (mounted on the same shaft). This large face wheel , set with pegs, in turn, turned a smaller wheel (such as a lantern gear ) known as a stone nut, which was attached to the shaft that drove the runner stone. The number of runner stones that could be turned depended directly upon

720-427: A horizontal water wheel on a vertical axle, and the other with a vertical wheel on a horizontal axle. The oldest of these were horizontal mills in which the force of the water, striking a simple paddle wheel set horizontally in line with the flow turned a runner stone balanced on the rynd which is atop a shaft leading directly up from the wheel. The bedstone does not turn. The problem with this type of mill arose from

800-598: A mostly rural work process, than the ancient urban-centered literary class had been. By Carolingian times, references to watermills had become "innumerable" in Frankish records. The Domesday Book , compiled in 1086, records 5,624 watermills in England alone. Later research estimates a less conservative number of 6,082 that should be considered a minimum as the northern reaches of England were never properly recorded. In 1300, this number had risen to between 10,000 and 15,000. By

880-457: A shaft with a horizontal axis to one with a vertical axis. Although to date only a few dozen Roman mills are archaeologically traced, the widespread use of aqueducts in the period suggests that many remain to be discovered. Recent excavations in Roman London, for example, have uncovered what appears to be a tide mill together with a possible sequence of mills worked by an aqueduct running along

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960-420: A single waterwheel driving more than one set of stones was drawn by Henry Beighton in 1723 and published in 1744 by J. T. Desaguliers . The overshot wheel was a later innovation in waterwheels and was around two and a half times more efficient than the undershot. The undershot wheel, in which the main water wheel is simply set into the flow of the mill race, suffers from an inherent inefficiency stemming from

1040-472: A source of water, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Fulling mills, and steel mills may have spread from Al-Andalus to Christian Spain in the 12th century. Industrial watermills were also employed in large factory complexes built in al-Andalus between the 11th and 13th centuries. The engineers of the Islamic world used several solutions to achieve the maximum output from

1120-408: A vertical-waterwheel via a gear mechanism, and the other equipped with a horizontal-waterwheel without such a mechanism. The former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot, breastshot and reverse shot waterwheel mills. The Greeks invented the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, and used, along with

1200-581: A water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira , Asia Minor , before 71 BC. The Roman engineer Vitruvius has the first technical description of a watermill, dated to 40/10 BC; the device is fitted with an undershot wheel and power is transmitted via a gearing mechanism . He also seems to indicate the existence of water-powered kneading machines. The Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica tells of an advanced overshot wheel mill around 20 BC/10 AD. He praised for its use in grinding grain and

1280-494: A watermill listed on the National Register of Historic Places The Watermill Center , a center for arts and the humanities Watermill Cove , St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, England See also [ edit ] Waterwheel (disambiguation) Windmill (disambiguation) Mill (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

1360-495: A watermill. One solution was to mount them to piers of bridges to take advantage of the increased flow. Another solution was the ship mill, a type of watermill powered by water wheels mounted on the sides of ships moored in midstream . This technique was employed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in 10th-century Iraq , where large ship mills made of teak and iron could produce 10 tons of flour from corn every day for

1440-537: Is a mill that uses hydropower . It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding) , rolling , or hammering . Such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour , lumber , paper , textiles , and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills , sawmills , paper mills , textile mills , hammermills , trip hammering mills, rolling mills , and wire drawing mills. One major way to classify watermills

1520-653: Is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide; ship mills are water mills onboard (and constituting) a ship. Watermills impact the river dynamics of the watercourses where they are installed. During the time watermills operate channels tend to sedimentate , particularly backwater . Also in the backwater area, inundation events and sedimentation of adjacent floodplains increase. Over time however these effects are cancelled by river banks becoming higher. Where mills have been removed, river incision increases and channels deepen. There are two basic types of watermills, one powered by

1600-420: Is by wheel orientation (vertical or horizontal), one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, and the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism. The former type can be further subdivided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot, breastshot and pitchback (backshot or reverse shot) waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills

1680-775: Is carried out in the UK at Daniels Mill , Little Salkeld Mill and Redbournbury Mill . This was boosted to overcome flour shortages during the Covid pandemic. Some old mills are being upgraded with modern hydropower technology, such as those worked on by the South Somerset Hydropower Group in the UK. In some developing countries, watermills are still widely used for processing grain. For example, there are thought to be 25,000 operating in Nepal, and 200,000 in India. Many of these are still of

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1760-428: Is the tide mill . This mill might be of any kind, undershot, overshot or horizontal but it does not employ a river for its power source. Instead a mole or causeway is built across the mouth of a small bay. At low tide, gates in the mole are opened allowing the bay to fill with the incoming tide. At high tide the gates are closed, trapping the water inside. At a certain point a sluice gate in the mole can be opened allowing

1840-498: Is the preeminent role of France in the introduction of new innovative uses of waterpower. However, he has drawn attention to the dearth of studies of the subject in several other countries. The waterwheel was found in China from 30 AD onwards, when it was used to power trip hammers , the bellows in smelting iron , and in one case, to mechanically rotate an armillary sphere for astronomical observation (see Zhang Heng ). Although

1920-469: The Aurelian walls in the late 3rd century. A breastshot wheel mill dating to the late 2nd century AD was excavated at Les Martres-de-Veyre , France. The 3rd century AD Hierapolis water-powered stone sawmill is the earliest known machine to incorporate the mechanism of a crank and connecting rod . Further sawmills, also powered by crank and connecting rod mechanisms, are archaeologically attested for

2000-522: The Byzantine Empire , having been applied for centuries in those provinces prior to the Muslim conquests , including modern-day Syria , Jordan , Israel , Algeria , Tunisia , Morocco , and Spain (see List of ancient watermills ). The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled watermills were both in widespread use by

2080-580: The Frohnauer Hammer in the Ore Mountains . The belly helve hammer was the kind normally found in a finery forge , used for making pig iron into forgeable bar iron. This was lifted by cams striking the helve between the pivot and the head. The head usually weighed quarter of a ton. This was probably the case because the strain on a wooden helve would have been too great if the head were heavier. The nose helve hammer seems to have been unusual until

2160-560: The Han era may rather refer to a water lever, not a trip hammer. Later research, pointing to two contemporary Han era funeral wares depicting hydraulic hammers, proved that vertical waterwheels were used to power batteries of trip hammers during the Han dynasty. With his description, it is seen that the out-of-date Chinese term for pestle and mortar (dui, tui) would soon be replaced with the Chinese term for

2240-467: The Roman Empire . So-called 'Greek Mills' used water wheels with a horizontal wheel (and vertical shaft). A "Roman Mill" features a vertical wheel (on a horizontal shaft). Greek style mills are the older and simpler of the two designs, but only operate well with high water velocities and with small diameter millstones. Roman style mills are more complicated as they require gears to transmit the power from

2320-589: The Romans , undershot, overshot and breastshot waterwheel mills. The earliest evidence of a water-driven wheel appears in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium (ca. 280−220 BC). The British historian of technology M.J.T. Lewis has shown that those portions of Philo of Byzantium's mechanical treatise which describe water wheels and which have been previously regarded as later Arabic interpolations, actually date back to

2400-539: The Sui dynasty (581–618 AD) was said to operate hundreds of them by the beginning of the 6th century. A source written in 612 AD mentions Buddhist monks arguing over the revenues gained from watermills. The Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) 'Ordinances of the Department of Waterways' written in 737 AD stated that watermills should not interrupt riverine transport and in some cases were restricted to use in certain seasons of

2480-614: The Zhou dynasty (1050 BC–221 BC), the British sinologist Joseph Needham regards the earliest texts to describe the device are the Jijiupian dictionary of 40 BC, Yang Xiong 's text known as the Fangyan of 15 BC, as well as the "best statement" the Xin Lun written by Huan Tan about 20 AD (during the usurpation of Wang Mang ). The latter book states that the legendary mythological king known as Fu Xi

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2560-507: The ancient world ". It featured 16 overshot waterwheels to power an equal number of flour mills. The capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time. A similar mill complex existed on the Janiculum hill, whose supply of flour for Rome 's population was judged by emperor Aurelian important enough to be included in

2640-619: The granary in Baghdad . More than 300 watermills were at work in Iran till 1960. Now only a few are still working. One of the famous ones is the water mill of Askzar and the water mill of the Yazd city, still producing flour. Typically, water is diverted from a river or impoundment or mill pond to a turbine or water wheel, along a channel or pipe (variously known as a flume , head race, mill race , leat , leet, lade (Scots) or penstock ). The force of

2720-524: The 12th century. During the Industrial Revolution the trip hammer fell out of favor and was replaced with the power hammer . Often multiple hammers were powered via a set of line shafts , pulleys and belts from a centrally located power supply. In ancient China, the trip hammer evolved out of the use of the mortar and pestle , which in turn gave rise to the treadle-operated tilt-hammer ( Chinese : 碓 Pinyin : dui ; Wade-Giles : tui ). The latter

2800-523: The 3rd century BC. According to M.J.T. Lewis, a flute player whose mechanism was described by the Persian Banū Mūsā brothers in the 9th century AD and can be "reasonably" attributed to Apollonius of Perge , functions on the principle of water-powered trip hammers. The Roman scholar Pliny ( Natural History XVIII, 23.97) indicates that water-driven pestles had become fairly widespread in Italy by

2880-537: The 6th century AD water-powered stone sawmills at Gerasa and Ephesus . Literary references to water-powered marble saws in what is now Germany can be found in Ausonius 4th century AD poem Mosella . They also seem to be indicated about the same time by the Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia , demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire . The earliest turbine mill

2960-608: The 9th century. A variety of industrial watermills were used in the Islamic world, including gristmills , hullers , sawmills , ship mills, stamp mills , steel mills , sugar mills , and tide mills . By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial watermills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia . Muslim and Middle Eastern Christian engineers also used crankshafts and water turbines , gears in watermills and water-raising machines , and dams as

3040-456: The British chemist and sinologist Joseph Needham speculates that the water-powered millstone could have existed in Han China by the 1st century AD, there is no sufficient literary evidence for it until the 5th century AD. In 488 AD, the mathematician and engineer Zu Chongzhi had a watermill erected which was inspected by Emperor Wu of Southern Qi (r. 482–493 AD). The engineer Yang Su of

3120-532: The Greek 3rd century BC original. The sakia gear is, already fully developed, for the first time attested in a 2nd-century BC Hellenistic wall painting in Ptolemaic Egypt . Lewis assigns the date of the invention of the horizontal-wheeled mill to the Greek colony of Byzantium in the first half of the 3rd century BC, and that of the vertical-wheeled mill to Ptolemaic Alexandria around 240 BC. The Greek geographer Strabo reports in his Geography

3200-542: The Western Qiang people by way of canals through the Qilian Mountains . In his Rou Xing Lun , the government official Kong Rong (153–208 AD) remarked that the invention of the trip hammer was an excellent example of a product created by intelligent men during his own age (comparing the relative achievements of the sages of old). During the 3rd century AD, the high government official and engineer Du Yu established

3280-416: The buckets fill, the weight of the water starts to turn the wheel. The water spills out of the bucket on the down side into a spillway leading back to river. Since the wheel itself is set above the spillway, the water never impedes the speed of the wheel. The impulse of the water on the wheel is also harnessed in addition to the weight of the water once in the buckets. Overshot wheels require the construction of

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3360-497: The cam remained confined to the horizontal type and was limited to a "small variety of machines" that included only rice hulling and much later mica-pounders, paper mills and saw mills, while fulling stocks, ore stamps or forge hammers were unknown. The main components for water-powered trip hammers – water wheels , cams , and hammers – were known in the Hellenistic world . Early cams are in evidence in water-powered automata from

3440-446: The cutlery trades. There were therefore many such forges known as 'tilts' around Sheffield . They were also used in brass battery works for making brass (or copper) pots and pans. In battery works (at least) it was possible for one power source to operate several hammers. In Germany, tilt hammers of up to 300 kg were used in hammer mills to forge iron. Surviving, working hammers, powered by water wheels, may be seen, for example, at

3520-567: The datable examples are from the 1st and 2nd century AD. At Dolaucothi, these trip-hammers were hydraulic-driven and possibly also at other Roman mining sites, where the large-scale use of the hushing and ground sluicing technique meant that large amounts of water were directly available for powering the machines. However, none of the Spanish and Portuguese anvils can be convincingly associated with mill sites, though most mines had water sources and leat systems which could easily be harnessed. Likewise,

3600-450: The date of the earliest tide mills, all of which were discovered on the Irish coast: A 6th century vertical-wheeled tide mill was located at Killoteran near Waterford . A twin flume horizontal-wheeled tide mill dating to c. 630 was excavated on Little Island . Alongside it, another tide mill was found which was powered by a vertical undershot wheel. The Nendrum Monastery mill from 787

3680-593: The dating of the Pumsaint stone to the Roman era did not address that the stone could have been moved, and relies on a series of interlinked probabilities which would jeopardize the conclusion of a Roman dating should any of them unravel. Water-powered and mechanised trip hammers reappeared in medieval Europe by the 12th century. Their use was described in medieval written sources of Styria (in modern-day Austria), written in 1135 and another in 1175 AD. Medieval French sources of

3760-586: The draining water to drive a mill wheel or wheels. This is particularly effective in places where the tidal differential is very great, such as the Bay of Fundy in Canada where the tides can rise fifty feet, or the now derelict village of Tide Mills, East Sussex . The last two examples in the United Kingdom which are restored to working conditions can be visited at Eling , Hampshire and at Woodbridge , Suffolk . Run of

3840-453: The early 7th century, watermills were also well established in Ireland . A century later they began to spread across the former Roman Rhine and Danube frontier into the other parts of Germany . Ship mills and tide mills , both of which yet unattested for the ancient period, were introduced in the 6th century. In recent years, a number of new archaeological finds has consecutively pushed back

3920-487: The earth, we taste again the golden age . The Roman encyclopedist Pliny mentions in his Naturalis Historia of around 70 AD water-powered trip hammers operating in the greater part of Italy. There is evidence of a fulling mill in 73/74 AD in Antioch , Roman Syria . The 2nd century AD multiple mill complex of Barbegal in southern France has been described as "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in

4000-421: The fact that the wheel itself, entering the water behind the main thrust of the flow driving the wheel, followed by the lift of the wheel out of the water ahead of the main thrust, actually impedes its own operation. The overshot wheel solves this problem by bringing the water flow to the top of the wheel. The water fills buckets built into the wheel, rather than the simple paddle wheel design of undershot wheels. As

4080-467: The first century AD: The greater part of Italy uses an unshod pestle and also wheels which water turns as it flows past, and a trip-hammer [ mola ]". While some scholars have viewed this passage to mean a watermill, later scholarship argued that mola must refer to water-powered trip hammers which were used for the pounding and hulling of grain . Their mechanical character is also suggested by an earlier reference of Lucius Pomponius (fl. 100–85 BC) to

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4160-417: The head mounted at the end of a recumbent helve , hence the alternative name of helve hammer. The choice of which type was used in a particular context may have depended on the strain that its operation imposed on the helve. This was normally of wood, mounted in a cast-iron ring (called the hurst) where it pivoted. However, in the 19th century the heaviest helves were sometimes a single casting, incorporating

4240-402: The hurst. The tilt hammer or tail helve hammer has a pivot at the centre of the helve on which it is mounted, and is lifted by pushing the opposite end to the head downwards. In practice, the head on such hammers seems to have been limited to one hundredweight (about 50 kg), but a very rapid stroke rate was possible. This made it suitable for drawing iron down to small sizes suitable for

4320-518: The lack of gearing; the speed of the water directly set the maximum speed of the runner stone which, in turn, set the rate of milling. Most watermills in Britain and the United States of America had a vertical waterwheel, one of four kinds: undershot, breast-shot, overshot and pitchback wheels. This vertical produced rotary motion around a horizontal axis, which could be used (with cams) to lift hammers in

4400-405: The late 18th or early 19th century. This was lifted beyond the head. Surviving nose helves and those in pictures appear to be of cast iron. The steam-powered drop hammer replaced the trip hammer (at least for the largest forgings). James Nasmyth invented it in 1839 and patented in 1842. However, by then forging had become less important for the iron industry, following the improvements to

4480-567: The middle of the 5th century AD in a monastery founded by Romanus of Condat in the remote Jura region , indicating that the knowledge of trip hammers continued into the early Middle Ages . At the Italian site of Saepinum excavators have recently unearthed a late antique water mill that may have employed trip hammers for tanning , the earliest evidence of its kind in a classical context. The widest application of trip hammers seems to have occurred in Roman mining, where ore from deep veins

4560-476: The more efficient vertical-set waterwheel, the Chinese often employed the horizontal-set waterwheel in operating trip hammers, along with recumbent hammers. The recumbent hammer was found in Chinese illustrations by 1313 AD, with the publishing of Wang Zhen 's Nong Shu book on ancient and contemporary (medieval) metallurgy in China. There were also illustrations of trip hammers in an encyclopedia of 1637, written by Song Yingxing (1587–1666). The Chinese use of

4640-454: The operation of hundreds of trip hammers in over thirty governmental districts throughout China. There are numerous references to trip hammers during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) and Song dynasty (960–1279), and there are Ming dynasty (1368–1644) references that report the use of trip hammers in papermills of Fujian Province. Although Chinese trip hammers in China were sometimes powered by

4720-614: The power available for British grain milling. By the early 20th century, availability of cheap electrical energy made the watermill obsolete in developed countries although some smaller rural mills continued to operate commercially later throughout the century. A few historic mills such as the Water Mill , Newlin Mill and Yates Mill in the US and The Darley Mill Centre in the UK still operate for demonstration purposes. Small-scale commercial production

4800-604: The power from a toothed annular ring that is mounted near the outer edge of the wheel. This drives the machinery using a spur gear mounted on a shaft rather than taking power from the central axle . However, the basic mode of operation remains the same; gravity drives machinery through the motion of flowing water . Toward the end of the 19th century, the invention of the Pelton wheel encouraged some mill owners to replace over- and undershot wheels with Pelton wheel turbines driven through penstocks . A different type of watermill

4880-460: The reduction of human labour: Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls; even if the cockcrow heralds the dawn, sleep on. For Demeter has imposed the labours of your hands on the nymphs , who leaping down upon the topmost part of the wheel, rotate its axle; with encircling cogs, it turns the hollow weight of the Nisyrian millstones . If we learn to feast toil-free on the fruits of

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4960-448: The river schemes do not divert water at all and usually involve undershot wheels the mills are mostly on the banks of sizeable rivers or fast flowing streams. Other watermills were set beneath large bridges where the flow of water between the stanchions was faster. At one point London bridge had so many water wheels beneath it that bargemen complained that passage through the bridge was impaired. In 1870 watermills still produced 2/3 of

5040-621: The side of the River Fleet . In 537 AD, ship mills were ingeniously used by the East Roman general Belisarius , when the besieging Goths cut off the water supply for those mills. These floating mills had a wheel that was attached to a boat moored in a fast flowing river. The surviving evidence for watermills sharply increases with the emergence of documentary genres such as monastic charters , Christian hagiography and Germanic legal codes . These were more inclined to address watermilling,

5120-406: The supply of water available. As waterwheel technology improved mills became more efficient, and by the 19th century, it was common for the great spur wheel to drive several stone nuts, so that a single water wheel could drive as many as four stones. Each step in the process increased the gear ratio which increased the maximum speed of the runner stone. Adjusting the sluice gate and thus the flow of

5200-517: The title Water Mill . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Water_Mill&oldid=1213748823 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Place name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages water mill A watermill or water mill

5280-617: The traditional style, but some have been upgraded by replacing wooden parts with better-designed metal ones to improve the efficiency. For example, the Centre for Rural Technology in Nepal upgraded 2,400 mills between 2003 and 2007. This is also the period when water-mills started to spread outside the former Empire. According to Cedrenus (Historiarum compendium), a certain Metrodoros who went to India in c. AD 325 "constructed water-mills and baths, unknown among them [the Brahmans] till then". Trip hammer One or more trip hammers were set up in

5360-400: The use of combined trip hammer batteries (lian zhi dui), which employed several shafts that were arranged to work off one large waterwheel. In Chinese texts of the 4th century, there are written accounts of men possessing and operating hundreds of trip hammer machines, such as the venerable mathematician Wang Rong (died 306 AD), Deng Yu (died 326 AD), and Shi Chong (died 300 AD), responsible for

5440-646: The vertical pestle stamp-mill type. The oldest depicted European illustration of a forge-hammer is perhaps the A Description of the Northern Peoples of Olaus Magnus , dated to 1565 AD. In this woodcut image, there is the scene of three martinets and a waterwheel working wood and leather bellows of the Osmund Bloomery furnace. The recumbent hammer was first depicted in European artwork in an illustration by Sandrart and Zonca (dated 1621 AD). A trip hammer has

5520-486: The water past the main wheel allowed the miller to compensate for seasonal variations in the water supply. Finer speed adjustment was made during the milling process by tentering , that is, adjusting the gap between the stones according to the water flow, the type of grain being milled, and the grade of flour required. In many mills (including the earliest) the great spur wheel turned only one stone, but there might be several mills under one roof. The earliest illustration of

5600-596: The water's movement drives the blades of a wheel or turbine, which in turn rotates an axle that drives the mill's other machinery. Water leaving the wheel or turbine is drained through a tail race, but this channel may also be the head race of yet another wheel, turbine or mill. The passage of water is controlled by sluice gates that allow maintenance and some measure of flood control; large mill complexes may have dozens of sluices controlling complicated interconnected races that feed multiple buildings and industrial processes. Watermills can be divided into two kinds, one with

5680-459: The water-powered trip-hammer (Chinese: 水碓 ; pinyin: shuǐ duì ; Wade–Giles: shui tui . The Han dynasty scholar and poet Ma Rong (79–166 AD) mentioned in one of his poems of hammers 'pounding in the water-echoing caves'. As described in the Hou Han Shu , in 129 AD the official Yu Xu gave a report to Emperor Shun of Han that trip hammers were being exported from Han China to

5760-456: The year. From other Tang-era sources of the 8th century, it is known that these ordinances were taken very seriously, as the government demolished many watermills owned by great families, merchants, and Buddhist abbeys that failed to acknowledge ordinances or meet government regulations. A eunuch serving Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (r. 712–756 AD) owned a watermill by 748 AD which employed five waterwheels that ground 300 bushels of wheat

5840-527: The years 1116 and 1249 both record the use of mechanised trip hammers used in the forging of wrought iron . Medieval European trip hammers by the 15th century were most often in the shape of the vertical pestle stamp-mill, although they employed more frequent use of the vertical waterwheel than earlier Chinese versions (which often used the horizontal waterwheel). The well-known Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci often sketched trip hammers for use in forges and even file-cutting machinery, those of

5920-427: Was a simple device employing a lever and fulcrum (operated by pressure applied by the weight of one's foot to one end), which featured a series of catches or lugs on the main revolving shaft as well. This device enabled the labor of pounding, often in the decorticating and polishing of grain, and avoided manual use of pounding with hand and arm. Although Chinese historians assert that its origins may span as far back as

6000-416: Was cleverly improved in such a way that the whole weight of the body could be used for treading on the tilt-hammer (tui), thus increasing the efficiency ten times. Afterwards the power of animals—donkeys, mules, oxen, and horses—was applied by means of machinery, and water-power too used for pounding, so that the benefit was increased a hundredfold. However, this passage as well as other early references from

6080-532: Was first crushed into small pieces for further processing. Here, the regularity and spacing of large indentations on stone anvils indicate the use of cam-operated ore stamps, much like the devices of later medieval mining. Such mechanically deformed anvils have been found at numerous Roman silver and gold mining sites in Western Europe , including at Dolaucothi ( Wales ), and on the Iberian peninsula , where

6160-552: Was found in Chemtou and Testour , Roman North Africa , dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. A possible water-powered furnace has been identified at Marseille , France. Mills were commonly used for grinding grain into flour (attested by Pliny the Elder ), but industrial uses as fulling and sawing marble were also applied. The Romans used both fixed and floating water wheels and introduced water power to other provinces of

6240-436: Was placed at the end of the flume on the headrace, this turned the direction of the water without much loss of energy, and the direction of rotation was maintained. Daniels Mill near Bewdley , Worcestershire is an example of a flour mill that originally used a breastshot wheel, but was converted to use a pitchback wheel. Today it operates as a breastshot mill. Larger water wheels (usually overshot steel wheels) transmit

6320-614: Was situated on an island in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland . Its millstones are 830 mm in diameter and the horizontal wheel is estimated to have developed 7 ⁄ 8 horsepower (650 W) at its peak. Remains of an earlier mill dated at 619 were also found at the site. In a 2005 survey the scholar Adam Lucas identified the following first appearances of various industrial mill types in Western Europe. Noticeable

6400-428: Was the one responsible for the pestle and mortar (which evolved into the tilt-hammer and then trip hammer device). Although the author speaks of the mythological Fu Xi, a passage of his writing gives hint that the waterwheel and trip-hammer were in widespread use by the 1st century AD in China (for water-powered Chinese metallurgy , see Du Shi ): Fu Hsi invented the pestle and mortar, which is so useful, and later on it

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