Watermill (water wheel)
Molino de agua (rueda hidráulica)
- Date
- c. 250 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Alexandria, Egypt and Byzantium
- Credited to
- Hellenistic engineers (Philo of Byzantium describes the bucket wheel)
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A wheel turned by a water current that converts hydraulic energy into rotary mechanical work, first to raise water (noria) and later to grind grain. Humanity's first non-muscular energy source.
The horizontal wheel (Greek or Norse mill) and the vertical wheel may have distinct origins; China independently had hydraulic trip hammers (shui pai) in the 1st century CE.
What it led to
- Freeing human and animal labour from milling, a task that took hours daily
- Hydraulic industry: sawmills, hammer mills and fulling mills in late antiquity and the Middle Ages
- Concentration of population by rivers and water rights
- The starting point of all engine-machine engineering
Built on
- Rotary quern and donkey millc. 450 BCE
- Toothed gearc. 270 BCE
- Archimedes' screwc. 250 BCE
- Noria (waterwheel)
- Rotary flour mill
Made possible
- Horizontal-wheel watermill (Greek or Norse mill)century I a.C. (posiblemente antes)
- Vertical-wheel geared watermill (Vitruvian mill)c. 25 BCE
- Water-powered trip hammerc. 20 CE
- Water-powered bellows for blast furnaces31 CE
- Water-powered sawmill with crank and connecting rod (Hierapolis)century III
- Ship mill (floating watermill)537
- Persian vertical-axis windmillc. century IX
- Water-powered fulling millc. 1000
- Water-powered multi-spindle ramie spinning frame1313
- Screw press coinage and rolling millc. 1550-1553
- Lombe's silk throwing mill1718-1721
- Smeaton's experimental study of water wheels1759
- Water frame1769
- Threshing machine1786
- Roller mill for flour1834
- Francis turbine1848
- Pelton wheel1878–1880
- Vertical waterwheel mill (Vitruvian)
- Barbegal mill
- Hierapolis water-powered sawmill
- Chinese hydraulic bellows