A watermill or water mill 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 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 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.
History
There are two basic types of watermills, one powered by 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.
Western world Classical antiquity
The Greeks invented the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, and used, along with 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 the Greek 3rd century BC original.M. J. T. Lewis, Millstone and Hammer: the origins of water power (University of Hull Press 1997) 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 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 the reduction of human labour:Lewis, p. vii.
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 the ancient world".Kevin Greene, "Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: M.I. Finley Re-Considered", The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Feb., 2000), pp. 29-59 (39) 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 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 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 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.Lewis, passim.
The Romans used both fixed and floating water wheels and introduced water power to other provinces of 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 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 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.
Middle Ages
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, 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 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.
Tide mills
In recent years, a number of new archaeological finds has consecutively pushed back 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 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 at its peak. Remains of an earlier mill dated at 619 were also found at the site.
Survey of industrial mills
In a 2005 survey the scholar Adam Lucas identified the following first appearances of various industrial mill types in Western Europe. Noticeable 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.
First appearance of various industrial mills in medieval Europe (770–1443) Adam Robert Lucas, 'Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe', Technology and Culture, Vol. 46, (Jan. 2005), pp. 1-30 (17).Type of mill Date CountryMalt mill770FranceFulling mill1080FranceTanning millc. 1134FranceForge millca. 1200England, FranceTool-sharpening mill1203FranceHemp mill1209FranceBellows1269, 1283Slovakia, FrancePaper mill1282SpainSawmillc. 1300FranceOre-crushing mill1317GermanyBlast furnace1384FranceCutting and slitting mill1443France
Ancient East Asia
The waterwheel was found in China from 30 AD onwards, when it was used to power trip hammers,Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, pp. 390–392 the bellows in smelting iron,Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 370. and in one case, to mechanically rotate an armillary sphere for astronomical observation (see Zhang Heng).Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 88–89. Although 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.Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 396–400. 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).Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 400. The engineer Yang Su of 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.Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 400–401. 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 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 a day. By 610 or 670 AD, the watermill was introduced to Japan via Korean Peninsula.Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 401. It also became known in Tibet by at least 641 AD.
Ancient India 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".:
West Asia and North Africa